The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella (18 page)

"Me? You think I am a thief?"

"Well no, but maybe one of your people?"

"I don't have people."

"Okay, what do you think the thief will do
with Marco's phone?"

Apex laughed. "What can't one do?
Smartphones are great leverage into a person's life, especially the
head of FedSec. One innocuous e-mail address could be the key to
opening a dozen doors. Manuel should have been more careful."

"I don't think he was expecting a drone to
fly into his bedroom to steal stuff."

"A drone? Well, people should assume that
development was inevitable. No one really believes drones will only
be used to deliver Amazon packages, do they? They have to expect
criminals to come up with other ideas."

"The average person has not thought beyond
the packages. Only people like you think about the broader
implications."

"People like me?"

"Yes, I've...I've extended the reach of my
investigation."

"Oh yeah."

"Yes."

"What for?"

"I was curious. There are not too many women
who own Internet companies or investment funds, private or
otherwise."

"Yes women are under-represented in those
fields."

"But I was thinking about where I might have
heard about women with those interests."

"And?"

"And I...I ran your face through the facial
recognition software in my brain and searched around for where I
thought I might have seen you before."

"Happy someone is still using a brain."

"Yes, well I recalled where I've seen
you."

"Really?"

"Yes. When Carter Harden was first coming up
as an Internet mogul, he was often photographed with his wife."

"Is that right?"

"Alexandra Spencer."

"And?"

"And I think that's you."

Apex burst out laughing. "Oh Dallas, you're
funny."

"Are you denying you're Alexandra
Spencer?"

"I told you my name is Apex."

"But you're her too?"

Apex laughed again. "What am I, a superhero
with dual identities? If that were true at least give me a cooler
name."

"Your husband has a few billion dollars.
Enough to finance your...rogue hacker adventures."

"Well, well, listen to this traitor to the
cause. I told you I'm a businesswoman with my own company and you
accuse me of being a kept woman. Such a horribly sexist line of
assumption to pursue."

"I apologize," Dallas shamefully said,
instantly backtracking on her comment. "You're absolutely right. I
don't know your net worth. You could be financing this adventure on
your own. I honestly apologize."

"Do you?"

"Yes I do."

"Why are you even questioning me?"

"I had a memory. I cross-referenced my
memory to online photos of Alexandra Spencer, and I came up with
you."

"That's hardly valid evidence."

"I thought I would at least try."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"What were you hoping to achieve by asking
if I was Alexandra Spencer?"

"Just the background."

"Or a story?"

"No."

"We've had an agreement since the beginning,
Dallas. There is no story here."

"Yes, I know but—"

"No story about anything. About me, about
the documents you found, about this so-called adventure you think
I'm on, no story."

"Yes, I understand."

"I hope so because you should not be turning
friends into enemies."

"No I shouldn't," Dallas contritely agreed.
"I really do apologize."

"Apology accepted. And for the record, of
course I'm independent and completely self-financing. I told you
I'm a private person, and I want my privacy respected which, by the
way, is not an outrageous demand. It's a fundamental American
right, a constitutional amendment for heaven's sake. Do you know
what year the fourth amendment was passed?"

"Ahhh...no."

"1791. Can you imagine? At that point in our
early history people said, 'hey I have a constitutional right to be
protected from snooping in my home, on my person, or through my
papers and effects.' The right to privacy has been required by law
for over two hundred years."

"But the Constitution only refers to
government intrusions, not private."

"Yes but now the two are becoming one and
the same. If the government is allowed to force private companies
to give up their data, the action is a government intrusion."

"But reasonable searches are allowed."

"And who's defining reasonable?"

"Public opinion?"

"Yeah until the feds come looking for
you."

"What made you such a major privacy
crusader?"

Apex hesitated. "I believe in my individual
rights. The idea of government viewing us as pawns to be played and
manipulated has never sat right with me. I am a sovereign being.
Government's sole responsibility is to keep crazy people away from
me so I can thrive. There is no government role to manage what I
personally do every day."

"But the government would say, safety comes
at a price. You have to allow them to protect you by implementing
universal procedures covering everyone."

"Violations of privacy in the name of
security should never be permitted. The debate always starts there
and escalates into a much more frightening story."

"How do you think they should protect
us?"

"The way they did in the past, with evidence
and brains. The problem is everyone is becoming lethargic, you can
sense the complacency in almost every field. The feeling is the
sense of bleakness one feels when...when you see trash on the
ground at Disneyland."

"What?"

"When Disneyland was first invented they
strived for perfection. You would never see trash on the ground
because one of the...cast members, any one would immediately pick
up every stray paper. But you can see trash on the ground at
Disneyland today. Maybe cast members are looking the other way or
maybe it's someone else's job done only on rounds or maybe there
are not enough trash people. Whatever the reason, trash on the
ground at Disneyland is the pop social indicator equivalent of a
society facing a massive decline in effort and caring."

"When in the world did you see trash on the
ground at Disneyland?"

"Don't hate. I like the rides. Now focus on
the point. At every level of our society, the malaise has swept in,
like a sleeping sickness. For law enforcement, an officer can sit
at a desk and data mine someone's phone instead of stepping out
into the streets to find clues."

"But why do things the hard way if you have
technology to make you more efficient?"

"Is the technology making him more
efficient? Regardless of the crime, police always jump to a
suspect's mobile phone 'to see if they can find anything.' Half the
time they have not even thought about the evidence to look for,
they are literally just scrolling through the data as if they were
trolling social media at home. The approach is not tactical, not
investigatory. The police have become digital time wasters like
everyone else. Law enforcement should have to think through all of
the parameters of the crime and possible evidence, and only go to
the phone if potential clues are pertinent to the other details
connected to the case."

"I think they're finding clues to
crimes."

"Sure, sometimes they are. But do they have
to look at everything on your phone to find those clues?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"Their approach is too sweeping, too
intrusive. The fourth amendment also says warrants must
'particularly describe the place to be searched, and the person or
things to be seized.' The warrant can not say 'we're just going to
scroll through this person's online data and see what we can find.'
Broad, generalized flailing around in police investigations has
been banned in this country for over two centuries. The liberties
law enforcement takes these days are illegal. We have to guard our
privacy."

"For privacy's sake?"

"For democracy's sake. Privacy is
foundational to societal peace. That's why it's in the fourth
amendment, not the 99th. We really do not need to know all the dirt
on our neighbors. Privacy is also critical to individual peace.
People should be able to choose the information they reveal to the
world, and when or if the data will be released. The automatic
assumption made by Internet companies that a person's personal
information belongs to the company is unprecedented in history.
When you go shopping at a brick-and-mortar store, do you expect the
storeowner to follow you home and record how you use every item you
bought? But online, that's exactly what's happening, and the worst
part is the companies believe they are doing you a favor."

"But don't people agree to these intrusions
by using the online services for free."

"All online companies, free and paid are
keeping and repackaging, using and manipulating, the consumer's
data. No one has agreed to this, but the practices have become
standard for businesses, without transparency to their
customers."

"The transparency existing now will
disappear all-together with this system they plan on
implementing."

"No doubt."

Dallas lowered her voice. "They're going to
win, aren't they, Apex."

"No!" Apex defiantly stated. "No,
never."

"But they'll get the system rolled out and
you won't be able to stop the project from expanding."

"If we can't stop the initial rollout, at
least we can make the subsequent build-outs difficult to implement
and maintain."

"How?"

"By deciphering their exact intentions and
aligning to limit the progress."

*

On the recommendation of the Secretary of
State, the President of the United States prepared to sign a
top-secret perpetual project directive warning all future
Presidents, the COSA experiment was a national security imperative
that had to supersede the vagaries of quadrennial elections. The
document, to be locked in a safe with other transition materials,
explained COSA's inter-connected infrastructure and the
impracticability of attempting to dismantle any section of the
system. The advice laid out the government and business strategy,
and suggested each future President accept the inevitability of
maintaining ground and online surveillance as part of the national
defense against physical and cyber terrorist threats.

"But the legal implications if the public
should find out..." the President of the United States stated, his
concern expressed to Julia in the Oval Office on the day of the
signing. Marco had joined her, as had the chairman of the
military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Mr. President, as I mentioned, this
research project has been implemented with extraordinary
cooperation. And if the experiment works, we will have demonstrated
our capability to achieve the widest reach possible over the
activities of terrorists."

"But we will be aggregating citizens' online
activity in an attempt to predict their next move."

"Mr. President with all due respect, on any
given day, there are perhaps 350 million people in this country.
Can you imagine the resources we would need to really pay attention
to every little motion every American and tourist is making each
day? The conspiracy theorists can speculate all they want, but
tracking every individual every minute, on cost alone, the scheme
is basically impossible. This project will flag the bad guys. The
system knows the difference between a gun store and a grocery
store. Facial recognition is only on people we have been tracking
in other systems because of their subversive activity. We don't
know anything about the average American unless the person becomes
a suspect. For some reason, people think we care about their every
activity, but we do not. We only want the threats to our national
security, and those guys come to us by virtue of their illegal
behavior. They act first, not us, and definitely not the
system."

"I see Justice has signed off, but I'm still
not sure what the American people would think of this. Everyone is
already up in arms over the cell phone monitoring mess."

"Sure but that was a functioning system
implemented without the consent of the American people. This is an
experiment, only R&D to understand our capabilities. We are
testing the functionality and determining possible features. Once
we have a concrete idea of our capabilities, we can develop a
comprehensive program to formally implement for the long-term."
Marco had been looking at Julia as she spoke, but dropped his head
to stare at a dot on the floor as she continued to weave a less
than accurate tale for the world's most powerful man. "We have to
practice with the software, get rid of bugs, determine exactly the
level of potential compromises, all of those sorts of tests will be
analyzed before we complete the work. You really have nothing to
worry about, sir. As the Justice Department said, we are only
operating in public areas, there are no legal implications when
people are functioning in public."

"People do not think their online activity
is public."

"Only because they do not read the fine
print. The Supreme Court has already said if you hand over
information to a public company to provide a service for you, like
banking, that's their information not yours."

"This is different, this is about
identity."

"The average person is comfortable with the
process. For the life they want, a law-abiding, normal life, they
have signed up, everyone is online. Handing over personal
information is not a major issue, they want to be connected and
they'll want the conveniences this project will eventually
deliver."

"Yes, I must say I love the opportunity to
extend education through online services and help people connect
their studies directly to jobs, those possibilities will be
enormously beneficial."