The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella

  *

  "You let her know there was something to fear?" Julia chided Marco. "You left a journalist thinking there's a story in those files?" The fading evening peered through the window of Marco's Horizon office where, on his laptop, he had paused his replay of his recorded conversation with Dallas.

  "She won't make a move," he told Julia who faced him across his desk with unshielded anger.

  "What makes you so certain?"

  "She has no usable information. A flash drive with a bunch of documents appearing to be thought pieces is hardly verifiable evidence. There's no story and speculation would be ridiculous. If she makes an accusation, we deny her version and she looks like an idiot."

  "Except her statements would not be speculation, but the truth. The contents of those documents are the real plans of the government of the United States."

  "Not even the government of the United States knows those documents are its plans."

  "She has information we cannot let spread."

  "She won't say a word. I've shut her down, and the restaurant guy too."

  "What did you do with him?"

  "We double-checked he had not read the files and had no interest in the story."

  "How did you verify his interest?"

  "We went through his recent communications, from the time they found the drive."

  "And?"

  "Nothing. He's not talking to anyone. He's okay."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive."

  "I hope so. You realize we are in the best situation we could ever be in for the plans we want to execute. Our timing for this project is serendipitously beautiful. The complete dysfunction of Washington politics has been a blessing for the entire scope of our objectives since day one. We could not have asked for a more perfect point in history for launching our work, but with this reporter...we are facing a disruption."

  "Dallas will not be a disruption."

  "Obtaining formal bi-partisan approval for our project would have been impossible. No one in Congress is approving major projects on the record. Legislators want to avoid demonstrating cooperation with the other party. Informally we can do as we please, no one is watching. The two parties do not speak to each other. Every member of Congress is looking to secure an individual future regardless of the impact a lack of action is having on the country, which means we can select the most effective operators to open doors where needed. Money is running wild while there is no tax reform or campaign financing controls, and no targeted spending on important initiatives. We can take bits and pieces from various sources and no one notices. The gap between the federal bureaucracy and elected officials could not be wider, leaving us a great yawning hole to manage to our benefit. We can send instructions to a federal civil servant and receive instant results because, with a lack of leadership, those poor people do not know any better. If we actually had to manage with a hard-working, committed, functioning government, we would never have been able to implement our project."

  "Yes the circumstances are perfect."

  "And you want to destroy our convenient alignment of inept behavior for your friend?"

  Marco stared at her. "No, of course not. If Dallas chooses to speculate on the origin of the documents, the story cannot be corroborated. No government department or agency is officially implementing the project. As you said, the current lack of cooperation in government means most of the contributors to the research had no idea why they were asked the questions they were asked about cyber security or the intention of the information gathering."

  "But every government department and agency will be unofficially made to accept implementation of the project, if they want to or not. And only about two dozen people around the world know why. And those people are expected to keep the secret for the rest of their lives. Your reporter is not committed to our secret, but she has our information."

  "Yes I know. But she's contained. She does not know the context for the information. Tell me your real concern."

  "I want a comprehensive idea of where we are on each subject area. If she starts talking, we need to be able to deflect attention away from activities in the real world that are preparation for our activities in the...future world."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well let's take the discrimination file. Can she learn about our future plans from activities we are conducting in the real world?"

  "On that topic, no. Race and gender politics are rising to a crescendo we have not seen since the '60s and '70s. Back then there was no expectation of equality, people were protesting for basic rights. But at this point, expectations are sky high and so are the disappointments."

  "Don't remind me."

  "Hey, you're a woman Secretary of State."

  "One high profile cabinet post. Where's the woman Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense? The Senate should be a minimum of 51 women, and the Supreme Court a minimum of five woman justices."

  "Okay, okay, you can't have everything."

  "We are the majority, more than fifty percent of the population, and we have no power."

  "Right."

  "And don't get me started on ethnicity. Sixty million Latinos in America and you barely have a place at the Cabinet table."

  "Yes I know."

  "Every forward step of the civil rights movement is being repealed and pummeled back into history."

  "Because the middle class had its heart ripped out by the housing crisis and they need someone to blame."

  "The politicians use simplistic, narrow solutions because they are all too lazy and stupid to work on real issues for turning around the economy and education. They pick an emotional target like voting rights and stomp all over the issue instead of launching a major initiative to find effective answers for creating jobs."

  "Okay, okay, where does the current social status put us with the data Dallas uncovered?"

  "The discrimination file essentially warns the software code governing today's consumer facing websites can be made to respond to an individual or organization's sexist and racist policies, or even innocent stereotypes, and no one will ever know."

  "If a business does not want a particular demographic to obtain its product or service..."

  "Or they want to charge certain people more..."

  "The software will let an organization seamlessly implement those policies. All they'll need is access to demographic data. Sites requiring people to post a picture will automatically have identity information, if they have the software to decipher the picture's content. Other sites will have people enter the data in the name of benign statistics gathering. And others will access the data from other websites or databases feeding information to businesses, for a price."

  "There's also name and location politics. The applications can be made to interpret where people live or the name they give, as an indicator of ethnicity or economic status."

  "And they can proactively alter the code or innocently make changes based on programming existing stereotypes into common questions."

  "There's nothing innocent about stereotypes."

  "Right, but the question is...in terms of our project, do we care? The result of online discrimination will hurt people on an individual level, but is the outcome going to be the kind of problem that halts our other plans?"

  "Technically, there is really no reason to care, the issue is almost impossible to prove."

  "As a person I care."

  "But as the director of FedSec?"

  Marco hesitated before unenthusiastically replying, "No."

  "Believe me, as a woman I care too. I know turning the other way is tough, Marco. But somehow we'll have to transcend this technical functionality. We'll have to find another road to our power and economic security."

  "There is no other road. Women are already far behind in tech employment and that's where the money is. If you get left even further behind by male-run online companies unrepresentatively programming
your access to products, including education by the way, you're going to completely miss out."

  "But we need our cyber project. If we do not gain total control of our domestic security, the country could become impossible to live in. We could have bombings and mass shootings every day."

  "Yes I know. The general idea behind our entire plan is surveillance. If we can monitor public places, have dynamic facial and body recognition and automatic alerts for suspicious behavior, we can finally get ahead of the terrorists."

  "I don't think the average American is really going to cry about the price they're paying, most of them are already enwrapped with their mobiles. We are talking about a population barely looking up as they go through their day. People have no idea how often they are viewed on camera."

  "I know. Indifference is one development I have never reconciled. When did people become so complacent?"

  "The 2008 recession sucked the dynamism out of the general populace. The crushing of the American dream of home ownership really prompted a lot of people to give up. They thought they had done everything right, but a configuration of indecipherable financial equations destroyed their hard work over night. People lost all their equity, every cent they had ever saved. Do you think they are going to turn around and start working hard all over again? Not if they can avoid the pressure."

  "Yeah I think the true social fallout from 2008 has yet to be written. But the effects are being played out in everyday life. The rise of smartphones came just in time to provide people with a distraction from ever making an effort again. With the malaise, people were waiting for an opportunity when they would not have to struggle. Now they have found one. Without a depression or a war to recover from or an evil dictator to be afraid of, people can settle into their docile lives without guilt. Staring at your mobile all day is not a sign of laziness, in fact most people would assume you were engaged with someone."

  "That's the irony. Most people are not using the smartphone to do anything smart. They are scrolling through social media updates."

  "Which means they'll barely notice when our system comes online, and we track and store their every move."

  "No, they'll walk right into the process."

  "With their heads down." Both laughed. "But we begin a high tech race and gender war at the same time?"

  "Only with those who are paying attention."

  "The issue is indirect. You can no longer hang a 'whites only' sign in front of your business, but you can code the directive into your business software. Since consumer websites are already collecting demographic data about people, as the information becomes cross-referenced and traded, every business will eventually know each individual's ethnicity and gender, and react as they wish."

  "A cyber Jim Crow world."

  "Exactly and no one would be the wiser. Complainers will have a hard time proving the computer rejected an applicant or buyer because decisions are made in split-seconds with no face-to-face interaction."

  "Without transparent standards for gathering and using personal data, you could also weed out people by education, profession, or location."

  "Right, you can have the system automatically reject graduates of a certain college who apply for a job. Or you can have a 'no journalists' policy at your hotel. A person whose profession is cross-referenced as journalist will always receive a 'there are no rooms available message' when they try to make a reservation at a hotel."

  "And a second later, I could book a room because really the hotel is only at fifty percent occupancy."

  "That's the idea."

  "Yikes."

  "And the possibilities go on."

  "Actually given those scenarios, maybe the outcome could also go the other way. Once these discriminatory practices start affecting white people...and men, the media will pay attention. Tech companies might have to think of ways to use software to fight discrimination."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. But everyone will know they can track the discrimination decisions. They will know when a woman applicant is rejected and a man is accepted. Every company would have statistics."

  "But they could also manipulate and manually change those numbers at any time. You would have to be able to infiltrate the business' systems to monitor activity 24/7."

  "Well there's a job for the hackers. Besides directly stealing consumer data like credit card numbers, businesses will have to watch out for hackers who practice data analysis on their decision-making information and publish those statistics to the public."

  "Yes maybe some hackers are civil rights activists or working with them. Imagine those stories. If a business is suspected of having coded discriminatory practices into its software, hackers could access those systems and pull the data before the business decides to delete or manipulate the findings. The ability to analyze those numbers would be a game changer."

  "Hackers would need to get organized if they are going to become the champions of civil rights. Businesses would instantly fight back, the data would be considered stolen. The hackers would have to have documented evidence they could prove, which would not be easy. They too could be accused of altering the data."

  "You would need cyber forensic scientists on top of cyber forensic scientists to investigate for the manipulation of the code."

  "Absolutely."

  "We are dealing with a real, but distant, possibility. Not only are those hacker guys...mostly guys, super-competitive, but they are also all over the world, and by definition, independent."

  "You would need one who saw this coming and started mobilizing forces right away."

  "Yes if any of them are even aware of our plans, his work is set, and he should be preparing a response right now."