Invasion of Privacy (15 page)

“She’s in danger,” said Randy Bell. “We need to pull her in.”

“And do what with her?” said Dylan Walsh, chief of the FBI’s Cyber Investigations Division. “Shall I put her up at my place? And the girls, too?”

“Maybe Keefe can help.”

“He’s on the bricks for three days. Can’t come near the office until he visits the company shrink.”

“We’ve got to do something,” Bell argued. “Between Mason and Prince, she won’t last a minute.”

“Calm down,” said Walsh sternly. He was tall and handsome and sturdy, forty-two years of age, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon with an advanced degree in computer science. Dressed in a dapper blue suit, his brown hair combed perfectly, he was an exemplar of the new FBI. “I understand your concern, and I appreciate your loyalty to Joe’s family. I don’t want anything to happen to Mary any more than you do. But we need to look at all the pieces here.”

Bell nodded a grudging agreement. “You’re the boss.”

Walsh patted Bell on the shoulder. “All right, then. Run this by me one more time.”

“She said it: ‘Semaphore.’ Just like that—out of the blue. It’s not exactly a word used in everyday conversation.”

“You have a point there.”

Dylan Walsh ran a hand across the back of his neck as he paced his office on the fifth floor of FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Semaphore had been a small operation to begin with. Just four fulltime agents, including himself. The number was limited by necessity. You didn’t raise a red flag when you wanted to investigate the man who had hacked into the Bureau’s mainframe. Not when that man was Ian Prince. That went double when your biggest rival in the organization was in Prince’s back pocket.

The Cyber Investigations Division had been formed five years earlier to help combat threats to national security through computer
strikes, namely illegal attempts at intrusions—hacks—into mainframes belonging to the government and private enterprise. To that end, Walsh oversaw his team’s cooperation with all members of the U.S. intelligence community (CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, and so on), as well as state and local law enforcement agencies. In those five years, a ten-man “fire team” had grown into one hundred dedicated agents, nearly all with master’s degrees in computer science, tasked with stopping computer and network intrusions, identity theft, and Internet crime.

Inside the Bureau, the Cyber Investigations Division went by the moniker CID, pronounced “Sid,” to differentiate it from the standard CID, the Criminal Investigative Division.

“Still,” Walsh went on. “Her saying it doesn’t mean anything of itself.”

“She knows Don Bennett is covering something up. That’s enough. I know her, Dylan. She won’t give up until she finds out the truth about her husband’s death.”

“I wouldn’t either.”

Bell sipped from a mug of coffee. “Any word from Mason?”

“Flew down there yesterday to oversee matters. A show of the Bureau’s concern for one of our own.”

“As if.”

“Ed Mason keeps peddling the same moonshine. He believes that if anything bad happens to ONE, or to Ian Prince and that supercomputer of his, it’ll jeopardize the NSA’s ability to do their job. Our job isn’t to stop the bad guys from snooping on our computers only to let Mason and the Emperor do it at their will.”

“Don’t know about that,” said Bell. “I do know that if we believe Mary Grant’s going to keep looking, then so does Ian Prince.”

“Exactly,” said Walsh, walking to the window and looking out across the Mall at the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian Building. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

“I can’t just stay here,” said Jessie, standing with her mother in the kitchen. “It’s depressing. I missed class yesterday. I can’t miss again today.”

“You need to be here with your sister.”

“Grace is fine. She can go over to the Kramers’ and play.”

“Jess, please.” Her mother’s face hardened, her lips tightening over her teeth. “Not today.”

“But…” Jessie tried to act like Grace. She held her arms at her side and didn’t slouch. It was harder keeping her voice all upbeat and chirpy. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll stay if you need me.”

“Thanks, sweetie. That’s nice of you. I appreciate it.” Mary tilted her head. Her mouth softened, and a weight seemed to lift from her shoulders. “Come to think of it, Grace will be fine.”

“Sure? I don’t have to go.”

Mary smiled and checked her watch. “Class starts at eleven, right?”

“Eleven to one. But I can hang around afterward.” Jessie winced at her choice of words. Parents thought “hanging around” meant looking to score weed or commit a jailable offense. “I mean, I can stay and talk to the teacher. He’s wicked smart.”

“Professor Gritsch?”

“No, the TA, Linus. He teaches the class.”

“Linus? Don’t hear that one much. Like Linus and Charlie Brown.”

“Yeah,” said Jessie agreeably, all singsongy like Grace. “Like that.” Her mom looked at her, and she thought she’d gone too far. But then her mom picked up her car keys.

“You ready?”

Jessie nodded, trying hard not to appear too excited. “Good to go,” she said. It was one of her dad’s expressions from when he was in the army or Marine Corps or whatever.

“I’ll tell Grace.” Mary stopped when she was nearly out of the kitchen. “Jess?”

“Yeah, Mom?” Here it comes, thought Jessie, her heart sinking. She’s going to change her mind.

“Do you think you could stay at school until two? It’s pretty far for me to drive there and back, and I have some errands.”

Jessie forced herself to count to three before answering. “I guess that might work.”

“Good. I won’t be a minute later than that.”

The classroom was full when Jessie arrived. She slid her pack off her shoulder and scooted through the aisle to her seat. She felt all eyes on her. She wasn’t just the youngest student in the class, but also the only girl. Most of the others were a bunch of rejects or kissy-ups headed straight for Redmond. Except for Garrett. She saw him out of the corner of her eye. He was almost cute, if you liked the Abercrombie type—straight blond hair hanging in his eyes, tall, always smiling and talking to everyone. She noted that he was wearing a Mumford & Sons shirt. Dork.

Linus, the TA, walked into the room, carrying a coffee. Technically he was Dr. Jankowski, but he told everyone to call him by his first name. He was short and had a beard and wasn’t cool at all. Still, the class shut up the second he walked in.

“So, you guys,” said Linus, dumping his satchel onto the table. “Before we get started, Mr. Clark wanted to say something. Go ahead, Garrett.”

Jessie kept her eyes on her desk, only partially seeing him stand out of the corner of her eye.

“Umm…yeah,” said Garrett. “Jessie, we know this is a hard time for you. We all wanted to say we’re really sorry about your dad. We think you’re pretty awesome just for being in here in the first place. You’re, like, fourteen. It’s amazing. And you’re really brave to come back to school so fast. So, anyway, um…hang in there. It’ll get better.”

Jessie tried to say thanks, and that actually she was fifteen, but the words caught in her throat. She didn’t dare look at the others. She couldn’t or she’d cry. A few people offered condolences. She nodded and kept her eyes on the desk. Mostly she could feel Garrett staring at her. He probably hated her Zeppelin T-shirt as much as she hated his Mumford & Sons.

Linus announced that the topic for today was breaking encryption algorithms. He lectured for ninety minutes, filling up all the whiteboards with code. At 12:45 he dropped his marker on the desk. “For the last fifteen minutes we’re going to have a test. No, not a test—let’s call it a race. We’re going to see who can figure out a cool hack the fastest. Or, I should probably say, whether anyone can figure it out at all.”

Linus explained the rules as he wrote the challenge on the whiteboard. “Root the box with admin privileges and capture the flag. Simple enough. Winner gets a Heineken. You guys have fifteen minutes. Go.”

Jessie looked around the room. Everyone was already hard at it, heads down, tapping away at their keyboards like mad. Garrett glanced up from under his brow and saw her looking at him. He raised his eyebrows and made a horrified face, as if this were the hardest problem in the world. Jessie looked away. She thought about the chunk of code she’d found on her mother’s phone. No one in the chat room had had any idea what it was or what it was supposed to do. They did say, however, that it wasn’t NITRON. Whatever it was, it was unique.

After a minute Jessie turned her attention to the problem. She was good at rooting the box. She decided to give it a shot. What did she have to lose?

“Time’s up.”

Linus Jankowski surveyed the room, chuckling to himself as if he knew no one had gotten it right. “Who’s got my answer?”

Five students raised their hands, mostly the buttoned-up guys headed to Microsoft or Oracle. Linus called on them one at a time, displayed their answers on the whiteboard, and one at a time shot them down, sprinkling in comments like “Thanks, propeller-head, but no,” “Couldn’t be more wrong,” and “Seriously, that’s as good as you got?” When he’d finished tearing them apart, he took up position in the center of the classroom. “Anyone else?” he asked. “Don’t be shy. Abject humiliation and embarrassment await.”

Jessie kept her head down, her hands covering her answer.

“Garrett? Got something for me?”

“I could only crack five of the six hashes.”

“There are a dozen websites that could have gotten you the last one.”

“Sorry, Linus, maybe next time.”

Linus moved down the aisle. “Jessie? Anything? Anything at all?”

Jessie winced at the sound of her name. She felt Linus’s eyes on her and shifted in her seat.

“Nothing?” Linus prodded. “No one?” He chuckled some more, looking way too pleased with himself. “Okay, then.”

“Umm,” said Jessie.

“Miss Grant.”

Jessie raised her head. All the other students were staring at her.

“We’re waiting…”

Jessie met their eyes, accepting the challenge from each, something inside her growing strong.

“You’ve got our attention,” said Linus.

“It’s easy.” Jessie flashed her answer onto the whiteboard and went to the front of the class to set forth her solution. “There,” she said when she’d finished. “Captured the flag.”

Linus examined her work. “You’ve never seen this problem before, have you?” he whispered, his beard close enough to scratch her cheek.

Jessie shook her head.

“Swear?”

“Swear.”

“Okay, then. We’re done here.”

Jessie returned to her seat, dejected. She’d been sure she had the right answer.

Linus opened his satchel and took out a bottle of Heineken. He popped the cap with his teeth and guzzled the beer. He belched, then walked down the aisle and set the empty bottle on her desk. “Congratulations, Miss Grant. You nailed it.”

The class broke into applause. Garrett hollered her name.

Jessie kept her eyes straight ahead as her chest swelled with pride and her cheeks suddenly felt as hot as the sun.

Linus leaned down and whispered, “I didn’t say the beer would be full.”

“I hereby declare this closed hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence in session.”

Ian took his seat at the witness table and adjusted his necktie. His attorney sat beside him and patted his arm as if Ian were the accused and needed reassurance. Ian figured the arm patting was included in the attorney’s $700-an-hour fee. Peter Briggs sat behind him, along with three of the attorney’s assistants. The assistants billed at $400 an hour. Maybe for that much, they’d hold Briggs’s hand.

“We are here to conduct our semiannual review of our cooperative assistance program with ONE Technologies,” said Senator Bailey Fisk of Tennessee, subcommittee chairman. He was old and vigorous and unrepentant about the steel-wool toupee he’d worn for the past twenty years. “Representing ONE Technologies is Ian Prince, founder and chairman. For the record, may I express our profound thanks for your presence here today and our recognition of your long-standing cooperation with the United States government. Welcome, Mr. Prince.”

“It’s my pleasure,” said Ian. “Had to do something to earn my passport, didn’t I?”

Ian gazed at the four men and two women facing him on the elevated dais. He knew each of them personally—in fact, far better than any of them realized. Both Senator Fisk and Senator Bowden were ONE Mobile customers. As a matter of course, he recorded their every conversation and catalogued all photographs and texts made from their phones.

He knew, for example, that Senator Fisk was carrying on an affair with a twenty-one-year-old male staffer (sexts, photos) and that Senator Bowden had refused to seek treatment for alcohol and prescription drug addiction. He’d recently been privy to a conversation between the senator and her husband in which she’d drunkenly informed him that enjoying two bottles of cabernet a night was her right and that the “American people could screw themselves” if they thought she was a drunk.

Ian had no plans to use any of the material…for the moment. He considered it money put aside for a rainy day. It paid to be a saver.

“Our agenda today is composed of four items,” said Fisk. “Obelisk, Lynchpin, Rosetta, and Prime. We’ll start with Obelisk.”

Ian smiled benignly. There was public Washington and private Washington. The first acted for the benefit of the media and the unknowing citizenry. The second did what it deemed necessary, critics be damned.

Public Washington chastised the intelligence community for its overzealous nature and the infringements it made on the individual’s right to privacy in the name of policing international terrorism and transnational crime. At the same time it accused corporate America (Ian and his counterparts at the country’s largest technology companies) of acquiescing to the intelligence community’s demands too quickly and too willingly.

All the while, private Washington contrived greater and more sophisticated means to continue collecting any and all intelligence that might serve to protect its citizens, and got down on its bruised and bleeding knees to beg the private sector’s cooperation.

“If I may,” said Ian, “I would like to once again refuse the government’s generous offer to repay us for services rendered. As a global citizen, ONE is happy to absorb all legal and compliance costs stemming from our in-house attorneys and support staff who oversee Obelisk.” It was his turn to pat his attorney’s arm. “Thank goodness they’re not as pricey as my private counsel seated with me today.”

Senator Fisk barked out a laugh and threw a hand on the table. He and Ian were two good ol’ boys who understood each other just fine. The only thing missing was a bottle of sourmash from his home state (though of course Ian didn’t drink).

“Obelisk,” said Senator Fisk. “Where do we stand?”

Obelisk, formerly known as Prism, was a program permitting the government access to ONE’s central servers, and those of every other major Internet provider. The government placed filters on all Internet traffic, both domestic and foreign, to search for keywords that might indicate pending acts of terrorism or individuals and/or organizations unfriendly to the cause—“the cause” being anything remotely related to the national security of the United States of America.

Once a keyword was spotted, the government presented ONE with a warrant requesting copies of all e-mails and/or other communications
linked to the offending account holder, including but not limited to Skype, Internet queries, wireless communications, and so on. A single red flag often triggered an avalanche of private information.

“Which brings us to Lynchpin,” said Fisk.

Lynchpin involved ONE’s software division. Ian’s engineers inserted a back door into all software for overseas sales and export—word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database—allowing any party with a “skeleton key,” or password, full and unfettered access.

A recent example of Lynchpin dealt with ONEWord, a word-processing program licensed to the German Ministry of Defense. Upon signature of the contract, Ian had dutifully informed the Pentagon of the transaction, and the Pentagon in turn had requested that Ian insert code into the software that automatically copied every document written and saved by the German military establishment and sent it to Washington.

In the past twelve months, this type of custom tailoring had been done on software sold to institutions in India, Pakistan, Poland, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Singapore, France, and Japan. Only Ian Prince held the password to all.

“Rosetta,” said Fisk.

Rosetta trafficked in a similar concept, but for hardware: ONE’s servers, routers, switches, laptops, tablets, and the like. Every device—no matter its intent or end user—was manufactured with a back door somewhere in its DNA. When it was sold to a customer designated “of interest” to the government, Ian shared how to exploit it.

“…which brings us to the last item on our agenda,” said Fisk. “Prime.”

Ian sat up straighter. The last two hours had been strictly warmup. This was the main event.

Fisk looked at his colleagues on the dais. “Is the subcommittee prepared to offer its recommendation regarding the purchase of ONE hardware and software for the new intranet being developed for the Central Intelligence Agency?”

Prime was the name of the top-secret communications network (an intranet) being developed for the CIA to enable the agency to bypass the open-format Internet. Coupled with the NSA’s use of Titan in Utah, Prime would give Ian access to the entirety of the United States’ intelligence networks.

Peter Briggs placed a hand on Ian’s shoulder. “Wrap this up, boss. We have a problem.”

Ian raised a concerned finger. “One minute, Senator Fisk.”

“Of course, Mr. Prince.”

“What is it?” Ian whispered through a clenched smile. “Not Gordon May, I hope.”

“No,” said Briggs. “The woman.”

There was no need to ask which woman. These days there was only one. “What now?”

“She’s asking about Semaphore.”

“How’s that?”

“It is. That’s all that matters.”

Ian turned back toward the dais. “Please go on, Senator.”

He answered the remaining questions as succinctly as he knew how. It was the longest hour of his life.