Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  With the end of the prohibition on isolation access, both government and licensed private interests could then use the database anonymously and extensively. New protocols permitted the segregation of secure private data into confined modules adding that data to the DL, but only temporarily. That data could then be looped into the DL database for specific oriented usage queries. Thus, the entirety of the database was available anonymously for uses that could be legal ... or not. And nobody could even trace that usage if the user had a license for isolation access. That government could do this was bad enough. That private industry or contractors could use it was shameful.

  That nobody was supposed to be able to track this kind of usage was thought to be very clever by those who fully intended to misuse the DL Main. And nobody could, that is, except for one small organization with broad operational access that had never disclosed to anyone or any organization. That small organization could track anyone, use its own data without dumping it into the DL Main and access all DL Main data no matter where held. It could capture all data permanently whenever and wherever input and could use any system or access any data module. Its access was free of trace or limitation of any kind. Its existence nullified all the controls and protocols neatly put in place, making it the real Master of the DL Main.

  And it held other important hole cards besides these but were never likely to use them unless the unthinkable were to happen. Only that organization was aware of what “unthinkable” meant and its meaning might change for them over time.

  And this small organization had worked closely with the Canadian government and the new Prime Minister to assure that the worst abuses would be restrained, and many other draconian measures prevented entirely.

  What began as the modern-day creation of the Great Library of Alexandria had become yet another vast NSA-like tool within a matter of years without any public discussion or debate on the potential for abuse of the citizenry. Disclosure to the public was considered both unnecessary and counter productive.

  But a few people had taken notice and they understood all too well the magnitude of the potential for abuse and misuse.

  After all, that’s in fact how they intended to use the DL Main too if necessary.

  Chapter 28

  9

  On its face the DataLab Project was simply a gigantic collection of disparate facts and data gleaned from many sources and collected under one huge roof. Described in this way, the DataLab Project sounded quite harmless and somewhat boring. While the collection of data might not be anyone’s first choice in an exciting and challenging career, the Project was far from harmless. And while as a research tool it could be used for humanitarian ends that were both honorable and noble, it should be noted that the DL Main could also be used for undertakings that could only be described as malevolent.

  Certainly, when routinely asked about the DataLab Project, the noble and benign characterizations were the ones most often ascribed and described.

  And, according to Adam St. James, data is just data and, as such, should be considered mostly, if not entirely, benign and neutral. It is the addition of human nature to the mix that complicates a project such as the DataLab. Adam was quick to point out that malevolence is not a characteristic of data – it is a human characteristic. The same data collected to cure a disease may be the same data that can be used to turn disease into a biological weapon. Disease does not weaponize itself.

  The task of aggregating data and then compiling it in a useful format that is accessible easily is not easy. All such information must be identified, collected in a usable format, stored and then made available for access by users. Identification and collection of targeted data are tasks that can be done by many parties as a rote activity, or by some parties as a very narrow and specific endeavor.

  The first principles of the forerunner to the DataLab Project were academic and altruistic. It was conceived by its creator as the “biggest encyclopedia of useful information for all of humanity in the world.” His vision was that of a child in some remote part of the world being able to access this fountain of knowledge and solving intractable problems in new and unique ways. It was, in its conception, the most democratic and selfless endeavor mankind could undertake – the delivery of knowledge everywhere in the world to everyone in the world without cost. Knowledge was deemed by this innovator to be man’s greatest gift to itself and should not be hoarded and doled out only to the privileged few.

  Somewhere between conception and realization, that dream died.

  For the DataLab Project, digitized library collections were first to be incorporated. Then additional data was added from all manner of scientific, legal, government and research institutions. Then phone books, birth and death records, and other vital statistics were added over the years as the data became available in digitized format. This type of information was labeled “targeted data”, as there was some thought given to what “ought” to be included, given some degree of perceived constraint regarding data formatting and storage.

  Generous amounts of thought were allocated to the issue of the appropriate categories of data, and how useful any old data might be past, say, one hundred years from DataLab inception. As a modern, forward thinking project, clearly recent human activity and scientific inquiry would be two of the key pillars supporting the need and funding for the DataLab Project going forward. Besides, all the old, musty and stale data of any conceivable beneficial use would probably be contained in one form or another in libraries containing less sophisticated collections. So, no need for the complexity and unwieldiness of storing large amounts of primary source data from, say the Middle Ages in Europe, or the Ming Dynasty in China.

  This, however, turned out not to be the path taken. What followed changed the course of the DataLab Project and its perceived potential as a research tool in just about every branch of human knowledge.

  The singular new mission of the DataLab Project was to secure and store as much human knowledge as possible, no matter the source or perceived accuracy. All human knowledge, period. All academic, government and industry data, all collected knowledge no matter the source would be incorporated. The undertaking was vast at inception and made more vastly difficult by the complexities of the speed and presumed manner of data retrieval. Then data manipulation; taking raw retrieved data and doing something useful with it. In this regard, utility was a very broad concept. The DL Main had to be able to match the breadth of the perceived endeavor with the speed required to do something useful.

  In the beginning, this was a major challenge. But in time, the genius of humanity caught up to the vision of utility.

  Quite by coincidence during the early stages of DL Main development, many new cutting-edge software programs had been developed by computer engineers and software developers around the world that could extract highly relevant information rather quickly and efficiently from disparate pools of data. Combined with a new revolution in data storage and low-cost efficiency, an entirely new paradigm was developing. The results, or at least some of them, were largely unintended. No single person, group or company intended to create what came next but, in the end, it was, nonetheless, created. And the people who understood what had been discovered and how to manipulate it, were destined to dominate the InfoTech Universe.

  Behind the scenes, software development, combined with advances in artificial intelligence and highly complex and intricate algorithms, yielded results that were neither sought nor expected. Like many of the great discoveries of mankind, luck, fortuity and whimsy entered the equation and the result was nothing less than astounding.

  Then, what happened next was right out of a cheesy fictional E-book.

  Chapter 29

  When Adam and Rod were in their early teens, Edward heard the boys arguing about something they had just seen on the news. The American government had passed a law allowing for its citizens to be surveilled, their phone calls monitored, and their lives recorded electronically
and without their consent. This new action had been taken and its justification explained as a necessary response to the imminent threat posed by foreign terrorists to the lives and safety of the American people.

  Rod thought it was the first step toward the totalitarian state described in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, a book he had just read in his high school English class. He had written an essay on the relevance of the themes in that book to the present-day situation in America, Canada and the world. It had had a profound effect on his thinking as well as his way of looking at world events, his life and the political institutions he studied so hard in his Civics or Government class. Current events, the news and politics could never again be unimportant background chatter he had always considered less important than the entertainment news of who was sleeping with who or what the other kids were wearing.

  Rod thought broadly about what this meant to him and his family. His mother and father told him many stories of their lives growing up in Mexico, their fears of the police as children and as university students and the political corruption endemic in the country they loved. Agustin, never a man of a million words, simply said that he hoped that his beloved Mexico would one day have a government and a system that was equal to the greatness of the Mexican people. He hoped he would live to see this in his lifetime.

  Rod said to Adam that once America began its journey down that road of exchanging civil liberties for ‘safety’ and ‘security’, when did it stop? When were we ever going to be ‘safe enough’? How would we know, and who would decide? And, would these measures ever be retracted when the danger, if it ever existed, was over? Could we ever give away our freedoms then ask for them back? Or was it just too late and we now had to accept life in that ‘brave new world’?

  Adam was unconvinced. New conditions require new rules, or at least the modification of old rules; that’s just updating to a new and dangerous global reality. New realities require new responses, he said. That’s just logical. In a world that was fundamentally different from anything ever imagined by the founding fathers and other great minds two hundred years ago, some updating of the nature of rights and responsibilities was in order. If the terrorists, criminals and the bad actors of the world became proficient with new technology and new ways of threatening law-abiding citizens, why should we be afraid of hypothetical limits and fail to meet the very real threat and challenge? Don’t we have an obligation to stop them before they do us any harm? How do we do that if we are afraid to do what is clearly necessary and use all available tools? Adam concluded that we should not be afraid of minimal intrusion into private lives; we should embrace it.

  Besides there were laws, good laws in Canada and in the United States that protect regular folk like us from bad government and political abuses. After all, we vote these people in, he said. We should be able to trust them.

  Rod laughed at Adam’s last statement. He said the correct question was not ‘should’ we be able to trust them, the better and more germane question, Rod asked, was do we trust them?

  Adam stopped and thought for a moment, then said to Rod that he honestly didn’t know. But it was a good question he hadn’t really thought about, except in the abstract.

  Then he said, “Let’s ask Dad.”

  Edward had been listening carefully to the arguments back and forth, impressed by both his sons’ sophisticated thinking and reasoned opinions. He was proud of his boys; neither simply regurgitated nor parroted things heard elsewhere or in school. Not even things heard at home in either household.

  Edward, was however, soon back reading about new crimes committed at new digs around the world. He was not paying attention when his boys came bounding into his study, faces lit and asking the old man for his opinion after filling him in on the discussion.

  Edward smiled; it had been a long time now since either of his sons gave a rat’s petute about what he thought about anything. If they did, they had been careful to keep it to themselves.

  Edward said he thought both had good arguments and both had been very persuasive. He also said his opinion should not matter if each held their beliefs sincerely.

  “But I do think each opinion depends on certain implicit assumptions you each make but didn’t express.”

  “Such as?” Rod asked.

  “Well, you, Rod, seem to assume the worst in people. People being people, that they are weak, greedy and corrupt. You may be right. Or wrong. I guess it depends on what you think of people actually in the halls of power.”

  “Hah”, said Adam, feeling vindicated.

  Edward continued, “And you, Adam, seem to assume the purist of motivations in people and in the effectiveness of the deterrent effect of laws. If that were true, there’d be no crime. Making it illegal would mean rationality prevails and people would never commit crimes.”

  “Then we’re both wrong?” Adam thought this was typical ‘Dad’; cryptic and providing little guidance.

  “No, actually, I think you’re both right. Just not right all the time and in every situation. Human nature is … odd. And sometimes good people do bad things. That includes me.”

  Road asked, “Then what do you think?”

  Edward sat back in his chair, took off his reading glasses, and explained.

  “America, and our new home, Canada, were both founded on an enduring principle that governs the lives of our people and our nations. That founding principle is that we are, both countries, fundamentally nations committed to, and based upon, the rule of law. But the principle of the rule of law is not an empty aphorism devoid of core meaning and essential values. It does not, and cannot, ever mean the mindless adherence to any law, no matter how foolish, perverse, harsh or unjustified. And the perversion of this principle can never mean that the democratic human rights of a free people must be sacrificed for some transient purpose or invented threat.

  “It is the duty of a free people to safeguard their own wellbeing. It is the right of a free people to destroy any system that no longer functions in furtherance of this principle. When close questions arise, the answers must be found in the expansion of civil liberties, not by the contraction of them.

  “Religious liberty, even that of the majority, cannot be the disguise employed to subvert secular rights. Religious rights are a freedom protected by secular law; but it is not the only freedom protected, nor should it ever preponderate over others. We guarantee religious freedom, but we are not governed by religion. We are at our core, a secular nation governed by secular law.

  “The rule of law, at its bedrock, promises fundamental fairness for all and a system of opportunity based on merit, skill and ability. The rule of law more than implies or suggests this, it promises and demands a competent legal system that is a shield protecting all its citizenry, not a sword wielded by the wealthy, the politically connected and the powerful elites to pervert that promise.

  “The perversion of our foundational principles, that is, using the very tools and institutions created to prevent that perversion of democratic and representative democracy, presents the greatest challenge that free peoples can face. When money, power and influence become the essential manner and method of governance in a system gone mad, it is the responsibility of the people to demand and institute change. Loudly, and, yes, sometimes violently.

  “If new institutions are required, then these new institutions must be established. And it is the immutable right of a free people to tear down the empty husk and perverse remnants of an old system that no longer represents its people or its own founding values.

  “It’s not the principles that are wrong; it’s the perversion of those principles that must be clearly identified, rooted out and, when necessary, destroyed.

  “Be aware that the process of undermining and perverting first principles does not generally occur over night. If it did, it would be much easier to detect and address. Instead, it always comes wrapped in a guise that seems fair, justified and absolutely legal. Beware of abominati
ons that are ‘legal’. It is how dictators, autocrats and totalitarians justify the monstrous evil they perpetrate. It is how wealthy and powerful elites inculcate themselves into democratic processes, so they can validate and rationalize often illegal and improper behavior. They feel justified in legally securing special benefits only they will be entitled to receive.

  “Beware of the tiny little exceptions that eventually consume the general rule. Beware of small intended changes and their unintended consequences. Beware of laws that benefit the few while disadvantaging the many. Beware of any law that does not, in common sense fashion, benefit the common good or promote the general welfare.

  “And it comes slowly, incrementally and quietly. It cloaks itself in fear, real or invented, and always solves a small problem with an overlarge and unnecessarily broad solution. It contorts words, distorts meaning and veils its true purpose.

  “It is the slow erosion of rights, the minute curbing of civil liberties and the gentle and gradual corrosion of privacy and personal freedoms that must be noticed and illuminated for a free people to see. Only then can we decide what we should do.

  “After all, evil things scurry in the dark for a reason.

  “But it is also true that reasonable, common sense people can disagree on the meaning of generally agreed principles and values. And things can often seem fair to one group, while they just as clearly do not to another. Sometimes it’s how and if some laws are applied that creates inequity. The rich man with the expensive lawyer walks away free, while the poor man without means is incarcerated. Look at the effect of a law, not just to the letter of it as written in a book.