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Congress must facilitate the defense of these
rights."

from the testimony of Everett Smith,

National Digital Identity Initiative
coordinator

SOAPI Hearing

November 15, 2016

~~~~~

THREE

Morning light woke her.

She pushed herself up from the blankets,
threw a pillow out of her way and stumbled the two steps to the
desk. One hand rubbed her half-open eyes, the other opened her
computer.

The site still glowed from last night.
Nameless strangers with plasticky faces stared out at her. Guilt
twinged her gut and she shut the site away quick. Night had slept
away her anger.

She swallowed.

Even with no one looking, she felt her
cheeks burn, feeling embarrassed about her own impatience. She
couldn't be angry. Not really.

Not here.

She went to the bathroom and got her
toothbrush ready, then went back to the desk. With one hand she
brushed her teeth. With the other she flipped open her laptop again
and hopped on her email. She typed in her name and password and
social security number only to be greeted by an empty inbox.

She sighed.

What did you expect?

She shook her head and her mind laughed
silently at itself. No one ever had anything to say. Not there.
Checking that inbox was just old habit. Only the occasional work
reminder ever popped up – a redundant note to remember the
spreadsheets for the meeting or that Monday was Presidents day. No
real communication.

Not in the safe places. Safe places were
boring places.

She closed her email.

She took a breath.

Sorry, Nomad.

She apologized silently in her head
again.

They had to be careful, and she knew it.

Carrying around an alias was like carrying
around a gun. But you wouldn't get arrested for the gun.

Of the sites that'd given the finger to the
28th amendment, most didn't survive. They all had to be careful.
There were creeps out there – out there beyond the safe places.
That's why they always got shut down. Pedophiles. Terrorists.
Thieves. They didn't like the safe places.

She sighed, closed her computer again, went
to the bathroom, spat, and put away her toothbrush.

Then she sat back down at her desk and
opened up chat window.

She was damned if she'd be
caught at a real meeting site – the above-board networks that
registered and kept the proper records. There
were
some fucking creeps out there.
The cops might catch some pedonazis or whatever the fuck they were
chasing these days (it was hard to keep track) but they caused as
much mayhem as they stopped.

And she was damned if she was going to give
her real name before she was ready.

Or as it turned out,
before
he
was
ready.

But she would be there when he was. She took
a breath and typed:

"Nomad, are you there?"

**********

The chat sound woke him. He jerked awake,
reflexively swiping the trackpad of the still-open laptop next to
him, waking it up, too. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his
eyes, blinked a few times and–

Ow.

Nomad flinched away from the spears of light
stabbing into his vision. He rubbed a hand over his eyes again and
glared at the offending sunbeams peeking through the chink between
the wall and the curtains. The tupperware still sat beside the open
laptop next to his arms crossed under his head where he had slept
for. . . he rolled over to look at the time.

7:03

He groaned at the numbers on the clock. Eyes
still gummed together from two hours of sleep, he blinked dumbly at
the clock on the screen for a moment before a smile broke onto his
face and his eyes stretched open, now wide awake.

He pushed himself up and arched his back,
stretching. It hurt.

But the smile on his face stuck stubbornly
anyway.

Carefully, he took a moment to cover the
tupperware with the last few leaves of yesterday's breakfast, and
pushed it out of the way. He took the fork and set it on the
plastic top. He grabbed a tissue and wiped futily at the dot of oil
on the bedspread again.

Then he abandoned the tissue and looked back
to the laptop.

News still floated on the
screen, but in a little bubble in the corner, over the headline of
another
New York Times
source jailed, was the bubble he'd been looking for. He
smiled.

"Nomad, are you there?"

Someone in Dubai was reporting on
corruption. Someone in New York was getting arrested. Someone in
Britain was voting. Someone was disagreeing - in all caps – with
Mr. Spin Nach. Somewhere, someone else laughed.

He didn't care.

He closed the news and clicked over to the
floating bubble in the corner.

"Nomad, are you there?"

His fingers answered automatically.

"Yes, Evade. I'm here," they said. Then
without permission from his brain, they kept typing, typing
something new: "I want to talk to you."

This time, the chat window answered:

User: Evade has ended chat.

He stared at the screen. He pulled his hands
away from the keyboard and closed his fingers into fists, as if
they would betray him again if left to their own devices, and write
more stupid stuff.

Dumbass,
he berated himself.

He reached out and closed the chat window.
Then he got up, went to the curtains and tugged them over the
sunbeams that had invaded the room. Returning to the bed, he turned
the sound up high again, and lay down again, this time crawling
under the covers.

Dumbass
.

~~~~~

H.R. 91184

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

APRIL 15, 2016

A BILL

TO PROVIDE EFFECTIVE PROSECUTION OF OFFENSES
AGAINST INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY ON THE INTERNET.

1. SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
   

2. THIS ACT MAY BE CITED AS THE STOP OFFENSES
   

3. AGAINST PERSONAL IDENTITY (SOAPI)
   

4. SECTION 2. DEFINITIONS
   

5. (A)"NETWORK" MEANS A SERVICE FACILITATING
   

6. COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS.
   

7. (B) "USER" MEANS AN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNICATING
   

8. ON A NETWORK.
   

~~~~~

FOUR

Nomad, what the fuck?

"I want to talk to you." His words screamed
at her from the screen. They weren't in caps. Weren't accentuated
with anything. Weren't accompanied by emoticons. Just quiet words
sitting on the page in front of her.

But they yelled in her mind.

"I want to talk to you."

Her fingers had frozen. Stuck in the air,
half an inch above the keys, they waited, paused a moment for her
mind to catch up. After a minute, they responded, a reflexive,
panicked response.

And closed the window.

Talk... Nomad, what do you want?

She flattened her hands against her knees
pressed her fingers flat, trying to stop the shaking.

Talk?

It was different.

She rolled the word over in her head. They
talked every day – or just about. But they didn't call it that.
That was different. Something had shifted.

And that shift sent a chill through her
stomach.

"Talk?"

On the phone or... outside? She shook her
head, shivering. Either way...

Here, inside her apartment, comforted by
four walls, the anonymity of the Unnamed networks was powerful,
safe. Or, well, safer than Safe. Safer than the sanitized networks
that asked for everything but a blood sample. But outside? Even
phones were Safe. The phone networks, like the sites, were Safe
places that kept records and registries to protect clients
identities.

She squeezed her eyes shut as if she could
blink away her trembling.

But she couldn't.

One hand reached out and
slammed her laptop shut. She got up, paced over to the window and
looked out. Outside were police. Right now, one strolled the
streets outside her apartment whistling, donut in hand. Outside,
there were informants, well-meaning citizens trying to maintain
order in their city – in
her
city. Outside, there were jails and police cars
and...

She tried to distract herself. She got in
the shower and stood under it until the stream was cold. She paced
around for a while after and tried to think about work. She cooked
spaghetti sauce from scratch, boiled some pasta and sat at the
table picking at it. She looked over her To-Do list for Monday,
then reorganized it.

But by evening she was staring yet again
screen, this time with an empty chat window open.

Her fingers drummed against her neck, the
heels of her hands pressed into her collarbone, as she hunched in
her desk chair, eyes fixed on the screen. It was dark. The sun had
gone down, and she hadn't been able to muster up the energy to
break away and get up to turn on the lights. It shouldn't have
mattered. She should be asleep in bed hours ago - there was a
budget meeting Monday morning and she had to prepare, but at this
rate she'd barely be able to keep her eyes open, let alone talk
coherently about staff spending.

Instead, she stared at the empty chat
window.

The words still glowed in her mind's
eye.

"I want to talk to you."

**********

Dumbass.

The word circled in his head again and
again.

He was under the covers again, but not
remotely tired – he'd slept all of the morning away and some of the
afternoon. But after milling about the stuffy apartment,
alphabetizing his one row of books and dusting the shelves, folding
a heap of t-shirts at the end of the bed, poking at some
leftover-from-whenever tuna salad and doing anything else to avoid
the computer, he'd crawled back into bed to hide.

His laptop stared at him from the
nightstand. It was closed, but its little prick of light blinked
slowly in and out accusingly. He rolled to his other side to avoid
it's glare.

What were you thinking?

He couldn't answer, but whatever it was,
whatever it had been that had moved his hands to type so forward a
suggestion, he was still thinking it. He wanted to meet the girl
behind the avatar.

He stared at the solid wall beside his bed.
A crack in the paint ran vertically halfway up the wall until it
forked and disappeared

His phone chimed.

He twitched at the noise, and his heart
thudded into his gut. He rolled over to look at the sleeping
laptop. Then he opened it.

Evade...

She was there. Silent, but there.

He touched the keyboard.

Don't–
"Can we talk?" his fingers were already repeating the
question from the morning. His brain cringed at his own impulsive
typing. He waited.

"We are talking."

At least she didn't run this time... He
smiled at that. He couldn't help it. She was still there, still on
the other end of... somewhere, still listening. So he obliged and
typed back, "No..." His fingers hovered for a moment. Then, "I want
to TALK to you," they rushed ahead.

~~~~~

October 27, 2016

COMPLAINT

National Digital Identity Initiative (NDII),
seeks reparations for willful infringement on NDII's identity
rights by Mr. Broc Coli.

NDII is the world's largest news and
advocacy group on digital identity issues. The publications NDII
are done by experts in the fields of technology, sociology, law,
and many other fields. NDII invests significant time and resources
into bringing digital identity issues to the public eye. A
significant portion of NDII's revenue is attributed to the high
regard with which our reporters and experts are held.

ACTS OF THE DEFENDANT

Defendant has made repeated and disruptive
comments, across several platforms, against NDII. These disruptive
comments offend the integrity and do harm to the identity of NDII
and its reporters and experts.

CLAIM FOR RELIEF

Although NDII cannot determine the amount of
revenue that it loses as a result of damage to its identity, the
amount is enormous. For example, one post by Mr. Broc Coli has
amassed more than 260 comments. Such widespread disruption – and
instigation –does harm to the esteem in which our reporters and
experts are held, and therefore puts the revenue of NDII in grave
jeopardy.

NDII request damages of $150,000 per offense
as compensation for past incidents and deterrent from future
incidents.

~~~~~

FIVE

She stared at the capital letters. They
weren't just in her imagination this time, but glowed on her
screen, commanding her attention.

TALK

A cold shiver ran from her gut up her spine
through her fingers, which froze, scared, useless, resting on the
keyboard. She shook her head. One finger moved, then another, slow,
letter by letter, then paused.

"Like..." She hesitated.

Her pinkie hit return and the useless
response sat there. She pictured him on the other end of the
connection, waiting while she struggled with the word.

TALK

"Like..." she tried again, "like on the
phone?" she finished hopefully.