The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella

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  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 benefit from 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.