Kill Switch

by William Hertling

  She continued her way up the train. In the middle car, she saw Essie staring down at her own suitcase. When Essie looked up and caught Igloo’s eye, she nodded to indicate everything was okay. They met near the center.

  “You stay at the forward end of the car,” Igloo said. “I’ll be at the back.”

  Igloo sat with the bag between her legs, where she’d have an eye on the door. The train slowed at the next stop, and the doors opened. She kept alternating between the door and the bag. If the first light turned red, it would indicate a known bad device had boarded, e.g. a government agent’s cell phone. Where Angie got the IMEI list, and how up-to-date it was, Igloo didn’t know. Maybe it had come from Forrest. If the second indicator light turned yellow, it was a suspicious device: something with hard encryption or a suspicious data pattern. The third light was more routine: cell phones with VPNs or normal encryption prototypes. The fourth and fifth lights were for non-cellular government frequencies: police, FBI, or other short-range radios.

  Ben and Diana walked in together. Fuck. They couldn’t follow the most basic precautions.

  They walked over to Igloo.

  “Didn’t I tell you to board separately, through different doors, and keep an eye on each other’s backs?”

  “I told him,” Diana said, “but he just rolled his eyes.”

  Ben raised a hand in exasperation. “It wasn’t like that. I told you we were supposed to split up.”

  “Look,” Igloo said. “I’m not making this shit up. We have to act carefully. If you want to be part of T2 and not endanger everyone, then you must follow my instructions. Otherwise you can’t be on the team, because we can’t afford the risk. Are you in or not?”

  Diana said “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

  Ben looked at Diana like he was going to protest, but apparently changed his mind. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Don’t ‘whatever’ me. Yes or no?”

  “Fine, yes. I’m in. I’ll follow instructions.”

  “Thank you,” Igloo said. She glanced down at her suitcase. The lights were still green, except the last one flickered yellow for a brief spurt. She slid a Paranoid Linux phone out of her pocket and checked the remote UI for their custom scanner. It showed a cluster of encrypted radio transmissions on a series of frequencies usually used by the FBI. The signals were all coming from the FBI office about half a mile away. That would be expected. As long as they didn’t begin to trail the train, or cluster around the next stop, they’d be okay.

  At the Gateway transit center, Carly and Wendy boarded the train. Igloo checked Carly first.

  “Phone?” Igloo asked.

  Carly turned it over, and Igloo put it into an EMF bag. She read the scanner log again. The train car had over three hundred items in it, multiple detectable electronics per person, but Igloo was triangulating between the two scanners and narrowing it down to only those between her and Essie. “Key fob for your Audi?”

  “Really?” Carly said. “You know it’s an Audi from there?”

  “The transmitter can be read at up to fifty feet and has a manufacturer ID as part of the code.”

  Carly sighed and turned over the key.

  “Fitness tracker and headphones.”

  Carly pulled out her wireless headphones and deposited them in the EMF bag. She glanced left and right, then reached under her shirt. Igloo caught a glimpse of a lacy bra before Carly handed over the tracker.

  “That’s good except for your wallet. I’ll let you keep that on you, but you have to bag it.” Carly put her wallet inside a smaller EMF-proof pouch.

  Igloo checked her phone one last time. Carly was clean. She repeated the process for Wendy.

  Melanie and Mike boarded the train at the NE 60th stop, followed by Jeff at the Hollywood stop, and Gene at Lloyd Center. Igloo repeated the scans at every stop, with every person. When she was done, everyone was as clean as they could get from a signals perspective. They’d work out the rest when they got there.

  She looked at the group of engineers. She read a range of emotions from frightened to amused to doubting, but she’d be the first to admit that reading people in person was not her forte. Let her scan a few thousand words of chat for sentiment analysis, and she could do a better job of understanding them.

  “Bear with me a little longer. Everyone get off at the Chinatown stop, and then we walk to Powell’s in groups of two or three. Take a different partner than you boarded with. Leave your stuff at the bag check and head to the rare books room, and then we’ll talk more. Take a hat, too.” She gestured toward Essie who had a pile of hats from the bag of disguises Angie had built up.

  Igloo paired up with Mike.

  “Go with Diana,” she told Essie, who looked concerned and lost.

  The rest of the group found partners, and at the Chinatown stop they exited. A surreal, out-of-place feeling came over Igloo as she left the train to see ordinary folks doing their ordinary day-to-day things, dealing only with their ordinary preoccupations.

  Meanwhile, what felt like the fate of the free world rested on Igloo and this small group of people. Then she realized that feeling was just a mask for what lay underneath. The real problem, the out-of-place strangeness, came from the fact that Angie would not be waiting for them at their destination. Not that Angie had ever planned to be there in particular. It was just a feeling. Always, always Angie had figured somewhere in Igloo’s hacking activities. She had been the cornerstone for it all. Now Igloo had to play that role. Without her, nobody else had a plan for T2, let alone possessed the hacking skills to make it possible.

  She fought to hold back a sudden outburst of grief, but Mike caught her sniffling.

  “Are you okay?”

  Igloo shook her head.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  They walked another half a block before Igloo started talking. “It must have been such a relief for Angie to have someone to rely on, someone who could cover for her.” Mike would have no idea what she was talking about, but she was done keeping all her feelings inside. “She and I never talked about it, and I always wondered about our relationship, but now I have a tiny inkling of how she must have felt. I miss her so much.”

  “You want a hug?”

  Igloo nodded, and Mike held her. She wanted to let go and cry, but she needed to stay strong. She couldn’t walk into this meeting red-eyed and snot-nosed. She sank into him and tried to just inhale and exhale until breathing came somewhat normally again.

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  Ten blocks later, Powell’s, the five story, city-block spanning bookstore, came into view. They made their way into the store, and she and Mike turned over their suitcases at the bag check. Igloo resisted the urge to look over her shoulder, but she couldn’t resist a glance at the glass door. Unfortunately, so many people were coming and going that a visual inspection told her nothing.

  She and Mike climbed to the top floor. The rare book room took up the back third of the floor. The room was isolated behind a steel and glass enclosure to protect the contents inside.

  She entered, and the door shut behind them. The air inside was cool and dry, and all the other sounds faded away. Open shelves were intermingled with locked glass cabinets.

  All of the T2 team was inside already. The sole other person was a leather-clad, purple-mohawked woman at least twice Igloo’s size. She came over to greet Igloo.

  “Shadow Cat,” Igloo said, giving her a hug. “Thanks for letting us use this space. I owe you a big one.”

  “No problem, little pet. I get maybe one or two serious buyers a day. Everyone else tries to put their paw prints on the books. Everything okay with you?”

  “No, but I’ve got a handle on it.”

  “Just remember you’ve got friends in the community. We’re here for you. You don’t have to tackle it alone.”

  Igloo looked up at the woman who performed her first public flogging. “Thanks, S
hadow. You’ve always been good to me. Take this.” She handed over her smartphone, which was still talking to the two suitcases downstairs, which were in turn scanning the wireless spectrum. “If any of these indicators turn red and stay red, knock on the door.”

  “Got it.” Shadow hit a switch which triggered protective metal shutters inside the glass windows to roll down with a subtle grind. “Just flip the lock behind me. I’ll be right outside.”

  Igloo locked the door, took a deep breath, and faced the group.

  “This cloak and dagger stuff is ridiculous.” Jeff said. “I doubt the government is going to take that much of an interest in us. And if they did, there’s no way your games are going to protect us.”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” Diana said. “Igloo knows what’s she’s doing.”

  Everyone turned to Igloo to see what she would say.

  Angie had always made it seem effortless when she handled dissension. A pit grew in Igloo’s stomach. She felt completely inadequate to the task.

  Essie caught her eye and her face said she believed in Igloo. If Essie believed in her, then she would have to deliver the strength that Essie wanted to see.

  “Jeff, let’s imagine that I was the inventor of Bitcoin. I wouldn’t go advertising my real identity around, and if you worked with me, there’d be nothing to suggest my secret life. What you don’t know about me would fill at least a book. In other words, don’t make too many assumptions.

  “There are reasons for everything we did. I wanted to be sure, absolutely sure, that none of us are being tracked, and that we aren’t being observed in any way. Out there, on the train, I was scanning everyone for tracking devices. I got all the routine stuff, and there was no sign of government surveillance. So we made our way here. This room, thanks to the metal shielding, is an effective Faraday cage. No wireless signals can get in or out. There’s a closed-circuit connection with the security room downstairs, and a phone line. Shadow Cat is going to let us know if anyone with a signal profile similar to the FBI, NSA, or any other government agency is approaching. In the meantime, we can talk securely without eavesdroppers. Because we’re all holed up in one place, off the grid, if the government is surveilling us remotely, this’ll force their hand.”

  “But what’s the point of all these charades?” Jeff said. “We’re talking about a software release.”

  “A release that someone killed Angie to stop,” Ben yelled. “If they killed Angie, they’ll get us too.”

  “Please,” Igloo said, her voice quiet. “Let’s not go there again, Ben.” If she was forced to try to make something up about Angie’s death, or worse, tell the truth that Angie had sacrificed herself, she wasn’t sure she could handle it.

  Ben’s face was red, and he had both hands on his hips. He opened his mouth once or twice, and maybe something he saw on Igloo’s face changed his mind, because he just nodded and turned away.

  Igloo took a deep breath. “We talked about the possibility of arrest this morning. That’s still a possibility. But Angie believed the government would be willing to do almost anything to stop this project. That’s why there’s nobody on T2 with kids, nobody who’s married. Angie was looking out for her team.”

  “Fuck. Are you telling me that Ben is right?” Jeff said. “Did Angie pick us all for a suicide mission? When the fuck was she going to inform us of the risk?”

  “I did. This morning. That’s what that whole meeting was about. That’s why we had it, why some of the people opted out. Angie knew there’d be a point where people could opt out, and most of them did. Nothing will happen to the people who are off the team. We’re the ones at risk. Did you think I wasn't serious this morning?”

  Jeff rested his head on his hand for a second. “No, I knew. But now we’re face to face with it, and I’m fucking scared.”

  “I think I can get us through it. If we’re careful. If we get T2 out. We get one try, and it has to be perfect. Once T2 is out and irrevocable, there’s no point to any of us being dead.”

  Jeff nodded somberly.

  “Maybe not dead,” Carly said. “But they could still arrest us.”

  “That we can fight against. We have lawyers. The government would have to show we actually broke a material law by what we did. We just have to stay lost until the software is out. Most of the incentive for them to arrest us on cooked up charges is to prevent the software release. Afterwards, our risk profile goes down substantially.”

  “What are we going to do to stay hidden?” Diana asked.

  “We’re going to split up. I only got us together so I can provide everyone with secure hardware and hardcopy plans. We’re not going to meet in person again. I’m going to give you a crash course in evading government surveillance, which is made easier by the fact that we only have to be hidden for a limited amount of time.”

  She handed out Paranoid Linux phones to everyone. “To start, no one is going to carry anything wireless other than these phones. They change IMEIs and MAC addresses and phone carriers automatically based on time and motion data. They encrypt and onion route over the Tapestry backbone. They’re hardware encrypted, and password, fingerprint, and visually locked. They contain alternate encrypted boot partitions based on Veracrypt, so you have plausible deniability if you’re caught. Provide your alternate password, and they act just like your normal phone. They’re ready to be initialized by each of you, so let’s take a few minutes to set them up.”

  When everyone was done with that, Igloo handed out brand new laptops. “These are also Veracrypt protected, dual boot for plausible deniability.”

  Finally, she passed around envelopes. “I don’t want you to open these until we’ve separated. Each packet has information about the identity you’ll be using, where to go, and cash to cover expenses. There are also instructions for what to do if your hardware breaks—please, don’t go to the store and try to replace it—and what to do if you’re arrested.”

  Melanie looked at her envelope. “If we’re getting hotels and stuff, won’t we need credit cards and IDs?”

  “All in there,” Igloo said. “Everyone has accommodations and other reservations that can be paid in cash without ID.”

  Melanie looked doubtful.

  “The internet is ripe with lists of places that take cash for everything. For people who want to have affairs, people escaping abusive spouses, that sort of stuff.” Igloo paused and cleared her throat. “Look, that’s the easy part. I could set up communications and reservations for everyone. The hard part is what you guys need to do. Or more specifically, what you need to not do.”

  “No going any place with security cameras. That’s almost everywhere. Now, it’s going to be unavoidable some of the time, but we have some tricks for that. I have infrared emitters for everyone.” She passed out devices that looked like clip-on bike lights. “You’ll want to fasten these on your collars. They’re super-bright, but they’re outside the range of human vision. We can’t see them, but security cameras will be unable to get a clear visual on your face. Mostly. It’s not bulletproof, and they have a somewhat unique signature, so you can’t make regular trips out and about. You’re mostly going to hole up somewhere safe and stay there.”

  “What if they capture you?” Ben asked. “You can tell them where we are.”

  “Actually, I can’t. Everything was randomly picked by a computer program. I printed them out, never looked at them, and put them in the envelopes. So I know nothing. Besides, I’m going into hiding too. Also, no contacting anybody you know. Assume anyone outside of our circle is actually being played by someone in the government, and they’ll manipulate you into revealing your location without you ever realizing it. Trust me on this.”

  “If they break into our Tapestry chat group?” Melanie said.

  “You wrote the chat code, Ben and Diana wrote the onion routing code, and I wrote the encryption layers. Is it a risk? You tell me.”

  “It’s the NSA,” Melanie said. “They know everything. Every fucking thing.�
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  “We’re going to be like rogue planets in interstellar space. We have to emit nothing. Be nowhere anyone expects to find us. As long as we don’t attract attention to ourselves, they won’t find us.”

  “We’re going to be in constant communication by chat, committing code, provisioning servers, running tests,” Mike said. “It’s not possible!”

  “Again, encryption, onion routing, Tapestry backbone. We have a lot on our side.”

  “Against the whole of the government?”

  “The Silk Road was pursued by the Feds for over a year before they captured Ulbricht,” Igloo said. “We just have to last a few days.”

  “Yeah, but the Silk Road 2.0 administrators were arrested in under a month.” Ben said, rubbing his head. “The government has only gotten better since then.”

  “We can do this, people,” Igloo said. “One week. Look, before we split up, let’s go through the backlog one last time.”

  “We’ve already been through the backlog,” Carly said. “Yesterday, and the day before. Everything that’s left is critical, we can’t release without it.”

  Mike paced back and forth. “This is ridiculous. Let’s release it now, and push out updates once it’s out there.”

  “Then we risk the government finding a way to shut it down because we haven’t properly hardened it,” Diana said.

  “Yeah, but how likely is that?” Mike asked. “I mean, in one week, are they going to find a hole?”

  “They’ll never let us get away with running T2 if they can find a way to stop us,” Igloo said. “If they do find a security hole that enables them to shut down our distributed server/clients, we’re sunk. Assume they put everyone they’ve got on eliminating T2.”

  “Then what?” Mike threw up his hands. “We close these, what, fourteen issues, and we’re miraculously so secure that the they can’t take us down? I don’t buy it.”

  “It takes us far enough along that we can survive until the next release,” Carly said. “Look, we need a bulletproof method of digitally signing client updates. We need to fix the VM shutdown. Without this stuff, we’re sitting ducks.”