The twenty-first century with its vast technological and scientific advancements was just about to be called history. The era of the Millennium with its great spiritual teachers had come and gone. The United States had seen the rise and fall of its first ethnic and its first female President, which to nobody’s great surprise did not change anything in the way the country was lead and managed. Power was still the magic potion and once the election campaigns had been put to bed and the oaths were yesterday’s news, business as usual resumed no matter who had the last say in the matter.
Information technology made strides way beyond the comprehension of its casual and unsuspecting users. It took but half of a century until it became obvious that the web that had been spun around the world with its border transcending subversiveness would start to eat itself like the snake that bites its own tail rather sooner than later.
One brightly lit black day in modern man’s history an e-mail message was delivered to a twelve year old girl in Salt Lake City, Utah with parts of grandma’s birthday wishes jumbled beyond recognition with the innocently looking signature line, “Message sanitized by CensServer2866DC. Contact DHS for more information.” The first censor servers had gone online without as much as a footnote in the news media. Spying on its own citizens by all levels of government and corporations was so common place and all encompassing that this latest step to employ machines to do the dark deed was not expected to rattle anyone’s cage. By then privacy protection groups had been driven so far into obscurity that they had almost no way of even communicating with each other and so their voice was only heard by a handful idealists clinging onto a humanist dream in the shadows of society.
The scope of power and repression that could be asserted by an inventive government seemed endless. The opportunity for near total control of the masses through the power of influence was too enticing to be passed over. Television programming and commercials, Internet search engines and advertising, all print media and alternative information channels and networks, on-line and off-line gaming and entertainment were being monitored and manipulated by a handful of super rich dotcom cartels. They had prepared the groundwork in college dorm rooms and garage corporations long before the technology was ready to be deployed. Computer code had lain dormant for years, waiting quietly for when the time was ripe. Once network capacities and penetration into the social fabric had reached a critical mass the programs self-activated and gave their creators unlimited access to and control over every communication and information channel from the security and comfort of their offshore kingdoms. They were America’s kingmakers of the day, but this one time someone had gone too far.
A twelve-year-old girl was outraged. Suzie Truman cried, screamed and threw herself onto her bed and pounded the pillows. She then stood up, walked over to her computer and forwarded that e-mail to every address in her book with a note,
“Hi, look what they’ve done (below). I’ve had it. I am going offline ... NOW. See ya, Suzie.”
With that she unplugged the network cable and ripped out the wireless antenna from the back of her personal computer. That was it. A simple act of courage born out of rage, life giving rage to shake off the shackles of information slavery. She then took out the battery of her tiny cell phone, dropped it into the proper recycle bin and casually slipped the phone into the trashcan. She was not to be reached by means of electronic communication again.
Only minutes after the message was sent Suzie’s e-mail server inbox was filled to capacity by answers and concerned inquiries from friends and family. E-mails started to be returned to the senders, “Message could not be delivered. This is a permanent error...” People were trying to contend with this unexpected situation. Little Suzie’s outcry was discussed in Internet forums and blog websites gaining her the inevitable air of heroism along the way. Her classmates were the first ones who contemplated to follow their friend’s example. In an act of civic defiance twenty-four girls got together in the school gymnasium and disabled their own computer’s networking facilities. They did not remain the only ones for very long.
An anonymous computer network specialist in Utah’s DHS (Department of Homeland Security) data center later recalled the scene in the traffic monitoring station, “It was like the lights would go out one by one and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a chaotic situation and there was a sense of panic in the room. We just knew that this was the beginning of something that we would be unable to stop.”
On the other, not quite so official end of networking reality, Samuel Stone sat hunched over his computer pad for long hours these days. He was chief of data mining for the Ripdotcom cartel operating out of an inconspicuous unmarked warehouse on the South side of Miami, Florida. Sam was famous amongst data hackers for his ingenious ways to maximize and utilize the precious information that his department extracted out of the never ending and steadily multiplying data streams. He had intercepted the reports flying back and forth between Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C. about their little Girl Scout Revolution. He also had managed to latch on to the flood of e-mails that had originated with that ominous censored message. There was no end in sight for the attention that this insignificant little note was getting.
Two weeks earlier he had to report to what was now called Rip Island in the Caribbean. One of the top Ripdotcom lieutenants wanted his opinion first hand about the federal government’s plan to take the censor servers online. Sam had been involved in the programming of some high level threat-definition routines for the censors but he was never convinced that they would do an adequate job of filtering relevant content out of a great volume of communication. The intuition that a good intelligence operative brought to the table could never be matched to a satisfactory degree by the machines.
In the end of course the decision was all about money. The intelligence services that Ripdotcom provided to the Capitol and the White House did not come cheap. Mass communication censoring had been a wide spread practice for years but it was a tedious labor intensive business and did not carry the kind of profit margin the cartel was used to produce from its other operations. Nobody was all too upset about the government’s plans to automate this process. The cartel still made a small fortune supplying and installing the servers and this could always be considered a favor that might come handy to cash in should the need arise.
Still, Sam had made it very clear to his superior that there were unforeseeable risks involved with letting semi intelligent machines mess with personal correspondence. Sam’s employees had always prided themselves in the fact that their censoring activities were hardly ever noticed and if so, they were able to convincingly blame it on software, hardware or user error every single time. Even with the most sophisticated programming available these were still machines and their workings were bound to be discovered eventually. He did not make the mistake to venture a prediction of how the average user would react to this revelation.
Sam Stone was shaking his head in disbelieve for the thousandth time. They had signed the censored message! What were they thinking? Probably one of these so-called security advisors had the brilliant idea to just be forthcoming with the information. This should show the government’s honest intent to protect its people from subversive elements and inside threats and at the same time intimidate the hell out of the common guy on the street.
“Good luck trying to intimidate a twelve year old these days, ha!” he grumbled to himself.
Sam felt it in his stomach that this issue would find its way onto his desk rather sooner than later. He needed to be prepared. The mere existence of the censor servers was a slap in the face of everything the United States once stood for. He knew that it would take a while to shake up a significant enough number of people to really turn this into a wide spread situation, but the Web had already started to create a buzz and not even his mighty organization would be able to stop this avalanche once it had gained sufficient momentum.
Suddenly a
bright red exclamation mark flashed across his computer’s touch screen followed by a warning message that he never had wanted to see in his career.
“Ripdotcom identity compromised!”
He could hear warning sounds chirping from computers in the offices down the hall. Seconds later one of his senior agents stormed into the room.
“Someone in Washington lost it!” Peter Lowry barked across the desk. “We were not able to trace the information back to its exact origin right away, but someone in D.C. posted a bulletin on the Associated Press tech blog about the censor servers and they quoted us as the operators. We retracted the text within 213 milliseconds but we don’t know if it was still distributed. We are scanning all channels for traces of it.”
“Well, we don’t need a panic, so calm down and turn off the warning bells.” Sam tried to keep the situation under control, “Use all the resources you need to stay on top of a possible distribution. Let’s put out this fire while it is small. Find out who posted the message and inform the ground force commander in D.C. as soon as you get closer. We need to stop whoever tries to crash our party before they can do some real damage. Keep me informed. Use the satellite phones for all communications. Good luck, Peter.”
He dismissed his employee and turned his chair around to face the bookshelf behind his desk. ‘Paper,’ he thought, ‘what a wonderfully predictable medium.’ He did not allow himself to get contemplative for too long. Sam Stone had always been kept in high regards because he was a man of action and this time he would have to prove what he was made of.
He pulled the satellite phone from its charging station between the books and for the first time dialed a number that only a handful people had knowledge of. He had to wait for more than twenty rings before an out of breath voice answered the other call.
“I saw it,” the thin voice came slowly across the line. “I assume you already initiated damage control actions.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam Stone acknowledged to Nicolas o’Riley, head of the Ripdotcom family, “We do everything in our power to contain distribution of the message and to find out the identity of the clown who wrote it.”
“Unfortunately, son, that was no clown who wrote and posted this note. It is no secret to us who stands behind this.”
Stone was dumbstruck by this casually uttered revelation.
“My college buddy Freddie van Nuys and I developed much of the code back then that is still the back bone of our operation,” o’Riley explained, “He was brilliant but did not see the long term benefit of the mining programs. After the buyout of my first company a few years later I snatched up all his rights for a few hundred thousand bucks from him. He blew the money on girls and pot and later went on to join the CIA. He is still there. Freddie was always jealous and critical of our venture and especially of our government contracts. Seems he grew a conscience with old age or maybe it was just the lousy pay that set him off.”
“Anyway, I got a text message this morning on the secure line. It said, ‘Nick the Tick, knew ya’ll make a mistake some time. Boom!’ Seconds later the alarms went off.”
O’Riley took a deep breath from his oxygen mask before he was able to continue. “You can call off the dogs. If you want to find Freddie just walk down to the CIA data center in D.C., he’ll be there waiting. But what good would that do. We need a more proactive plan to resolve this mess. Let’s see how this plays out until tomorrow. Sleep on it and give me a call in the morning with ideas.” He hung up without another word.
“Yes, sir, will do,” Stone slowly mumbled into the dead line.
The next morning the Web and all kinds of official and alternative media channels lit up with fireworks of articles about the role of Ripdotcom in the censor server scandal. DHS officials denied accusations that the federal government had any involvement in deploying the servers. The signature line in the censored messages was claimed to be an attempt to provoke civil unrest against government offices and institutions. Ripdotcom was accused of terroristic activities against US citizens and appropriate counter measures were promised. Not that anyone really cared at that stage, but Washington, as always, was all about not loosing face and covering their tracks.
Freddie van Nuys lived his days in a small unmarked office at Sublevel Two of a CIA data center on the outskirts of Washington D.C. The wall across his desk was covered with an array of computer screens that displayed all sorts of information at the push of a button. Everyone in his department knew Freddie as a quiet man with a biting sense of humor, but these days he was all smiles and giggles. His old tired eyes gleamed while watching a parade of sensationalizing news stories from all around the country and a few from abroad about his old friend o’Riley’s woes.
He looked fondly at a list of news bulletins that he had secretly been assembling for years. Each one revealed yet another chapter of digital piracy committed by the vast network of companies and operational centers of the Ripdotcom cartel. Next to every line in his long list was a little bomb icon with a date and time stamp. The documents were uploaded and armed for delivery by the most inventive methods conjured up by a creative vengeful mind. Freddie van Nuys was not out for a quick kill, he was all about standing by and watching the mighty squirm and run for cover for a long time. He had learned to be patient and he was going to milk this for his twisted enjoyment as long as he could.
And so the dominoes had begun to fall. A jumbled birthday wish and a rash emotional response from a little girl, the complacency of an omnipresent spying government, the ages old battle for power and influence, personal revenge and skeletons rattling in everyone’s closets. Powerful information technology that had been developed by greedy, childish yet ingenious minds and carelessly put to use by the masses without giving the faintest thought to the detrimental effect it would have if it ever fell into the wrong hands. It took a lot to plant the seed of distrust into technology in the minds of large parts of the population but the first stone was thrown, the line had been cast. Freddie van Nuys was sitting in his office fifty feet below the face of the earth and made sure that the plant of doubt was tended to. Even if he were to disappear for some unforeseeable reason his plan was put on autopilot, the news bulletins would go out and there was nothing anyone would be able to do about it.
The dominoes fell slowly. In a world that relied on instant global communication and availability of nearly every piece of information and knowledge ever gathered by humankind the mere thought of giving up even a small portion of these conveniences was unfathomable for almost everyone at the beginning. Every aspect of public, private and business life was fully dependent on the cheap and effortless access to the global data networks. Even going on a romantic date without the prior reassurance of online compatibility tests and initial chat room contacts was hard to imagine for even the most love starved people.
Faith is a wonderful thing. It lets us face hurdles, challenges and adventures without the certain knowledge of how to master them and still go forward to a fulfilling and life enriching experience. Blind faith on the other side is like being fast asleep at the wheel of a speeding car and not even waste the spark of a thought to the fact that there might be a bend in the road and we are not in control to negotiate it. Ignorance is bliss they say but this only holds true as long as we are ignorant of our own ignorance. Once the sleeping mind has been jolted awake even for the fraction of a second to see life for what it really is, the sleep is not going to be as fast anymore. Freddie van Nuys’ messages had begun to do quite a bit of jolting far beyond his direct reach. Personal responsibility was slowly retracted from the list of four-letter-words that it had been banned to for too long.
It takes a lot to wake a sleeping bear, but when he awakes you better stand back and not get in his way. The American public had begun to awake from its lazy-boy supported lull where life was played out only on 16:9 aspect ratio ultra definition flat panel screens. The system of total control and manipulation by government and corporations had depended on the co
nstant, immediate and unsuspecting access to an overwhelming part of society. This system had been compromised and scrutinizing it started to become a favorite past time.
There was no land-rush to the shores of self-reliance or self-empowerment. It was more like a trickle at first, an annoying side bar to the mainstream media channels. Still, the steady trickle became a gurgling brook and the brook became a river and the river became a raging stream and then - - there was the waterfall, an unexpected gorge that opened in front of the still learning and struggling swimmers. That gorge almost swallowed the country for two long centuries.
For Anthony Hager personal responsibility came knocking on his door when he discovered that the nuclear power plant he was chief safety engineer of was frequently driven above the maximum rated energy output by remote network request. Someone or something in a far away big city office had decided that the safety of Hager and his colleagues as well as the surrounding rural area was less important than a few percent of additional power output to push quarterly profits for the power company. He pondered the consequences for a long time and decided he had no choice in the matter. After a sleepless night and a long talk with his wife he sat down at his desk the next morning, took the control computers off-line and initiated the power-down sequence of the reactor. He knew that he had put his life and his and many other people’s future in jeopardy but there was no way to un-grow a conscience once it has manifested itself in ones personality. Anthony Hager’s sigh of relief was heard and felt throughout the mighty plant.
Rachel Summers taught sixth grade history at Lincoln High, Tallahassee, Florida. One morning she was looking up into her classroom and all she saw were rows of computer screens with girls and boys ducked behind them trying to absorb the stale information they were force fed at a pre determined pace. Something new and unknown, frightening and exciting began to awake in Rachel. What would it feel like to be a real teacher?
“Tracy, would you please keep the class quiet for a few minutes, I want to fetch something from the library,” she instructed one of the class captains.
With that she stepped out into the hallway and rushed down two flights of stairs to the library floor. The old librarian looked surprised to see a teacher walk in during school in session. Ms. Summers just nodded quietly to the library desk and made her way to the back of the room where row after row of old unused real paper books were stored. No one ever made it that far back these days. Special interest titles were downloaded to memory cards for display in the classroom computers and the regular lesson material was accessed directly from central education server banks. Books were just ancient relics and kept around for sentimental reasons more than anything else.
Rachel found the row of books she was looking for and picked up one on American history reaching back many centuries. It was a heavy book and the dust that had accumulated on top of it made her eyes water and her nose tingle. The sound of her unexpected sneeze seemed twice as loud in the celebrated silence of the library hall. The second sneeze felt even more liberating and made her feel lightheaded.
The librarian was used to not question the teachers. She just assumed that Ms. Summers wanted to show her class first hand what an ancient paper book looked like and how fortunate they all were that they got their lessons in a much more convenient way.
With a newfound spring in her step Rachel Summers almost ran up the stairs back to her classroom. There was not a peep to be heard and only two or three of her students looked up when she opened the door. She crossed the room to her desk and dropped the heavy book onto it with a loud thud. Now she had their attention. With a big gesture for everyone to see she paused the lesson in progress from her teacher’s terminal.
“Gather around everybody, we will learn today what it was like to be in a class room many decades ago. Bring your chairs to the front and sit down, we are going to learn from a real book today.”
There were many uncertain looks on children’s faces not sure what to make of their teacher’s new found enthusiasm. One by one they picked up their chairs and moved to the front of the classroom. A few minutes of tumult and murmurs until they all were assembled to see what strange things might unfold that day.
“We are going to read about the same chapter of our country’s history that you had studied on the terminals today, in the book,” Ms. Summers explained, “Let’s see if there is more to learn when we do the work ourselves.”
There were many surprised faces including Ms. Summers’ when it became obvious that history in the book was written quite differently than the one taught by the standardized computer lessons. Eyes wide open these twenty-eight pupils and their brave teacher read and discussed and read some more until the school bell ended this remarkable history lesson.
Small acts of civic bravery, initiative and original thinking in all parts of the population left their marks on small or large areas of every day life. Every one of these early deeds was met by official repercussions that far outweighed the offense but underlined their significance all the more. More rules, more restrictions, more control and of course more taxes were met by more resistance and determination of individuals, communities and organizations.
Decades of a back and forth struggle between a freedom thirsty population and a power hungry and panicking government steadily eroded the trust in all forms of authority. The web of free information and data exchange that had been spun for almost a century unraveled itself from the outside in. The fragmented remains were not able to sustain the federal and global communication infrastructure that had been the foundation of modern economy on every level.
The segmentation of the economic system brought a long laundry list of quite unpleasant situations and circumstances in its tow. The break down of supply lines for food, energy and affordable every day supplies left many regions and metropolitan areas at the mercy of raiders and pirates who always seemed to be able to acquire sought after merchandise one way or another and offer it to the highest bidder.
Many short lived attempts of reorganizing larger areas under common administrations ended in all out confrontations between loosely organized paramilitary groups and armed street gangs. In the end the motorcycle and street gangs remained the only organized forces in many large cities and ironically matured to peace keeping and security authorities. Often they were the only effective protection from outside raider attacks.
“... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ...” quote United States Declaration of Independence.
The People finally took back their rights by force in what would be remembered as the Girl Scout Revolution. It would take more than two hundred years before the thought of instituting a new federal government could be even discussed without violent outbreaks and loss of life and treasure.
Chapter 3: East By North East