The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella (20 page)

I thank you all again for your hard work,
cooperation and incredible courage in the service of humankind. We
go forward, equally vigilant against our enemies, against those who
may seek to disrupt our work, and against those who do not
understand the value we are providing by using technology to these
ends. We will have to fight them, we will have to be more organized
and committed to our project. But we have the advantage of already
being implemented, of being in place and ready to be used by the
populace. Our enemies, whoever they are, cannot be much more than a
misled bunch of anarchists who will haphazardly approach us in
disruptive battles. But we will be ready for them. And we will
win."

At the conclusion of her words, those in the
room ignored the mandated decorum of the scene and jumped to their
feet as they broke out in prolonged applause. Julia nodded to them
all in turn, a smile of contentment and gratification etched on her
face as she took the moment to stand unchallenged in a world made
accessible through one light touch of a finger to an icon on a
screen.

*

At her home office, Apex carefully read the
detailed COSA overview file prepared for the President of the
United States' trips to the summits. FedSec explained the project
as a spontaneously created database integration by concerned
businesses and agencies, and recommended the President support all
government departments' participation in the global experiment.
'What a bunch of liars,' Apex thought. 'Some experiment.' The
document did not call for Presidential or any other level of
approval. Instead the experiment would be rolled out as a test, and
miraculously over the years no one would bother to roll the system
back. FedSec's careful language did not bind the administration,
nor government departments, nor industries, yet within a couple of
decades, the organization expected the early phases of the project
to be flawlessly functioning for global surveillance tracking
integrated with personal online data.

'Carter was right,' Apex conceded. 'They
have set up an entire global system to move forward without human
intervention. No government department has a reason to withdraw
from an experiment aiding national security. The funding from each
department is minimal, no one can see the underlying financing
located all over the world provided by those who expect to be
benefactors of the data aggregation capabilities. No one has a view
into the entire picture of this project, its mandate is to take
personal privacy and hand the data over to governments and
businesses. There's no story for the press, no obvious crime
against which the public could rally. Only a carefully thought
through scheme designed to provide a window into private activity
for a government bent on control.'

But Apex knew there were people who would
take the time to analyze the details and would be able to
understand its implications. Diligently, she prepared a summary of
the document's key points - the planned connection of the project's
server farm infrastructure and the intentions of its consumer
facing views. Packaging the summary with the original blueprint,
she e-mailed the files to every independent technologist she knew,
everywhere in the world.

*

For businesspeople, scientists and
academics, Carter began his promotion of COSA as surreptitiously as
possible. Beginning with close friends who were the founder-owners
of consumer facing technology companies, he privately spoke to them
about the long-term efficiencies to be gained by cross-referencing
all user data across multiple websites. No one was skeptical about
the benefits, all questioned the legality, or more importantly,
consumer acceptance. Carter repeated the claim that the rollout was
only a test, and businesses could build a separate database,
mirroring the existing one, but to be used only for research.

"Believe me no one is more torn about this
turn of events than I am, " Carter told five friends at dinner in a
secluded restaurant in Tiburon, California, across the Golden Gate
channel from San Francisco. "My contribution could turn out to be
the worst thing I have ever done. But if I never see another
terrorist incident, maybe my work was the best thing. Either way my
motives here begin and end with the technology. Regardless of how
the functionality is used, we have to know our ultimate
capabilities. People who have worked on this project are stunned by
the results. We are next gen leading the way on facial and body
movement recognition. This functionality can be used to find
missing children or seniors with Alzheimer's, not just wanted
criminals. The extended reach into everyday life is even more
profound. Think of a world where routine tasks are just done,
completely automated. I'm one of these people who hate doing
administrative chores...you know going to the DMV, registering to
vote, buying insurance. In future phases, all the time standing in
line and filling out forms will disappear. My health care premiums
will be directly tied to my actual health, the food I eat, even the
environment where I live. Drones can deliver my groceries or carry
my bags from an airport carousel directly to my home? Don't you
want to be able to have all of today's wasted time to do things you
really enjoy?

And education. We should not be losing a
single child, or even adults because of a lack of education. Kids
should have a learning program tailored only for their personal
needs. I was also thinking about at-risk kids, boys in gangs, what
if we could get them to sit down at the computer for a few hours a
day and have all of the lessons built around the factors in their
life. We could prepare lessons around the subjects they are
interested in. So for example an African-American gang kid could
come to a safe place, sit down with his laptop, do an hour of
writing practice using only the histories of successful black men
as teaching tools, and we've got him. Next time it's two hours and
his science lesson is about how compounds join to create drugs,
pharmaceuticals, not illegal drugs. Maybe he'll stay for a third
hour to do math lessons if the examples refer to objects in his
neighborhood. Think about the value of that kind of personalized
education. The average kid spends more than 10,000 hours at public
school. We could ensure the same level of learning in half that
time, and add additional layers of tactical studies aimed at
preparation for the job market. The impact on our nation would be
tremendous.

So I admit, I'm excited by the opportunity
to provide every citizen with a uniquely directed life. We'll be
able to better manage transportation, electricity, water,
waste...think about getting rid of landfills, and this state's
water shortages. The potential is enormous and exciting. But the
question is 'should the government know everything about you?' My
answer is 'no' and the system will be fully equipped to let you
opt-out. Of course, from day one you'll be opted-in so by the time
someone is an adult and aware of the extent of gathered
information, effective opting out will only be on a go-forward
basis. But the functions will be available. Opting-out as an adult
may also trigger law enforcement to think you've gone off the grid
to join subversives. But the camera and sensor surveillance will
cover you. The government will still see you operating in public
places so no one will bother you if you decide you do not need a
daily life update from the system.

Look, I know we have a fine line here, but
the potential and the opportunity are fantastic. We are missing a
lot of people, under this system we won't miss anybody. Governments
will have no excuse for ignoring the homeless or pretending
education and job creation are working. There will be live,
real-time, exact statistics available every second on unemployment,
affordable housing, education levels, food consumption, transit
use, everything. People will have total transparency around taxes
and spending...I could go on and on."

"Don't bother, Carter," one of his friends
protested. "You're a total sell-out. You've got to be out of your
mind to be promoting this system. This idea is a gross invasion of
privacy. I'm not signing my company up for a government experiment
to implement Big Brother everywhere."

"Let's not be alarmist," Carter calmly
responded. "This is one of those moments when you have to pick a
side in history. Technology, our technology is here to stay, and
but do we let governments determine how and where they want to use
our innovations? Do you want a seat at the table or not? At the end
of the day the system works best when everyone has opted in, but
stays alert to how to participate. You don't want a situation where
you cannot attract employees because they want to run their lives
online and your company is still requiring them to do all of the
company's work and administrative tasks in a separate system. Don't
worry about security. I know that's the other big concern. Your
intellectual property can remain behind proprietary digital locks
and keys. But this system is about your employees being able to
manage their lives online. You'll want to connect employment
access, healthcare and retirement plan information and maybe extras
like parking passes and daycare clearances. Why would anyone want
to separately deal with each of those issues when data from one
could feed the other? The better connectivity you have, the easier
the rollout will be for your employees.

But remember at the end of the day, how you
manage your life online will be up to you. Education and awareness
will be the keys to making sure this system is a benefit and not a
subversive burden on the average person. And we have the
responsibility to define those options. We are the professionals
who understand exactly how this project is expected to work. We own
this technology. We also have the world's best technologists
working with us. At the end of the day, no government will be able
to make the system function without our help. We will be the
monitors, the guardians of our consumers' privacy and we can
control the technical operations, as we want. If you sign on now,
you're making the decisions. The results of these tests will be the
framework for an eventual fully global system. You do not even have
to update your test server environment because the data could be
static until such time as you realize the benefits of the plan.
Really we, the technology industry, we hold all the cards here. You
can sign up, check the system out and make a decision, your
decision." Glancing from face to face across the table, he said
with finality, "I hope I've addressed all of your concerns."

For better or for worse, he had.

With Carter's caveats and assurances, more
businesses signed on. Holding tight to the option to opt-out
anytime or to change the parameters of their involvement, and to
maintain at all times the right to manage their own consumers'
data, participants provided the COSA team with access to their
servers in exchange for the test results and the software.

Privacy advocates, who learned of the
project's existence through managers and executives in business,
had no recourse against an unofficial, experimental process no
government legislated into law. Concerned activists complained to
the media to report that the foundation was being laid for a
permanent system, but few believed their warnings. With each
tentacle reach from one server farm to another, more outsiders
wanted to be in, and the opportunity to grow the experiment
expanded exponentially, beyond even the original estimates
calculated by Julia's team for the first few years of the project
plan.

Test results were disseminated to all
participants and the value they saw was astounding. Aggregated data
was used to create an individual's profile in which a business or
government could view a range of activity, not only expected
shopping, banking, traveling and social media habits but also the
location, demographic, frequency and quantity data needed to
predict behavior. Where available, COSA cross-referenced
surveillance data and added the individual's non-online activities
into the profile to obtain a complete picture.

Participants began exchanging information
about the findings, and those conversations were recorded in
e-mails intercepted and read by Apex and her friends. As enthusiasm
grew, so did traffic about the project and its possibilities.

The satisfaction extended around the world.
When global governments began to see the benefits of COSA, they
realized the system would need a permanent home, organization, and
more palatable name. After intense discussions centered on issues
of national sovereignty, the world's governments agreed to allow
the United Nations Security Council to establish a unit for cyber
security incorporating COSA and its future development. To avoid a
controversial tone of permanency, the Council called the group,
Special Command for Cyber Security, established its headquarters
with the U.N. in New York City and appointed its head of operations
who was initially given the title, Director.

Within the U.N.'s budget Special Command's
funding was limited to the surveillance equipment infrastructure,
data aggregation software, the real-time feeds from all cameras and
sensors set-up around the world, and satellites the organization
could access through its own links, as well as the daily
operational costs of salaries and administrative overhead. But
unofficially, GCS established a permanent funding organization to
provide Special Command with additional resources whenever a global
issue needed to be resolved without the constraints of the U.N.
budget process.

As COSA's original name had proposed, the
project became complete online and surveillance aggregation, every
step and action each individual human took was recorded as a life
online. The original system uniting all of the proposed
functionality evolved into popular use, accessed from mobile and
static devices and openly referred to by civilians and governments
alike by a much more evident name, The Network.