Kill Switch

by William Hertling

  “This is my second in command, Alice.”

  Benson shook hands with Alice.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Alice said. “I know your people must be busy.”

  “Busy is irrelevant,” Benson said. We’re the first, second, and third line of defense against cyberattack. Taking people offline for this training exercise is hazardous.”

  “I know, Ma’am. We’ll try to keep it short.”

  Benson shook her head. “This is Major Williams. He’s in charge of Bravo team.”

  “Shall we head down to meet the rest of the team?” Williams said.

  They followed him down a hall. “Alpha and Bravo alternate lead to allow for breaks and background tasks,” Williams explained. “There’s no difference in experience or skills. Bravo will work on your program while Alpha has lead. If anything comes up, of course, we’ll get retasked.”

  “Understood,” Enso said. “You know about our target?”

  “Angelina Benenati. Alice gave us a briefing, and we’ve been working on her since the start of this shift. I expect we’ll have something for you by the time we get to my office.”

  Enso shook his head. “Nothing personal, Major, but Angie is beyond difficult. I suspect it’ll take longer than that.”

  Williams chucked. “Sir, you don’t understand what Cyber Command is capable of.” He stopped laughing and turned serious. “By the way, you can use what we learn of course, but not a word of how we obtain our data can leave here.”

  Enso nodded. “Understood. You seem a bit more enthusiastic than your boss.”

  “Benson’s a stickler for rules. The reality is, everyone’s got people they watch. Ex-wives, girlfriends, parents, kids. We can see everything. If we’ve got it, we should use it, right?”

  They arrived at a door, which Williams opened with a scan card. This end of the room was raised, and held a large desk, with a half dozen screens and several phones. The remainder, a couple of steps down, consisted of rows of identical desks, each staffed. A soft buzz of quiet discussion permeated the room.

  When Williams entered, an officer at the raised desk stood, and waited next to the desk.

  “You have a report, Jack?”

  “Several. Office, home, subject, and recent activities. Which would you like first?”

  Williams turned to Enso.

  Surely this was a joke. They couldn’t have penetrated her defenses that quickly. “Recent activities?” Enso said.

  Jack handed a tablet to Enso. “Subject left her house to meet one of her employees for coffee this morning at a shop on the edge of industrial district.”

  “Are you sure she was really there?” Enso said. “She often—”

  The officer leaned over, swiped the tablet to the next screen. An oblique photo clearly showed Angie and Igloo.

  “Oh. That’s good. Did you get that from a UAV?”

  “Chinese satellite,” Williams said. “But don’t repeat that. They have more birds up there, at a lower attitude. We like to borrow cycles from them.”

  Enso was so blown away, for a moment he wished they were seated. He thought he knew everything. This was unprecedented.

  “The next part gets good. Angie’s car, here,” Jack revealed another image on the tablet, “continues signal emissions consistent with Igloo and Angie inside the coffee shop. But they never entered. They went for a walk instead.” Another photo, showing them side by side.

  “Angie chose the neighborhood well. There was almost nothing we could piggyback on. Few security cameras, almost no cars on the street, no radios. Compared to a residential or business district, it’s desert wasteland.”

  Jack showed a few other long range shots. “We got maybe fifteen seconds of audio as they walked by a car. Listen.”

  The audio recording was almost entirely hiss and warbling. Then he heard a few muffled words, then more hiss and warbling.

  “I don’t hear anything useful,” Enso said.

  “Yeah, well, we’re just human,” Jack said. “But machine learning can do it. Here’s the transcript.”

  Igloo: “—news for the entire country. Entire world.”

  Angie: “We can, and we have to.”

  Igloo: “You’re out of your mind.”

  <3.6 second pause>

  Angie: “I’m right, and you know it. You just don’t want—”

  “That’s all you got?” Enso said.

  “Hey, we’re hijacking a car audio microphone designed to pick up what’s inside the car and using that to listen through the glass, and still managed to pick them up when they were thirty feet away. If it had been an ordinary street, with a row of cars, we’d have continuous coverage, obviously.”

  “Then what?” Enso said.

  “Well, then we lose them for a long while. Two hours. If they stayed in the neighborhood, they must’ve walked a really odd path to avoid coverage. We think they left.”

  “Think they left? What happened to the satellite oversight?”

  “We can only borrow the Chinese satellites for thirty seconds as a time, and we didn’t catch anything on our birds. But we know there was a car parked under a tree in the vicinity of where they were walking, and for ninety minutes, that car disappears, then comes back. Presumably they took the car, drove somewhere, came back. Shortly after that, Angie goes home in the vehicle she originally arrived in.”

  Jack pulled up a set of timestamped photographs. Every photo looked the same to Enso, just a tree with heavy foliage. A second set of photos had the same tree, with a yellow, car-shaped outline in part of it.

  Enso looked up at Jack.

  “More machine learning,” Jack said. “I can’t see the car either. You have to learn to trust the machine. Look, I’d sum up the morning as she got lucky. If we had coverage at the right moment, we would have gotten a look at the car, then we could have correlated it with other photos, figured out where she went.”

  Enso tried not to show the disappointment he felt. The truth was that these people had achieved vastly more in far less time than his team. “This is good work. This is all covered under cyber warfare?”

  Williams shook his head. “Everyone here has done rotations in different commands. Some did drone duty, some supported field operations, some worked SIGINT. We’re heavily cross-trained. If someone interferes electronically with a drone mission or troops on the ground, we’re ready to pick up the pieces and take over.”

  “What about her home and office?”

  “We have a ton of goodies there,” Jack said. “I assume you already know about the Faraday closet in her house?”

  “Yes but how did you figure it out so quickly?

  “We plotted the signal strength to and from every wireless device on her block and the next one over. There’s a hole there. Doesn’t look that much different than a refrigerator, but the signal attenuation is a little stronger, a little bigger. I’m guessing she does her dirty work in there.”

  Jack flipped to a new window on the tablet. “We have live feeds from a couple of devices in her house. She’s got a digital assistant. It’s a secure one, but we compromised the underlying operating system. She has a couple of webcams that we got into, but she keeps them physically covered. On the other hand, the two security cams for the front and back doors are not covered, and we did compromise those.”

  “This is bad,” Alice said. “Angie has detected every bug we’ve ever planted, every device we’ve ever compromised. We stopped because of that. Just because you got in…all it’s going to do is alert her.”

  “I figured with her background that she’d be on the lookout,” Jack said. “We treated this like we would a foreign government intrusion and assumed counter-intrusion defenses. The next-door neighbor has a gas hot water heater with electronic ignition, and every time that heating element kicks on, it generates a little EMF buzz. We’re going to amplify that buzz a bit, and we’re going to route the data out the opposite side of the house to the other neighbor and send it out over their internet.
We’re only going to be able to squirt a couple of megabytes each time the heating element turns on, but it’ll be enough for an audio feed from the digital assistant, and a few photos from the security cams. I can guarantee she won’t detect our transmission. It’ll look like noise from the hot water unit.”

  “This is good stuff,” Enso said. “What about the office?”

  “We have the employee list, and we’re backtracking them now. We’ll compromise their laptops at home or coffee shops and use them to capture audio and stills in the workplace. They’ll only transmit the data back to us when off-site and idle. Should be good. Then we’ll run everything we capture through machine identification and see what it picks out. It’ll take a few days before we’re getting anything significant.”

  “How long can we do this for?” Enso said, turning to Williams.

  “The initial setup is taking up most of Bravo team. Once we’re monitoring, it’ll just take a couple of people to keep it running. We can watch for a couple of weeks. But no reports leave this room. You can come here, get briefed, and take out a page of notes. Nothing more.”

  “That’ll work,” Alice said.

  “Thank you,” Enso said, and for once, he really meant it. This was beyond anything he had hoped for. Now they’d dig up something on Angie.

  Enso and Alice headed back upstairs after being escorted out.

  “Amazing stuff,” Enso said.

  Alice nodded. “The FISA court order will be delivered Monday morning. It should stir something up. We’ll keep up the surveillance.”

  “Good. Let me know as soon as we discover anything.”

  Chapter 18

  Angie boarded the Monday morning flight to San Jose. As she found her row, her phone shrilled with the urgent alert reserved for the highest priority messages. Only Matt, Igloo, and Thomas could trigger that alarm. What now?

  She shoved her wheelie into the overhead compartment while the phone kept screaming for attention. Everyone stared at her. She’d like to see them wrestle a bag into an overhead with one arm while their phone was ringing.

  She finally settled into her seat and grabbed the phone. She had missed both calls and messages from Matt. The last one read, “Don’t board the plane. Emergency! Call.”

  She let out a long sigh and looked up toward the ceiling. Getting up early for a flight she didn’t particularly want was disheartening. Doing that for no reason whatsoever… She called him.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, after he answered.

  “The government’s here. A bunch of them. They sequestered Amber and Maria in the executive office suite. You need to get back right now.”

  Angie’s throat caught, despite herself. She ran down the options: her past, her current hacking projects, something having to do with Tapestry, maybe the FISA court order, or something unknown. If it had anything to do with past or current hacking projects, then they’d pick her up in person, right? They’d have no reason to go to Tapestry and talk to Amber and Maria. Still, there was always a chance.

  “Any word on what it’s about?” She tried to remain calm. Had she kissed Thomas goodbye this morning?

  “They wouldn’t say anything to me. I called Schwartz and Associates, and they have someone on their way.”

  “Tell Amber to stall. Say nothing, agree to nothing, give them nothing.”

  “They won’t let me anywhere near the room.”

  “I’m on my way. Try to get her a message.”

  She forced her way back off the plane, enduring more dirty looks from the other passengers, and took a carshare from the airport. She sent Amber several messages en route but didn’t get any response. She took slow breaths. She was a little shook up, but she needed to walk into that room cool and collected. She’d faced worse than this many times. If they wanted her imprisoned, they would have come directly after her. The most likely scenario was that they were fishing for something, but didn’t have anything. That, or a court order.

  Matt met her at the front door and took her suitcase. “They’re still in the exec room.”

  She headed up there, mentally taking inventory. Nothing incriminating on her. Phone encrypted. All hacking assets secured as usual. Time to channel her old mentor, Repard. She felt a curtain descend over her, an invisible layer, remoteness. She controlled what came in, what went out. Repard had taught her to fool a polygraph as reliably as an investigator. She approached the meeting room with a fake but believable small smile.

  She held up her hand as she approached the room and addressed the two people guarding it. “Sir. Ma’am.” No reason not to be polite. “I’m Angie Benenati, CEO. I’m needed inside.”

  “Go ahead, Ma’am.”

  She entered the room, and everyone inside turned to look at her.

  There were three people in dark suits. Those would presumably be government agents. On the other side of the table, Amber and Maria, their faces grim. Carter Schwartz, son of David Schwartz, owner of their law firm, rounded out the table. His forehead was creased with tension.

  Amber looked up. “Finally. You can deal with these people.”

  The man in the center of the suits cleared his throat. “I’m Agent Haldor, Ms. Benenati. Glad you can join us. I’ll bring you up to speed. I’m here representing the U.S. Government, and we’ve served Tapestry with a FISA court order to provide access to Tapestry’s database for matters of national security.”

  Angie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They weren’t here to arrest her. That was the main thing.

  It was only a matter of time before the FISA court order arrived. It meant Tapestry was in the big leagues now, along with companies like Tomo and Avogadro. The government wanted the same backdoors installed on Tapestry’s servers that allowed the NSA to monitor everyone else’s data.

  “I’d like to talk to my attorney without you present,” Angie said.

  “That’s fine,” Agent Haldor said, “but before I leave the room let me caution you that the terms of the FISA court order prohibit you from disclosing any details of the court order, including its existence and any associated data, to anyone other than those required to implement the court order and who are approved by the FISA court. At this time, that includes yourself and the executive leadership, the chairman of your board of directors, and Mr. Schwartz. Compliance with the terms of this court order is considered a matter of national security and carries aggressive penalties. Don’t pick up the phone and call anyone, don’t send messages to your employees, don’t speak to the press. Basically, don’t talk to anyone. Are we clear on this?”

  Angie nodded. “Yes, perfectly clear.”

  She waited for the government people to leave. The door shut behind them with a thunk.

  Maria let out a small breath.

  Amber’s jaw was set. “I saw the look on your face. You knew this was going to happen this morning.”

  Angie shook her head. “I didn’t, but I suspected as soon as I got Matt’s message.” She paced the room as she looked at Carter Schwartz. “What are our options for response?”

  “Nobody is supposed to talk about FISA court orders,” Carter said, “but people do, obviously. Every big tech player is hit with the same order eventually, giving the government blanket access to their data. We can appeal if you want, but no FISA appeal has ever succeeded, to the best of my knowledge. Nevertheless, Schwartz and Associates recommends that Tapestry appeal the ruling so that, if it should ever be made public in the future, you can show you defended user privacy to the best of your ability.”

  “You all know what’s going on?” Maria asked. “I’ve never heard of FISA court orders before.”

  Angie glanced at her. Maria had two highly regarded stints managing IT organizations; one in the military and one at a Fortune 100 company, but none would have dealt with user data on the level that would involve FISA.

  “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Angie said. “The whole Snowden thing. Widespread spying by the US government via backdoors in
all the major Internet companies. That’s all ruled by the FISA court. In theory, it’s supposed to be an impartial judicial process. In practice, the court proceedings are secret and there’s no higher level appeal process. It’s a joke. Everyone is forced to comply with what the government wants.”

  “We knew it had to come sooner or later,” Amber said. “Apparently three hundred million users are enough to attract their attention.”

  “Carter, how long do we have to comply?” Angie gestured toward the court order, an actual paper document, sitting in front of Carter.

  “Thirty days to turn over design documents, sixty to have pipelines in place, ninety days to be in full compliance.”

  “Can we get an extension, based on the complexity of our federated design?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Carter said. “The first thing we have to turn over is the data architecture. Whatever data Tapestry holds or touches, they’re going to require access to. Doesn’t matter what the complexity is. They’ll want the raw information.”

  Angie had been waiting for this day, had counter-measures planned.

  “Only the data Tapestry, the company, has access to,” Angie said. “But if it’s only ever on the user’s computer, inside the Tapestry client, then we’re not responsible for providing access to it.”

  Carter nodded hesitantly.

  “If Tapestry processes everything on the user’s computer, and doesn’t ever expose any data in the clear to our servers, then there’d be nothing for us to provide to the government, right?”

  Carter’s eyes widened in doubtful disbelief. “There’s always some data in the clear. Metadata of some type. Connections that have to be established. But regardless of that, even the encrypted traffic has to be provided to the government. If we can decrypt it, we have to provide it in plaintext. If we can’t—if there are client-side keys we don’t possess, then we provide the encrypted bytes to the government, and they take their best shot at decrypting it.”