Death of Secrets

by Bowen Greenwood

  The manager turned out to be a young African-American man, wearing a collar and red tie but no jacket. "Can I help you?" he asked.

  "Nathan Jacobs. I work for the National Security Agency. We’re concerned for the safety of one of your guests, and I need to see her room." He repeated the name on Kathy’s fake ID, then laid his business card on the desk. As he did it, he assumed he’d have no trouble with someone random like this realizing that the NSA wasn’t supposed to do human intelligence gathering. He was, however, acutely conscious of the fact that he worked for an agency supposed to work foreign intelligence, and he was using his official authority in a situation on American soil. If the NSA looked bad already in the political press, he was putting the reputation at much greater risk.

  "Very well. I can show you up to their room. Please come with me." The manager accepted the card and turned away. First he looked at the computer briefly. Then he reached under the counter. When he returned his attention to Nate, he held two key cards. "They came down and rented a second room last night," he said. "The second key is for that."

  Jacobs thanked him profusely and followed him to the elevator. The manager led him to Mike and Kathy's original room and followed him inside.

  Hearing about the recently-acquired second room, Nathan wondered what it was for. He grimaced. Everything unexpected in this situation was making him realize how serious it was.

  In the first room, though, he found things in order. Their beds had been made, and any empty glasses or room-service plates had been cleaned up. They hadn't had more than the clothes on their backs, he remembered, so that explained the lack of anything hanging on the coat rack.

  Mike's laptop. There it sat on the room's desk.

  Discovering it was such a surprise Nathan swore aloud. How did I not know Mike had his computer with him? When you're trying to stay hidden, turning this on is the worst thing you can do.

  As he thought that, the same old nagging questions about working at the NSA came to mind. Is it really healthy that people can't even turn on a computer in privacy?

  He pushed it away for later. Mike's computer had not only been turned on, but left on.

  Nathan seized on that. Was it a sign they had left in a hurry?

  No, not by itself, he forced himself to admit. But what he saw next was. An instant messaging program was running, with several messages flashing, waiting to be read. Jacobs frowned. Mike didn't use software like that – in fact he'd always made fun of Nate's on-line social life.

  Curious, he sat down at the desk and clicked on the program as the manager looked on silently. He wondered who "KH12" was. Probably Mike's girlfriend, he figured. Her name was Kathy, right? That starts with a K.

  >Yo, KH, you ever find Jakarta?

  >KH?

  >Huh, you fall asleep at the keyboard again? Well, drop me a line when you wake up.

  All those messages were from someone called 133tluser. The third message was a very good sign that they'd left here unexpectedly, and that had Nathan really worried. But his worry was temporarily overridden by curiosity at the first message.

  Jakarta? Jakarta the hacker? Was Mike looking for him? Why would they be doing that? They had that mysterious flash drive, after all. Could it be tied up with that hacker?

  Nate leaned back in the chair, forgetting about the manager behind him completely. This was an interesting line of thought indeed.

  The NSA had been well aware of Jakarta's existence and reputation for quite some time. He’d managed to gain unauthorized access to their own servers, and almost no one did that to the NSA. It was quite legitimate to call him the most famous hacker in the world. The Post had even carried an interview with him – the questions had been asked entirely over the Internet.

  The flash drive was obviously something illegal. There was no other explanation for the excessive force that had been employed to try to take it away from Kathy. So what if the world's greatest hacker was behind it all?

  It made little sense to Jacobs. Hackers were generally non-violent people. Nonetheless, there was the name on Mike's laptop computer. So what was going on?

  ***

  Jakarta led them in a single file procession through a hallway and up a flight of stairs. The long room into which they emerged took up the whole upper floor. Windows admitted sunlight at regular intervals, and the walls were lined with computers, six of them in all.

  "Inasmuch as I have a command post, this is it," the hacker said. "I and anyone working with me operate out of this place. If you'll grab some chairs from the other computers, I'll go through the contents of the flash drive with you."

  As Kathy and Michael pulled found places to sit, Colleen warned, "I've been at that thing with every different decryption program I can find, and the most I could do is decode the file names. This may not be as easy as you think."

  "Ah, but what's impossible to decode on your own becomes nothing more than a few keystrokes when you've stolen the password," Jakarta said. "I grabbed that when I was rooting around their system, trying to find the code. Their security was too tight for me to download the code, but I did get the decryption key before they noticed the intrusion and I had to leave."

  As Colleen watched, he ran the files on what she had come to think of as "her" flash drive through a decoding program. He entered a few simple keystrokes as she watched, and it was that easy.

  One at a time, he began sending the files to his printer. Colleen's jaw dropped. "I wasted hours on that thing! Days, practically!"

  The hacker patted her hand. "And you made remarkable progress, decrypting the file names. In itself that’s a very impressive achievement. I just have an unfair advantage."

  The others looked on as Jakarta sifted through the files on the flash drive, scanning the contents. He printed up lists of files, some of the content, and the diagram file. The nearby laser printer whirred to life, spitting out page after page from the stolen flash drive.

  He tapped a button on a little intercom box near his PC and said, "Got some stuff for you."

  Almost right away their driver appeared in the door and walked up to Jakarta, grabbing the printout from the printer.

  "You all met Jerry on the drive over here," Jakarta said.

  Then he turned directly to the newcomer and said, "I skimmed over those and I don't think you should have any trouble interpreting them."

  The driver walked out of the room and Kathy asked, "What's he up to?"

  Jakarta shrugged, looking at his screen rather than anyone else in the room. "I need him to analyze that stuff," he said. "It should… you know, help us interpret the code." He went back to work, opening one of the main files.

  Before their eyes, a long list of source code swam up on screen.

  "I don’t believe it," Colleen breathed.

  Jakarta scrolled down a little ways through the text. "They're good corporate coders over there at EG," he said. "I'm sure they've commented the thing to death."

  Colleen nodded. Comments were an indispensable feature of programming. They were little lines of text that were marked for the program to ignore. But when a human read through the code, they would tell the reader what the program was doing. Computer programs could be many hundreds of thousands of lines of language designed to be read by machines, not people. When a new programmer other than the one who originally wrote it looked at the work, it was often very difficult to tell what the author had been thinking. By inserting regular comments, the author ensured that anyone else who worked on the project would be able to understand what the program was supposed to do at every single step.

  "There!" Jakarta exclaimed. "There we go. Read at will, Colleen."

  She leaned in toward the screen, with Kathy and Michael craning to get a look over her shoulder. She reached for the mouse and scrolled down just a bit, her jaw dropping open as she did. Finally she pushed the mouse away and thumped back into her chair.

  "I can’t believe it."

  "What is it, Colleen?" Kathy asked.
/>   "It's all written right there, you guys don't need me to interpret this for you. I guess the only good I can do is authenticate that yes, those are real comments written by the coders, and yes, they do accurately reflect the intention of the programming language they’re wrapped around."

  Mike and Kathy pushed their way in closer to the screen and read the comments there.

  ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

  //Following is the library of known recognizable

  //emotive and thought codes. Function

  //CompareInput()

  //searches this library to translate received

  //radiation into

  //recognizable thought."

  ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

  When he'd finished reading, Mike eased himself away from the screen. "Colleen, are you absolutely certain that's an accurate reflection of what the program does?"

  "Yeah. I can't believe it either. Let me check one more thing to be sure."

  She grabbed for the mouse again and scrolled through some more text.

  "Yeah, that's what it is. The whole section that follows is a pattern matching library. I don't recognize what the patterns are, but then I've never seen a Thought Recognition system before. I've seen and even written about every other kind of pattern matching library there is, and never seen this one before. It's got to be TR. Do you guys have any idea what this means?"

  Mike sighed. When he spoke, his voice was very low. "It means two guys I consider my best friends lied to me. Jeez, I've known D.W. for almost ten years. He taught me what real politics is. Without him, I never would have gotten elected to office. And it’s not just me; he lied to a lot of other Congressmen."

  Jakarta said, "I'm sure you're not naive enough to think no one has ever lied to Congress before."

  Mike shook his head. "I know, I know. But these are my friends."

  Jakarta nodded and fell silent.

  Kathy spoke up. "This kind of creeps me out. It’s bad enough when you read in the papers that they’re reading all our e-mails and phone calls. Mike… you seem to know something about this. Can you do anything about it? I don’t like it."

  Colleen shook her head. "It doesn't work like that, Kathy. Science isn't something you can just stop. Now that the theory has been tested and proven, you can't just make it go away."

  Jakarta smiled a thin smile. "Well, perhaps that's not quite accurate, Colleen. I plan to put an end to this little Machiavellian scheme."

  "How?" all three of them asked simultaneously.

  He bared his teeth. "Simple. Now that I've seen their code I'll get back in their server. A little tweak here, a small modification there, and suddenly the program doesn't work anymore."

  Colleen shook her head. "They may be corporate morons, but they're not stupid. They'll definitely back up their stuff. When they see the code doesn't work anymore, they'll just restore the backup."

  Now Jakarta burst into laughter. He tapped the drive where their flash drive sat. "And just where do you think that came from, huh? Their backup is already in my hands."

  Colleen's jaw dropped. "I never thought of that."

  He stood up. "They won't either. I'm not stupid, Colleen. It won't be immediately obvious to them that their code is sabotaged. I'll make subtle changes, things that make it seem like the code still works. But it won't. And when they ship the product to the NSA, they'll be shipping something that doesn't work. Our thoughts will remain safely secret."

  "You really think it'll work?"

  Jakarta nodded. "I'm practically certain of it. Colleen, if someone went in and tweaked code of yours, so it still kicked out recognizable results but not the results you thought, would you know it?"

  After a moment she shook her head. "You're right, I wouldn't know unless I went specifically looking for it."

  "Neither will they. And with the backup drive in our hands, we can stop this thing before it's too late."

  "Now wait just a minute here." Mike got out of his chair, and began to pace. "This is the federal government we’re talking about here, I’m not so sure we should be messing with this."

  From his seat, Jakarta eyed the Congressman. "Actually, I understand how you feel. You’re thinking of me as a hacker, just some kid who breaks the rules for his own fun and profit. And yes, I have been known to have a bit of fun now and then. But that’s not the only reason I do it. There’s something seriously wrong here, seriously wrong. Reading people’s minds is a ridiculous violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches. I’m sure you can see that."

  Mike turned away, then turned back. He clenched and unclenched his fists, then blew out a sigh. "Maybe. But maybe there’s a system in place for dealing with things like that – a Congressional hearing, or any number of other ways. That’s why we have checks and balances in the government, so the system can be sorted out without resorting to vigilantism."

  Colleen spoke up. "It doesn’t always work, though, Mike. I’m sure you know that better than any of us here. I’m not some kind of anarchist, but I know I don’t like the thought of anyone reading my mind, let alone the government. How well are the checks and balances going to work when one side knows all the cards the other side is holding?"

  "Yeah, but Colleen, realistically, they’re not going to be reading your mind. There are 300 million people in this country. At worst it’d be like the e-mail and phone meta data-gathering – a huge vault of information that no one ever looks at, in the case of the average person. Mostly, if this technology is what he says it is," Mike nodded at Jakarta, "it’d be used for things that need it – think of how much harder it would get to conceal evidence of a murder, or rape, or other serious crimes."

  Jakarta asked, "Can you be sure no one will ever use it? Have we forgotten Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover already? Somewhere there has to be a limit to how much of our privacy we give up. Somewhere, there has to be an end to what the government knows."

  Mike chewed on his lower lip, thinking. That was a hard argument to beat, especially since he’d just been telling Nathan a few days ago that he didn’t want to bring in law enforcement because he was afraid of the records being abused.

  He looked over to Kathy, searching for some kind of support there. For her part, she didn’t know what to say. She wanted to take his side, but found herself agreeing with Colleen. The idea of someone able to read her mind creeped her out. She settled on taking Mike’s hand in hers and saying nothing.

  Reluctantly, Mike returned to his seat, without saying anything. Jakarta looked at him, then looked away and said, "I hope it sets your mind at ease to know that I’d never consider selling the information to terrorists, or some such nonsense. I may be suspicious of our government, but I still like it better than anybody else’s. I only want to help keep it as honest as possible."

  Mike didn’t reply, and Jakarta let it drop. He turned back to his keyboard, and resumed work. Colleen gazed at the young hacker with his dark tinted lenses and his all black clothing.

  The man who'd driven them there walked up to the assembled group at the computer. When his understudy tapped him on his shoulder, Jakarta turned to Colleen and her friends. "Excuse me just a moment, would you?"

  They all made noises of assent as Jakarta and the other man walked outside the door.

  "Why are we keeping them here?" the driver asked. This man better fit the stereotype of the computer nerd. He looked like he lived on Doritos and delivered pizza. His unkempt mop of brown hair hung down over thick glasses. His name was Jerry Garver.

  "They've got a lot invested in this. Letting them watch me do this part will give them closure on it. Our security will go out the window if they try to keep asking us questions about it after we're done. You've seen how easy it is for the feds to track them. They'd lead the law right here, and we'd end up in federal prison. If we let them watch, they'll have security about the resolution of the thing."
r />   "It's a security risk just to bring them here, let alone give them access to our network. Are you sure you aren't trading a smaller threat for a bigger one?"

  Jakarta shook his head. "I'm not stupid. They don't get anything like real access to our network. Except for being out here talking to you, I’m right there watching them when they’re near our machines. So you'd better settle down and let me get back in there if you're concerned about security."

  Jerry crossed his arms. "If they find out about the rest…"

  "Look," Jakarta responded. "It’s not like they’re going to get involved in your compartment or anything. Use the workshop down the hall and lock the door. I’ll let them watch me sabotage the EG code to set their minds at ease, they’ll spend the night, and then you’ll take them away somewhere. They never saw where you drove them, so they can’t give anything away once they’re gone. Relax, I have it under control."

  "Are you sure you're not thinking three feet lower than your brain?"

  "Yes, I'm sure," Jakarta said, turning to go back inside. For a brief moment he turned back to his associate and smiled. "Ms. Christina is beautiful, to be sure."

  Jerry watched his friend go back in the computer room. In all the time he’d worked with Jakarta, he’d never worried so much as he did when he saw how his friend looked at that blonde girl, Colleen.

  Jakarta returned to the computer, gently nudging Colleen aside and resuming his place in front of the keyboard. She scooted out of the way to let him work, but didn't move any further than necessary.

  The young hacker began rattling his keyboard. Kathy and Mike watched in ignorant fascination as windows and boxes flashed up on the screen momentarily only to be clicked away almost as fast.

  "What are you doing now?" Kathy asked.

  "Well, what we're doing now is compromising other, innocent systems to route our connection through. He gets access to some other machine – probably some home user who doesn't understand the need for security on a high speed Internet connection – and that machine sends out your requests, instead of yours. Then the compromised machine sends the information on to you once it gets it. The advantage is that anyone on the machine you're trying to hack who looks at an IP address for the intrusion to their system will see the compromised machine's IP, not yours. It’s a way of hiding yourself."