Black List

CHAPTER 32

Nicholas introduced Nina to Harvath and briefly outlined his friendship with Caroline. He then asked Nina if she could give them some time alone. They had a lot to catch up on, much of which was too sensitive to be discussed in front of her. He did his best to frame it so that she wouldn’t be offended.

“I understand, Nick,” she replied, setting aside the paperback she had been reading. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

Nina rose from the couch and as she walked past, she smiled and gave his arm a little squeeze. “See you later.”

Harvath was fascinated. He’d never seen Nicholas interact with a woman before. Once the front door had closed, he turned and said, “She calls you Nick?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“She’s an incredible woman. She reminds me a lot of her sister.”

“And you two…” Harvath let his voice trail off.

The little man didn’t answer. His silence spoke for him.

“I wouldn’t have figured you for the goth type.”

“This isn’t about her looks. We have a connection like you wouldn’t believe.”

He was right—Harvath didn’t believe it. The only female companionship Nicholas had ever known had come with a price tag attached, but suddenly, in the middle of an absolute shit storm, he had stumbled into a budding romance with an attractive woman likely half his age. It made the contrast with his own personal situation that much more stark.

“Riley’s dead,” Harvath said. It was an abrupt and perhaps cold change of subject, but in all fairness, there were much more serious things happening than Nicholas’s relationship with Caroline Romero’s sister.

To the credit of the large heart that beat within his little body, Nicholas took no umbrage. “I’m sorry, Scot,” he said. “What happened?”

From the way Harvath had spoken about Riley in the past, he had suspected there might have been something more than just professional respect between the two, and as Harvath recounted what took place in Paris, Nicholas realized that his friend had indeed developed feelings for her.

Once Harvath had filled him in on everything that had happened, it was Nicholas’s turn. Before he started, he walked into the kitchen, grabbed a beer for each of them, and returned to the living room. He handed one to Harvath and began to speak.

Layer by layer, Nicholas brought Harvath up to speed on what he had uncovered. He detailed his friendship with Caroline Romero, along with her background at Adaptive Technology Solutions. Harvath was unfamiliar with ATS, so Nicholas read him in.

From there, the little man explained how Caroline had mailed a box to her sister in Texas, with a recordable greeting card containing instructions and an advanced flash drive. He then described how he had unlocked the drive and what he had learned from it so far.

When he was done, Harvath stood up and fetched them another round. Returning from the kitchen, he remarked, “You said Caroline characterized what ATS was doing as a sort of ‘digital panopticon.’ What is that?”

“It’s based on a concept developed in the late eighteenth century by a British social theorist named Jeremy Bentham. The panopticon was a vision for the perfect prison. The building was like a wheel, with all the cells facing the hub. In the center of the hub was an enclosed circular guard tower with highly polished windows. The guards could monitor any of the prisoners at any time without their knowing exactly when they were being actively watched.”

“And Caroline Romero believed ATS was doing the same thing, only digitally?” asked Harvath.

“Yes, and not to prisoners but American citizens. She cataloged how ATS was steering like-minded members of the U.S. government in order to create a fully encompassing, fully functioning digital panopticon. Hence the term Total Surveillance.”

“But what does it have to do with me being accused of treason, or our organization being penetrated and Riley getting killed?” Harvath asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t, you’re right. That’s why having a better understanding of what Caroline discovered might help us figure this all out. She made a big deal about a study from the Brookings Institute. Entitled ‘Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments,’ its premise was that as the costs for data storage fall, it becomes ‘more cost effective for governments to record every scrap of digital information’ its citizens produce.

“The easier and more cost effective that is, the more incentive there is to do it. The technology not only enables authoritarianism, it encourages it. Governments simply cannot say ‘no’ when offered more power. And as we know, information, and thereby knowledge, is power.

“Caroline saved a blog entry that summed it up best. Every e-mail, all your Internet activity, the entirety of every single phone conversation, every piece of GPS data, all your social media interactions, every credit card transaction, every single electronic detail about your life, like it or not, is being placed into a safety deposit box that you have no control over. The government can come in at any point, open that box, and conduct retroactive surveillance on you. They will be able to create a perfect profile of your behavior, and they’ll be exceptionally well armed if they deem your behavior to be in opposition to the best interests of the state.

“While Brookings estimated that the conversations of every citizen could be recorded for seventeen cents a year, Caroline showed that ATS and the NSA were not only already doing it, they had gotten the cost down to only five cents a year. They’re storing all of your e-mails, GPS data, text messages, and Web activity too, for even less.”

“Is there any data on private citizens they’re not collecting?” Harvath asked.

Nicholas shook his head and filled him in on the testing of streetlights in Michigan that could record audio and video and then explained how ATS via the NSA had been behind the explosion in surveillance cameras in Manhattan and Chicago. Caroline had downloaded a PowerPoint presentation that outlined how ATS could have one surveillance camera for every five citizens up and running within three years.

There were new Japanese cameras ATS liked that recorded every single person who passed by and stored the information in perpetuity in a digital library. Using breakthrough facial recognition software, the camera could go back into its database and scan 36 million faces per second until it found the one it was told to look for.

Anticipating resistance because of the cost of all this surveillance technology, ATS had its in-house governmental lobbying firm craft a step-by-step case showing how Congress could orchestrate a “public safety” tax, whereby the citizens being surveilled would bear the cost themselves.

“Evil doesn’t even seem to begin to describe these people,” said Harvath.

“No it doesn’t,” said Nicholas. “And all the surveillance right now is being done without a warrant. Americans have no idea. But that’s not even the worst of it.”