The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella

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  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 house? 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, 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 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 they diligently, and patiently, established their foundation for fighting back.

  But as enthusiasm grew, so did traffic about the project and its possibilities. The satisfaction continued to extend around the world. When global governments began to recognize the permanence 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, real-time feeds from all cameras and sensors set-up around the world and satellites the organization could access through its own links, and the data aggregation software to aggregate all of the information, 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.