Scott's head jerked toward Pinball. "What about the Freedom League?" he asked pointedly.
"All I said is that this political hacking sounds like the Free- dom League," Pinball said innocently. "They bloody well go on for a fortnight and a day about how software should be free to anyone that needs it, and that only those that can afford it should pay. Like big corporations."
"I've heard of Freedom before," piped Scott.
"The Freedom League is a huge BBS, mate. They have hundreds of local BBS's around the States, and even a few across the pond in God's country. Quite an operation, if I say."
Pinball had Scott's full attention. "They run the BBS's, and have an incredible shareware library. Thousands of programs, and they give them all away."
"It's very impressive," Dave said giving credit where credit was due. "They prove that software can be socially responsible. We've been saying that for years."
"What does anybody know about this Freedom League?" Scott asked suspiciously.
"What's to know? They've been around for years, have a great service, fabulous BBS's, and reliable software."
"It just sounds too good to be true," Scott mused as they made it back to the warehouse for more hours of education.
* * * * *
Until late that night, Scott continued to elicit viewpoints and opinions and political positions from the radical underground elements of the 1990's he had traveled 3000 miles to meet. Each encounter, each discussion, each conversation yielded yet another perspective on the social rational for hacking and the invasion of privacy. Most everyone at the InterGalactic Hackers Confer- ence had heard about Scott, the Repo Man, and knew why he was there. He was accepted as a fair and impartial observer, thus many of them made a concerted effort to preach their particular case to him. By midnight, overload had consumed Scott and he made a polite exit, promising to return the following day.
Still, no one had heard from or seen the Spook.
Scott walked back to his hotel through the Red Light District and stopped to purchase a souvenir or two. The sexually explicit T Shirts would have both made Larry Flynt blush and be banned on Florida beaches, but the counterfeit $1 bills, with George Wash- ington and the pyramid replaced by closeups of impossible oral sexual acts was a compelling gift. They were so well made, that without a close inspection, the pornographic money could easily find itself in the till at a church bake sale.
There was a message waiting for Scott when he arrived at the Eureka! It was from Tyrone and marked urgent. New York was 6 hours behind, so hopefully Ty was at home. Scott dialed USA Connect, the service that allows travelers to get to an AT&T operator rather than fight the local phone system.
"Make it good." Tyrone answered his home phone.
"Hey, guy. You rang?" Scott said cheerily.
"Shit, it's about time. Where the hell have you been?" Tyrone whispered as loud as he could. It was obvious he didn't want anyone on his end hearing. "You can thank your secretary for telling me where you were staying." Tyrone spoke quickly.
"I'll give her a raise," lied Scott. He didn't have a secretary. The paper used a pool for all the reporters. "What's the panic?"
"Then you don't know." Tyrone caught himself. "Of course you didn't hear, how could you?"
"How could I hear what?"
"The shit has done hit the fan," Tyrone said drawling his words. "Two more EMP-T bombs. The Atlanta regional IRS office and a payroll service in New Jersey. A quarter million folks aren't getting paid tomorrow. And I'll tell you, these folks is mighty pissed off."
"Christ," Scott said, mentally chastising himself for not having been where the action was.
What lousy timing.
"So dig this. Did you know that the Senate was having open subcommittee hearings on Privacy and Technology Protection?"
"No."
"Neither do a lot of people. It's been a completely underplayed and underpromoted effort. Until yesterday that is. Now the eyes of millions are watching. Starting tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Scott yelled across the Atlantic. "That's the eighth. Congress doesn't usually convene until late January . . ."
"Used to," Ty said. "The Constitution says that Congress shall meet on January third, after the holidays. Since the Gulf War Congress has returned in the first week. 'Bout time they did something for their paychecks."
"Damn," Scott thought out loud.
"I knew that would excite you," Tyrone said sarcastically. "And there's more. Congressman Rickfield, you know who he is?" asked Tyrone.
"Yeah, sure. Long timer on the Hill. Got as many enemies as he does friends. Wields an immense amount of power," Scott re- called.
"Right, exactly. And that little weasel is the chair."
"I guess you're not on his Christmas list," Scott observed.
"I really doubt it," Tyrone said. "But that's off the record. He's been a Southern racist from day one, a real Hoover man. During the riots, in the early '60's, he was not exactly a propo- nent of civil rights. In fact that slime ball made Wallace look like Martin Luther King." Tyrone sounded bitter and derisive in his description of Rickfield. "He has no concept what civil rights are. He makes it a black white issue instead of one of constitutional law. Stupid bigots are the worst kind." The derision in Ty's voice was unmistakable.
"Sounds like you're a big fan."
"I'll be a fan when he hangs high. Besides my personal and racial beliefs about Rickfield, he really is a low life. He, and a few of his cronies are one on the biggest threats to personal freedom the country faces. He thinks that the Bill of Rights should be edited from time to time and now's the time. He scares me. Especially since there's more like him."
It was eminently clear that Tyrone Duncan had no place in this life for Merrill Rickfield.
"I know enough about him to dislike him, but on a crowded subway he'd just be another ugly face. Excuse my ignorance . . ." Then it hit him. Rickfield. His name had been in those papers he had received so long ago. What had he done, or what was he accused of doing? Damn, damn, what is it? There were so many. Yes, it was Rickfield, but what was the tie-in?
"I think you should be there, at the hearings," Tyrone suggested.
"Tomorrow? Are you out of your mind? No way," Scott loudly protested. "I'm 3000 miles and 8 hours away and it's the middle of the night here," Scott bitched and moaned. "Besides, I only have to work one more day and then I get the weekend to myself . . . aw, shit."
Tyrone ignored Scott's infantile objections. He attributed them to jet lag and an understandable urge to stay in Sin City for a couple more days. "Hollister and Adams will be there, and a whole bunch of white shirts in black hats, and Troubleaux . . ."
"Troubleaux did you say?"
"Yeah, that's what it says here . . ."
"If he's there, then it becomes my concern, too."
"Good, glad you thought of it," joked Tyrone. "If you catch an early flight, you could be in D.C. by noon." He was right, thought Scott. The time difference works in your favor in that direction.
"You know," said Scott, "with what I've found out here, today alone, maybe. "Jeeeeeesus," Scott said cringing in indecision.
"Hey! Get your ass back here, boy. Pronto." Tyrone's friendly authority was persuasive. "You know you don't have any choice." The guilt trip.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Scott called his office and asked for Doug. He got the voice mail instead, and debated about calling him at home. Nah, He thought, I'll just leave a message. This way I'll just get yelled at once.
"Hi, Doug? Scott here. Change in plans. Heard about EMP-T. I'm headed to Washington tomorrow. The story here is better than I thought and dovetails right into why I'm coming back early. I expect to be in D.C. until next Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. I'll call when I have a place. Oh, yeah, I learned a limerick here you might like. The Spook says the kids around here say it all the time. 'Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one da
y and a big black dog fucked it.' That's Amsterdam. Bye."
Chapter 20 Friday, January 8
Washington, D.C.
The New Senate Office Building is a moderately impressive struc- ture on the edge of one of the worst sections of Washington. Visitors find it a perpetual paradox that the power seat of the Western World is located within a virtual shooting gallery of drugs and weapons. Scott arrived at the NSOB near the capitol, just before lunchtime. His press identification got him instant access to the hearing room and into the privileged locations where the media congregated. The hearings were in progress and as solemn as he remembered other hearings broadcast on late night C-SPAN.
He caught the last words of wisdom from a government employee who worked for NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technol- ogy. The agency was formerly known as NBS, National Bureau of Standards, and no one could adequately explain the change.
The NIST employee droned on about how seriously the government, and more specifically, his agency cared about privacy and infor- mation security, and that ". . .the government was doing all it could to provide the requisite amount of security commensurate with the perceived risk of disclosure and sensitivity of the information in question." Scott ran into a couple of fellow reporters who told him he was lucky to show up late. All morn- ing, the government paraded witnesses to read prepared statements about how they were protecting the interests of the Government.
It was an intensive lobbying effort, they told Scott, to shore up whatever attacks might be made on the government's inefficient bungling in distinction to its efficient bungling. To a man, the witnesses assured the Senate committee that they were committed to guaranteeing privacy of information and unconvincingly assur- ing them that only appropriate authorized people have access to sensitive and classified data.
Seven sequential propagandized statements went unchallenged by the three senior committee members throughout the morning, and Senator Rickfield went out of his way to thank the speakers for their time, adding that he was personally convinced the Govern- ment was indeed doing more than necessary to obviate such con- cerns.
The underadvertised Senate Select Sub Committee on Privacy and Technology Protection convened in Hearing Room 3 on the second floor of the NSOB. About 400 could be accommodated in the huge light wood paneled room on both the main floor and in the balcony that wrapped around half of the room. The starkness of the room was emphasized by the glare of arc and fluorescent lighting.
Scott found an empty seat on a wooden bench directly behind the tables from which the witnesses would speak to the raised wooden dais. He noticed that the attendance was extraordinarily low; by both the public and the press. Probably due to the total lack of exposure.
As the session broke for lunch, Scott asked why the TV cameras? He thought this hearing was a deep dark secret. A couple of fellow journalists agreed, and the only reason they had found out about the Rickfield hearings was because the CNN producer called them asking if they knew anything about them. Apparently, Scott was told, CNN received an anonymous call, urging them to be part of a blockbuster announcement. When CNN called Rickfield's office, his staffers told CNN that there was no big deal, and that they shouldn't waste their time. In the news business, that kind of statement from a Congressional power broker is a sure sign that it is worth being there. Just in case. So CNN assigned a novice producer and a small crew to the first day of the hear- ings. As promised, the morning session was an exercise in termi- nal boredom.
The afternoon session was to begin at 1:30, but Senator Rickfield was nowhere to be found, so the Assistant Chairperson of the committee, Junior Senator Nancy Deere assumed control. She was a 44 year old grandmother of two from New England who had never considered entering politics. Nancy Deere was the consummate wife, supporter and stalwart of her husband Morgan Deere, an up and coming national politician who had the unique mixture of honesty, appeal and potential. She had spent full time on the campaign trail with Morgan as he attempted to make the transition from state politics to Washington. Morgan Deere was heavily favored to win after the three term incumbent was named a co- conspirator in the rigging of a Defense contract. Despite the pending indictments, the race continued with constant pleadings by the incumbent that the trumped up charges would shortly be dismissed. In the first week after the Grand Jury was convened, the voter polls indicated that Deere led with a 70% support factor.
Then came the accident. On his way home from a fund raising dinner, Morgan Deere's limousine was run off an icy winter road by a drunk driver. Deere's resulting injuries made it impossible for him to continue the campaign or even be sure that he would ever be able to regain enough strength to withstand the brutality of Washington politics.
Within days of the accident, Deere's campaign manager announced that Nancy Deere would replace her husband. Due to Morgan's local popularity, and the fact that the state was so small that everyone knew everyone else's business, and that the incumbent was going to jail, and that the elections were less than two weeks away, there was barely a spike in the projections. No one seemed to care that Nancy Deere had no experience in politics; they just liked her.
What remained of the campaign was run on her part with impeccable style. Unlike her opponent who spent vast sums to besmirch her on television, Nancy's campaign was largely waged on news and national talk shows. Her husband was popular, as was she, and the general interest in her as a woman outweighed the interest in her politics. The state's constituency overwhelmingly endorsed her with their votes and Senator Nancy Deere, one of the few woman ever to reach that level as an elected official, was on her way to Washington.
Nancy Deere found that many of the professional politicians preferred to ignore her; they were convinced she was bound to be a one termer once the GOP got someone to run against her. Others found her to be a genuine pain in the butt. Not due to her naivete, far from that, she adeptly acclimated to the culture and the system. Rather, she was a woman and she broke the rules. She said what she felt; she echoed the sentiments of her constituency which were largely unpopular politically. Nancy Deere didn't care what official Washington thought; her state was behind her with an almost unanimous approval and it was her sworn duty to represent them honestly and without compromise. She had nothing to lose by being herself. After more than a year in Washington, she learned how the massive Washington machinery functioned and why it crawled with a hurry up and wait engine.
In Rickfield's absence, at 1:40 P.M., Senator Nancy Deere called the session to order. Her administrative demeanor gave no one pause to question her authority. Even the other sole Congres- sional representative on the sub-committee fell into step. While Senator Stanley Paglusi technically had seniority, he sat on the committee at Rickfield's request and held no specific interest in the subject matter they were investigating. He accepted the seat to mollify Rickfield and to add to his own political resume.
"Come to order, please," she announced over the ample sound system. The voluminous hearing room reacted promptly to the authoritative command that issued forth from the petite auburn haired Nancy Deere who would have been just as comfortable auc- tioning donated goods at her church. She noticed that unlike the morning session, the afternoon session was packed. The press pool was nearly full and several people were forced to stand. What had changed, she asked herself.
After the procedural formalities were completed, she again thanked those who had spoken to the committee in the morning, and then promised an equally informative afternoon. Nancy, as she liked to be called on all but the most formal of occasions intro- duced the committee's first afternoon witness.
"Our next speaker is Ted Hammacher, a recognized expert on the subject of computer and information security. During 17 years with the Government, Mr. Hammacher worked with the Defense Inves- tigatory Agency and the National Security Agency as a DoD liai- son. He is currently a security consultant to industry and the government and is the author of hundreds of articles on the subject." As was required, Na
ncy Deere outlined Hammacher's qualifications as an expert, and then invited him to give his opening statement.
The television in Rickfield's office was tuned to C-SPAN which was broadcasting the hearings as he spoke into the phone.
"Only a couple more and then I'm off to spend my days in the company of luscious maidens on the island of my choice," he bragged into the phone. The Senator listened intently to the response. "Yes, I am aware of that, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm calling it quits. I cannot, I will not, continue this charade." He listened quietly for several minutes before interjecting.
"Listen, General, we've both made enough money to keep us in style for the rest of our lives, and I will not jeopardize that for anything. Got it?" Again he listened. "I don't know about you, but I do not relish the idea of doing ten to twenty regard- less of how much of a country club the prison is. It is still a prison." He listened further.
"That's it, I've had it! Don't make me use that file to impli- cate you, the guys over at State and our Import . . .hey!" Rick- field turned to Ken Boyers. "Who started the afternoon session?" He pointed at the TV.
"It looks like Senator Deere," Ken said.
"Deere? Where does that goddamned bitch get off . . ?" He remem- bered the phone. "General? I have to go, I've got a suffragette usurping a little power, and I have to put her back in her place. You understand. But, on that other matter, I'm out. Done. Fini- to. Do what you want, but keep me the fuck out of it." Rick- field hung up abruptly and stared at the broadcast. "Some house- broken homemaker is not going to make me look bad. Goddamn it, Ken," Rickfield said as he stood up quickly. "Let's get back out there."
"Thank you, Senator Deere, and committee members. I am honored to have a chance to speak to you here today. As a preface to my remarks, I think that a brief history of security and privacy from a government perspective may be in order. One of the reasons we are here today is due to a succession of events that since the introduction of the computer have shaped an ad hoc anarchism, a laissez-faire attitude toward privacy and security. Rather than a comprehensive national policy, despite the valiant efforts of a few able Congressmen, the United States of America has allowed itself to be lulled into technical complacency and indifference. Therefore, I will, if the committee agrees, provide a brief chronological record."
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