The Cloud (28 page)
U
p pops some kind of multimedia file, maybe it’s a Word document or a PowerPoint, I can’t keep track of all the formats. It’s got a heading:
Then there is an image of a map of the United States. Each state is denoted simply by its shorthand initials, CA for California, OH for Ohio, and so forth. It looks meaningless, surely, on its face, nothing someone would kill for.
I run my cursor over the map, and, when I reach the first state, which is Maine, something happens: a little dialogue box pops up. Inside it reads: US SEN.: Andreeson (D) v. Sonol (R). Below that line, another heading in smaller font: HOUSE SEATS, and then a handful of more sets of names, like Johnson (D) V. Kyle (R), and Fern (D) V. Everson (R).
I’m looking at an electoral map of some kind.
I hear a noise outside the car and see a woman across the street with a barking dog on a leash. She’s glancing my direction, and it takes me a second to realize why. I’m stuffed into this car like a Boa constrictor in a snail shell, and with a laptop perched on my steering wheel. She looks away and keeps walking. In San Francisco, it probably dawns on her, there’s no length someone won’t go to check their laptop, no matter how uncomfortable the physical position required.
I return to the electoral map. I notice that each name in each of the elections is underlined, a hyperlink. I click on the first name, Andreeson, vaguely recalling that he’s the Democrat in a tight senate race in Maine.
A new window pops open on the right half of the screen. It takes a second for the format to come into focus. I’m looking at a document with four columns across the top. Left to right, the columns read: D
ATE
, IP A
DDRESS
, S
EARCH
T
ERM
D
ETAILS
, H
YPOCRISY
P
OTENTIAL
.
I increase this window so that it takes up the entire screen.
I look at the first few lines in the document:
The list goes on and on, pages upon pages. Hundreds of entries like this that cause my eyes to glaze over. I’m trying to make sense of it, looking for some handrail, when several entries catch my eye.
I’m drawn to these entries both because of the “hypocrisy potential”—the only ones I’ve seen so far that read “possible”—and because “POSSIBLE” is in all caps. This, evidently, is important.
I’ve covered business long enough to strongly suspect what the “Alt Min Tax” stands for: Alternative Minimum Tax. It’s a pain-in-the-rear tax that can really nail people in the upper-middle bracket.
I think what I’m looking at is that someone has done an Internet search about how to avoid paying this tax. Not just someone, but Dan Andreeson, the Democrat running for senate in Maine, or maybe someone using his computer.
I close this file. I go back to the map. I run my cursor over other states and wind up on South Dakota. Again, I get a dialogue box, with the senate race at the top and a handful of house races beneath.
In the senate race, the Democrat is Fisher, the Republican is Swan. I click on Swan. Up pops another huge laundry list. It starts.
I read on, through hundreds and hundreds of entries, then see:
I pause to let myself put a fine point on what I’m seeing. It’s a list of Internet searches. “IP address”—Internet protocol, if memory serves—refers to a specific Internet connection associated with the search. In more lay terms, it is the address of a computer, a number that, in effect, signifies a specific computer. In this case, evidently, the computer belonging to a Republican candidate for the senate, or a computer in his or her household.
The search term must refer to a specific Internet search on a specific date, something that someone sought on Google or Yahoo or, what’s the name of Microsoft’s version, Bing?
That’s explosive stuff, and private. Fred’s somehow tapped into these private searches. I pass over that mind-boggling concept and consider the specific search terms.
The would-be Republican senator has looked for how long marijuana stays in the system, and how to get it out of the body, how to dupe a urine test. Previously—I glance up the search list—the candidate has searched on how to tell if a child is gay, and has made sporadic searches about ordering OxyContin without a prescription from an overseas pharmacy. Hypocrisy potential: high.
I close the document and I click on the file for Steve Fisher, the Democrat in the South Dakota race. I skim through the mostly innocuous entries. Then I find a bunch of dates with entries like:
I look up from the file. I glance outside, seeing emptiness and quiet on the residential street but feeling self-conscious nonetheless. I feel like I’m holding something smoldering. It’s starting to make sense, particularly in light of the things I’d overheard Fred say about politics. He hated hypocrisy and insincerity. He said that the reason that politicians can’t solve real problems is that they can’t move beyond platitude. He wanted to use technology to bring truth to politics.
I think, sitting here squeezed into this car looking at this incredible document, that maybe he’s figured out a way to do so in the most extraordinary, and maybe most insidious, way in history.
What I’m looking at are the Internet search terms of all the people running for higher office in the United States. Somehow, Fred has managed to tap into their computers, and record hundreds, maybe thousands, of their individual searches, looking for behaviors and habits that might make them unelectable. No, that’s not right, I realize; it wasn’t that he was finding search terms that prove what makes them unelectable, but rather what makes them human.
Fred was going to expose the widespread commonality of people who cloak themselves as icons of moral purity.
Maybe.
There are some reasons to doubt the veracity and power of this document, both what it represents and whether it’s accurate. After all, even if he managed to pull up this level of surveillance, how could he prove that these aspirants of higher office were the people sitting at their computers doing the Internet searches? Could it have been their spouses, family friends, business associates? And, even if it was them sitting at the computer, couldn’t they claim otherwise?
But there is one major-league bit of evidence suggesting that this document is the real deal: someone is willing to kill for it. More than one someone.
I return to the map and do quick searches across the country, at house and senate races in California, Montana, Colorado, Georgia and Texas. Even a cursory glance shows me that, with rare exception, the documents have search terms that either are incendiary on their face or, in the hands of the right opponent or sensational media outlet, could bring shame.
I look at the clock. It’s 10:45. I’ve got to get the laptop back to Nat. I make a copy of the file and I save it to his laptop. I’m not super tech-savvy but I manage to bury the document in some file library where Nat’s unlikely to look, unless he was expressly searching there. And, without knowing what he was looking at, he’d be hard-pressed to understand it.
I’m about to close down the machine, when I realize there’s something I cannot resist. I return to the map. I run the cursor over Washington, D.C. Up pops a dialogue box with the two presidential candidates.
I click on the incumbent. As the search-term list materializes, I realize that I can’t believe that Fred would have been able to record the president’s searches. First of all, the president probably doesn’t do his own searches. And, secondly, even if the president does search the Internet, there’s got to be a massive firewall in the White House that would prevent such snooping.
The file opens. I nearly chuckle. Fred’s a genius. The search terms listed are from four years earlier, from before he was elected president. And there are a couple of striking ones, not eye-popping, but eye-catching. Searches about marital discord, mild pornographic searches, a few medical conditions I’m certain he wouldn’t want the world to know he was concerned about and that would make the year of a late-night talk-show comedian.
Male yeast infection?
Erectile dysfunction related to stress?
I turn to the challenger. I make it past the first page when I come to a scattering of entries that almost make me blush. One refers to a sex act that some might perceive as unorthodox or even perverse. And there are a bunch of searches about how to avoid paying taxes by parking assets overseas. I can’t believe this guy. What a hypocrite.