Double Tap

CHAPTER EIGHT

If the experts are to be believed, Madelyn Chapman and her minions have perfected software that allows the government to monitor its people and their activities in ways that would cause most of us to shudder. The stated purpose, at least publicly, is to do what geologists cannot do when it comes to earthquakes: predict with accuracy the tremors of terrorism.

This morning Harry and I have made arrangements to be briefed by one of the few people outside of government and Chapman’s own company who have knowledge of the Information for Security program-IFS-and how it works. We are huddled in the conference room of our office in the far bungalow behind Miguel’s Cantina on Coronado Island.

James Kaprosky is in his sixties, tall, slender, stoop-shouldered, and from all appearances frail. Every few minutes he has to pause to cough up a lung.

If what I have read in news accounts on Nexis is accurate, a good part of Kaprosky’s current physical state is the result of more than a decade of litigation against the federal government. During this time Kaprosky, his company, and his family have been ground into dust by a bureaucracy with bottomless pockets and legions of government lawyers. He has been at war with Uncle Sam in a series of civil suits that have worn him to the nub and that two years ago sent his company, a once prosperous software manufacturing firm, reeling into federal bankruptcy court. From all appearances he is a walking, breathing warning label that litigation will kill you and that legal tangles with the federal government will most likely follow you into your grave.

This morning Kaprosky stands in front of us, a pointer in one hand and the remote control to an overhead projector in the other. He is giving Harry and me chapter and verse on the IFS system while his wife looks on.

Jean Kaprosky has driven her husband to this meeting because he no longer has a license. His doctors have had it revoked because of his failing health. If I am any judge, Mrs. Kaprosky is perhaps ten years younger than her husband. If I had to pick the dominant expression readable in her eyes, it would not be weary but worried, as if she long ago realized that the war with the government was over but still cannot steel herself to tell her husband. So she drives him and comes along for moral support.

“The heart of the system,” says Kaprosky, “is the Primis software. Primis is what makes it all work. Without it you have nothing. I know because I wrote it.”

Kaprosky is here today not because we are paying him but because he is now at the point of desperation where he will talk to anyone willing to listen. Like everyone else, he has read about Ruiz’s case in the papers. Unlike everyone else, Kaprosky sees a link between Madelyn Chapman’s murder and the IFS program, the government’s proposal to monitor everything that is now digitized in American life. He is convinced that Chapman’s murder and his own battle against the government are somehow linked.

While Harry and I have to weigh our suspicions that maybe Kaprosky has gone around the bend and finally snapped under the pressure, what is undeniable are his professional credentials. He has been writing software and designing programs-some of them for Fortune 500 companies, and most of them for large mainframes-for more than forty years. Regardless of his faltering finances, he is an icon in the industry.

“Jim. . You don’t mind if I call you Jim?” I say.

“Why should I? It’s my name.”

“Why don’t you have a seat? Let’s just talk.”

For a second he looks bemused, as if without the pointer and slide show he might be lost. Then he breathes a deep sigh, sets the pointer and the controls on the table, and slumps into one of the swivel chairs at the other end of the table.

“Tell us a little bit about Primis. We don’t need to know all the technical details.”

“What do you want to know?”

“For starters, how did it come about?”

“I created it seventeen years ago. Of course, back then it had a different name. Probably didn’t have all the bells and whistles it does now, though I haven’t seen their final take on it, so I really can’t say. When I owned it, it was called Paradize. The Defense Department wanted to buy it. They wanted to modify it, use it for their own purposes.” He coughs a short jag, then catches his breath.

“Of course, that was good news for my company, back then. If you could only roll back the calendar. .” Kaprosky muses. “I guess I was a little naïve.” He looks at his wife as if to apologize for the rugged ride through life he has given her. “But I was dealing with the federal government. Who would have thought?”

“Tell us about it.”

“We thought it was a tremendous opportunity,” he recalls. “We signed a contract, not to sell, but to license the program to the Pentagon. They wanted to use it for random processing of large amounts of data, but they wanted some changes. That was fine. .” His voice trails off, and for a moment I think he’s gone to sleep in the chair. But Kaprosky is just catching his breath.

Jean Kaprosky looks at me with a kind of mournful expression and shakes her head.

“Everything was fine for a while, about a year,” he resumes. “Then the government claimed that we had somehow violated the contract. They canceled it and refused to return the source codes or stop using them. Except for a small sum that they paid up front, we received nothing. They claimed that we had failed to make required changes they wanted to the software.”

“Did you?” says Harry.

“No. The problem was they failed to provide any specifications. How do you write parameters for a program when you don’t know what they are? No: the people running the program never intended to pay us.”

“Why?” says Harry. “Why would the government want to take your software without paying for it?”

“The government? No. The government is just a concept. Figment of our imagination,” says Kaprosky. “It took me a long time to figure that out. It’s the people who run it who do the Devil’s work. Ambitious dogs. We think we’re protected because they come and go. But along the way some of them reach out and grab things, things of value. Things that they want for themselves and their friends. I never thought of the government as a friend or benefactor. But I once believed that while they could draft me, tax me, or put me in jail, there were rules they had to follow. Now I know better. You want to know who took the software? His name was Gerald Satz.”

Harry gives me a look. The first possible connection with Ruiz’s case.

“What we found out during the lawsuits,” Kaprosky goes on, “is that the government had already hired another company to come in and make the changes they wanted, using my source codes.”

“What is this thing?” says Harry. “You’ve mentioned it a couple of times: the source code.”

“To an operating program, the source code is like DNA. It’s written in programming language, what you would call human-readable instructions, like a long list, using logic. For it to be used by a computer, the source code has to be translated into machine language, something the computer can read. What is important about this,” Kaprosky explains, “is that you can only make changes to the program if you have access to the source code. The changes are written in the original programming language and then converted to machine language.”

“So if you don’t have the source code, you don’t have anything,” I say.

He nods. “That’s why most software companies only license the finished product. As long as they hold the source code in secret, it’s protected. Once they release it out into the public, they’ve lost any claim to ownership.”

“But you said you gave the source code for Paradize to the federal government,” says Harry.

“Actually, Paradize contained more than a hundred different source codes,” says Kaprosky. “That’s why it took them a year before they cut us off and canceled the contract. We had just delivered the last in the series when they pulled the plug. It was the final piece they needed. And so that you understand, we didn’t give the codes to the government. The contract called for licensing of the program for the government’s use. It did allow access to the source codes, but only for limited purposes and only if they used it under our license.”

From the breast pocket of his coat, he takes a handkerchief and coughs into it, then wipes his lips. “Besides, I figured like everybody else it’s the government, right? They’re not going to steal it. Well, I was wrong.”

“Why would they go to somebody else to rewrite the program?” Harry asks.

“It wasn’t a rewrite. They just wanted to tweak it so they could claim it was their own: an original item.”

“But it was based on your source codes,” says Harry.

“Yeah, well, Try telling that to the federal courts. They don’t seem to care.”

Kaprosky has employed a generation of lawyers in an effort to get the government to pony up damages, including hundreds of millions of dollars for infringement of copyright. He has gotten within a hairsbreadth of delivering the case to a jury on two occasions, only to have the government raise the specter of national security and refuse to disclose the source code for its program. The code is the critical piece of evidence needed to confirm Kaprosky’s claim. Because the software in various forms is currently used by a number of intelligence agencies-the CIA, the NSA, and others-and because in more watered-down forms it has been licensed by the U.S. government to allied foreign intelligence services in other countries, the courts have sustained the national-security defense.

The crowning blow came last year when a federal circuit court in Washington, D.C., threw a blanket over the entire case, denying Kaprosky’s appeal on national security grounds. Three months later the Supreme Court denied a hearing on appeal. That decision in effect leaves Kaprosky and his company without legal recourse. He cannot prove his claim without the evidence that is in the possession of the government. And the courts will not compel the government to turn over the evidence on grounds of national security.

“And you think General Satz played a major role in all of this,” I say.

“Oh, I know he did. That’s not even in question. He was the principal officer in charge of contracts at the time we signed the agreement. He was no fool. When he saw the Paradize program and had a chance to examine it with his technical people, he knew that what he had was golden.

“If information is power, Satz was holding the keys to the kingdom,” Kaprosky continues. “I don’t want to sound immodest, but Paradize was the genie in the bottle, and Satz knew its value. He knew somebody was going to build a commercial empire on it, and it wasn’t going to be me. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the U.S. military-not the soldiers in the field, but the top brass, the ones who survive long enough to make it into top offices in the Pentagon-if you check it out, you’ll discover that they aren’t usually buried in a pauper’s grave when they die. Knocking around in a courtroom for a dozen years, talking to other people, you learn things.”

Kaprosky pauses, then resumes: “I could give you the names of ten corporations, most of them funded almost entirely out of the Pentagon budget, the U.S. military being their biggest customer. In some cases their only customer. Check the board of directors of these companies and you’ll find they are controlled by former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a good number of their cadre. That’s no accident,” Kaprosky notes. “I can tell you about inventions and innovations with military or intelligence applications, some of them so advanced, you begin to wonder if the government isn’t sitting on a time machine in one of its warehouses. Somehow these things always get gobbled up by newly formed corporations. And when you look at the company’s organizational chart, it reads like the roster of the Army-Navy Club. So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when Satz picked somebody else to write the modifications to my software. But back then I didn’t think stuff like that happened.” He smiles wearily. “I guess you could say I was green.”

“Let me guess who wrote the changes,” I say.

“Madelyn Chapman.” Kaprosky says it before I can. “So now you know why I called, why I talked to your partner. Back then she hadn’t formed her corporation yet. But she was outside the fold. She’d left the Pentagon. She had two or three people plus herself working in a small office in Virginia, spitting distance from the Pentagon.”

“Gerald Satz steered the software to her company. Gave it to her.” This comes from Jean Kaprosky, who until now has sat silently at the other end of the table, across from her husband. She can no longer contain herself.

“What he got in return we don’t know,” says Kaprosky.

“You can bet it was plenty,” Jean says.

“They changed the name of the program from Paradize to Primis.”

“They just took it?” says Harry.

“I know: people don’t believe me when I tell them,” says Kaprosky. “They think I’m crazy. But that’s what happened.”

“And you sued them?” I ask.

He nods. “I sued the government. Secretary of defense. I named Satz and several others.”

“Did you sue Chapman?”

“Once, but it was dismissed,” he replies.

“Why was that?” Jean asks, scratching her head. “I can’t remember anymore.”

“She wasn’t a party to the original contract,” Kaprosky says. “Unless we could prove that the government had done something wrong, we couldn’t reach Chapman or her company.”

“Yeah. Now I remember.”

“And you couldn’t get traction against the government because of national security,” I say. I have read this travail of tears in the news accounts.

He nods slowly, his shoulders slumping. “We’ve been in and out of the courts for twelve years,” he sighs. “Closest we got was a judgment from the district court telling them to surrender the source codes from Primis so they could compare them to mine. That decision was blocked and overturned by the court of appeal on grounds that the Primis program constituted-how did they put it? — a fundamental national-security asset. My lawyers tell me that politicians have used national security in the past to cover up crimes. That’s supposed to make me feel better, since in this case they’ve only committed civil fraud.”

I could tell him that I know how he feels, but I don’t. I don’t think anyone could unless they’ve been through Kaprosky’s particular wringer.

“What else do you want to know?” he asks.

“Maybe you could tell me a little about how the software works,” I suggest.

“Why not? Paradize, or Primis-whatever you want to call it-is what they call an all-inclusive relational database. The end user defines parameters and the software searches through massive amounts of digitized information, finding anything that falls within the stated boundaries. It can sort through oceans of information looking for certain predefined transactions. For example, maybe you want to know whether anybody purchasing airline tickets to specified destinations purchased certain chemicals, or transferred sums of money between certain banks. Paradize would tell you. The theory is that the software, if properly programmed, can identify patterns of activity that are likely to reveal criminal acts that are being planned or are in progress.”

“Predicting terrorist activities?” asks Harry.

“Not just predicting,” Kaprosky replies, “but providing information as to who, when, and possibly where. If you can believe the government, at the moment the program is functioning at a minimal level because they don’t have access to all the data. I don’t happen to believe them, but then, I suppose I’m jaded.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“In order to function at full efficiency, the software requires access to as much data as possible. Mountains of it. An ocean of digitized information. That’s what IFS, Information for Security, was supposed to provide. Congress was supposed to pass legislation that required every private, commercial, and government database in the country to hook up to a bank of supercomputers in the Pentagon and to feed everything they had into the Defense Department computers so they could process it with the software.”

Harry is visibly surprised. “No search warrants?”

“Minor details,” says Kaprosky. “They wanted everything: medical records, banking and financial transactions, addresses, telephone records, lists of all the property you own, the names of your children and the schools they attend, whether they are in day care and where, their grades, all of your e-mail transactions, including the content of the messages, the sites you visit on the Internet, all of your credit-card purchases. Anything and everything in a computer database anywhere in the country was supposed to be available. If it was digitized, they wanted it.”

“I thought Echelon was bad.” Harry is referring to the feds’ party line in the sky. “If the British prime minister sneezes during a phone call with the French president, Uncle Sam says ‘Gesundheit.”’

“I never intended that my software be used in that way,” Kaprosky says, shaking his head. “In the end it didn’t matter, since they had one major problem: Congress refused to pass the legislation forcing everybody to hook up to their system. They couldn’t get the data.”

I remember seeing the story in the newspaper, but I hadn’t followed the details.

“They did have an interesting pitch to sell the plan politically,” he points out. “What they proposed was to slap one more Band-Aid over the software so that everything they looked at from the massive data feed would be anonymous. They would have access to all of the information on three hundred and fifty million Americans, but if you believed them, they wouldn’t be able to tie any of it to a specific individual unless they got a search warrant.”

“How would they do that?” I ask.

“That was the creative part,” says Kaprosky. “It was supposed to be guaranteed by a separate system of software that Chapman’s company was going to write. I suspect that was one of the reasons they needed my source codes: so they could filter this in. The add-on was called Protector. If the government’s computers detected a pattern of activity that raised suspicion-enough to convince a court to give them a search warrant-Protector was supposed to be written in a way that, by keying in the number on the warrant, the filter that masked out the individual’s identity would fall and they’d get the name, address, everything.”

“Pretty ingenious when you think about it,” Harry observes. “It’s hard to argue you’re invading somebody’s privacy or infringing on their Fourth Amendment rights when you don’t know who they are. The government could rummage around in everybody’s digital trash to their heart’s content. Then if a pattern pops up on the screen, they run to a judge and get a search warrant.”

“But Congress didn’t buy it,” I say.

“No.” From the look on his face, this is the only silver lining in Kaprosky’s dark cloud. “And for good reason. I am told that programmers who delve in the dark arts were already at work devising ways to get around the identity filter. Anything devised by man can be circumvented by him. Show me a lock and I’ll show you a pick.

“In this case it was called a trapdoor. They’d used it before. I can’t prove it, but I’m told by people who would know that Chapman wrote one for them years earlier. According to the information, the federal government had licensed Pentagon-inspired software to some of our allies, early versions of the altered Paradize program. What they didn’t tell our foreign friends was that Isotenics had installed a trapdoor in the system allowing the U.S. to monitor the activities of these foreign intelligence services without their knowing it. The U.S. was able to look over their shoulder as they used the software.”

“All’s fair in love and war,” says Harry.

“But here’s the part that will interest you,” says Kaprosky. “Apparently there was a major argument brewing between Chapman and the Pentagon at the time she was killed.”

“Over what?” I ask.

“That’s the question.” Kaprosky shrugs. “I don’t know. What I do know is that it was getting very ugly. The word is that General Satz was making noises that if she didn’t get in line, he might have to go to the Justice Department to have them take the program away from Isotenics. Out of Chapman’s hands.”

“Maybe she refused to go along with them on the trapdoor thing?” says Harry.

“No,” Kaprosky says. “They couldn’t very well go to Justice and tell the lawyers that Chapman wasn’t playing fair because she refused to allow them to violate the law. Besides, the trapdoor would only be useful if Congress allowed the Pentagon to wire up all the computers in the country to get the raw data. Only then could they mine it for information, and if they found something-say, a pattern of conduct-they could slip through the floor without a search warrant to identify the party involved to put them under surveillance, arrest them, or do whatever else it is that they do.” It is obvious that Kaprosky has darker thoughts about the government than most people.

“Without some source or raw data, the trapdoor was useless,” he goes on. “It was premature. If they approached Chapman on it, it’s possible she said no, simply because it was too risky. If they got caught, she and her company would have been toast. But Isotenics wasn’t the only shop that could engineer something like that. I think it was something else.”

“What then?” I ask.

“According to some of the data junkies in D.C.-people working for other government agencies, and I know a lot of them-the word is that Defense is already running Primis to mine data. They’re getting massive amounts of digitized information somewhere. Maybe it’s only beta testing. Maybe they’re only working out the wrinkles hoping that Congress will ultimately come along. But what if they’re not? What if they found some other way to get inside, to tap into the databases? What if Chapman wasn’t involved? What if she found out? She couldn’t afford to just sit by and watch.

“The government tapping into private information on three hundred and fifty million Americans in violation of federal law,” Kaprosky continues. “If that kind of a web started to come unwound, you’d have a scandal that would make Watergate look like child’s play. If that’s what it was, Isotenics would have been at risk. The company would have been ground into dust by the lawsuits and congressional investigations that would have followed. My battles with the government would have been a virtual paradise compared to what she would have had waiting for her.”

If it is true, Kaprosky is right. Chapman would have been in a bind, caught between loyalty to old friends; Gerald Satz, her mentor; and the continued existence of her own company. If she started making disagreeable noises, it would explain why she was feuding with the Pentagon. And if they suspected that she might go public-or, worse, engage in the favored political pastime by leaking the information to congressional staff or the press-the anxiety that might grip those in high places would provide a mountain of motive for murder.

“How do we prove it?” Harry asks. “Can you give us names? Your sources inside the data Beltway in Washington: will they testify?”

“Not in this lifetime,” Kaprosky replies. “Their jobs would vaporize. Trust me. After more than a decade fighting with the government in and out of court, there is one thing I do know with certainty: whistle-blowing on that level is bureaucratic suicide. Besides, even if you got close-assuming you could find somebody willing to testify under oath-I guarantee you, before you could get them on the stand, the Justice Department would have them bundled up and shipped off to Anchorage in a box marked Top Secret. The old national-security defense,” he says.

We sit around the table in silence. Jean seems to be studying the grain of wood in the shimmering surface, lost in her own thoughts, security in their old age slipping way.

“You look puzzled, my friend.” Kaprosky is looking at me.

“What I don’t understand is that if they’re cut off from getting the data by Congress, which refuses to compel business to allow them to tap in, how are they getting the information?”

“I don’t know,” says Kaprosky. “But I can tell you one thing. They’re running Primis, and they’re doing it around the clock.”