? how? When I was a kid in England, we grew up believ- ing that when the nuclear war broke out we'd have just four minutes' warning. We used to talk about it. What would you do with your four minutes? I'd have got blind drunk and—"
"We have centuries," said Mavens. "Not just minutes. We have a duty to keep society functioning as best we
<1 can, as long as possible. What else can we do? And
-sir meanwhile—as has been true for decades—this country ? has more enemies than any nation in the world. National 'l^ security may have a higher priority over issues of indi- 's- vidual rights."
"Tell us what you're proposing," Kate said. Mavens took a deep breath. *T want to try to set up a deal. Mr. Patterson, this is your technology. You're en- titled to profit from it. I'd propose that you'd keep the patents and industry monopoly. But you'd license your technology to the government, to be used in the public interest, under suitably drafted legislation."
Hiram snapped, "You have no authority to offer such a deal."
Mavens shrugged. "Of course not. But this is obvi- ously a sensible compromise, a win-win for all con- cerned—including the people of this country. I think I could sell it to my immediate superior, and then ..."
Kate smiled. "You really have risked everything for this, haven't you? It's that important?"
"Yes, ma'am, I believe it is."
Hiram shook his head, wondering. "You bloody kids and your sentimental idealism."
Mavens was watching him. "So what do you say, Mr. Patterson? You want to help me sell this? Or will you wait for the raid tomorrow?"
Kate said, "They'll be grateful, Hiram. In public, any- how. Maybe Marine One will come collect you from the helipad on your lawn so the Prez can pin a medal on your chest. This is a step closer to the center of power."
"For me and my sons," Hiram said.
"Yes."
"And I'd maintain my commercial monopoly?"
"Yes, sir."
Abruptly Hiram grinned. His mood immediately switched as he accepted this defeat and started to revise his plans. "Let's do it, Special Agent." He reached across the table and shook Mavens' hand-
So the secrecy was over; the power the WormCam had granted Hiram would be counterbalanced. Kate felt an immense relief.
But then Hiram turned to Kate, and glared. "This was your foul-up, Manzoni. Your betrayal. I won't forget it."
And Kate—startled, disquieted—knew he meant it.
THE GUARDIANS
Extracted from National Intelligence Daily, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, recipients Top Secret Clearance and Higher, 12 December 2036:
... WormCam technology has proven able to pen- etrate environments where it is impractical or im- possible to send human observers, or even robotic roving cameras. For example, WormCam view- points have given scientists a completely safe way to inspect the interior of waste repositories in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where for decades plutonium has been spilling into the soil, air and river. WormCams (operated under strict federal- operative supervision) are also being used to inspect deep nuclear waste sites off the coast of Scotland, and to study the cores of the entombed Chemobyl- era reactors which, though long decommissioned, still litter the lands of the old Soviet Union— inspections which have turned up some alarming results (Appendices F-H)....
... Scientists are seeking approval to use a WormCam to delve without intrusion into a new giant freshwater lake found frozen deep in the Ant- arctic ice. Ancient, fragile biota have been en- tombed in such lakes for millions of years. In complete darkness, in water kept liquid by the pres- sure of hundreds of meters of ice, the trapped species follow their own evolutionary paths, com- pletely distinct from those of surface forms. The scientific arguments appear strong; perhaps this in- vestigation will prove to be truly non-intrusive, and so spare the ancient, fragile life-forms from im- mediate destruction even as their habitat is breached—as notoriously happened early in the century, when overzealous scientists persuaded in- ternational commissions to open up Lake Vostok, the first such frozen world to be discovered. A com- mission reporting to the President's Science Advi- sor is considering whether the matter can be progressed, with results being made available for proper scientific peer review, without making the WonnCam's existence known outside the present restricted circles....
... The recent rescue of Australian King Harry and his family from the wreck of their yacht during the Gulf of Carpentaria storms has demonstrated the WonnCam's promise to transform the efficacy of emergency services. Search-and-rescue operations at sea, for instance, should no longer require fleets of helicopters sweeping large areas of gray, stormy water at great risk to the crews involved; SAR op- eratives working in the safety of land-based moni- toring centers will be able to pinpoint accident victims in a few minutes, and immediately focus rescue effort—and unavoidable risk—where it is required....
... This fundamentalist Christian sect intended to "commemorate" the two thousandth anniversary (as they had calculated it) of Christ's assault on the moneylenders in the Temple by setting off an elec- tromagnetic pulse nuclear warhead in the heart of every major financial district on the planet, includ- ing New York, London, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Agency analysts concur with the headline writers that, if successful, the attack would have been an electronic Pearl Harbor. The ensuing financial chaos—with bank transfer networks, stock markets, bond markets, trading systems, credit networks, data communication lines all badly disrupted or de- stroyed—could, according to analysts, have caused a sufficiently powerful shock to the interdependent global financial systems to trigger a worldwide re- cession. Largely thanks to the use of WonnCam intelligence, that disaster has been avoided. With this one success alone, the deployment of the WormCam in the public interest has saved esti- mated trillions of dollars and spared untold human misery in poverty, even starvation. .. .
Extracted from "Wormint: The Patterson WormCam as a Tool for Precision Personal Intelligence and Other Applications." by Michael Mavens, FBI; published in Proceedings of Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (Intelligence Community), Tyson's Comer, Virginia, t-
WormCams were first introduced on a trial basis to federal agencies under the umbrella of an inter- agency steering and evaluation group on which I served. The steering group contained representa- tives from the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI, CIA, the Federal Communications Commis- sion, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Institutes of Health. The power of the technology has quickly become apparent, however, and within six months, before completion of the formal pilot, WormCam capabilities are being rolled out to all the major pillars of our intelligence enterprise, that is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Na- tional Reconnaissance Office.
What does the WormCam mean for us?
The WormCam—a surveillance technology which can't be tapped or jammed—cuts through the surveillance and encryption arms race we have been waging since, conservatively, the 1940s. Essentially the WormCam bridges directly across space to its subject, and is capable of providing images of un- questionable authenticity—images, for example, which could be reproduced in the courtroom. By comparison no photographic image, however rele- vant, has been admissible as evidence in a U.S. court of law since 2010, such has been the ease of doctoring such images.
Domestically WormCams have been used for customs and immigration, food and drug testing and inspection, verification of applications to federal positions, and a variety of other purposes. As re- gards criminal, justice, though the drafting of a legal framework regarding privacy rights to cover the WormCam's use in criminal investigations remains pending, FBI and police teams have already been able to score a number of spectacular successes— for example, uncovering the plans of lone anarchist Subiru, F. (incidentally claiming to be a second- generation clone of twentieth-century musician Mi- chael Jackson) to blow up the Washington
Monument.
Let me just remark that in 2035 only an estimated one-third of all felonies was reported—and of that third, only a fifth was cleared by arrest and filing of charges. A fifth of a third; mat's around seven percent. The balance of me deterrence equation was tipped toward ineffectiveness. Now, though full fig- ures from the trial period arc not yet in, we can already say that apprehension rates will be un- proved by orders of magnitude. Ladies and gentle- men, it may be that we arc approaching an age when, for the first time in human history, it can truly be said that crime does not pay....
Now regarding external affairs: in 2035 the gath- ering and analysis of foreign intelligence cost $75 billion. But much of this intelligence was of little value; our collection systems were electronic suc- tion systems, picking up much chaff along with the wheat. And in an age in which the threats we face— in general emanating from rogue states or terrorist cells—are precision-targeted, it has long been ap- parent that our intelligence needs to be precision- targeted also. Merely mapping an enemy's military capability, for instance, tells us nothing of his stra- tegic thinking, and still less of his intentions.
But many of our opponents are as sophisticated in technology as we are, and it has proven difficult or impossible to penetrate with conventional elec- tronic means to the heart of their operations. The solution to this has been a renewed reliance on hu- mint—human intelligence, the use of human spies. But these, of course, are difficult to place, notori- ously unreliable, and highly vulnerable.
But now we have the WormCam.
A WormCam essentially enables us to locate a remote camera (in technical terms a "viewpoint") anywhere, without the need for physical interven- tion. WormCam intelligence—"wonnint," as the in- siders are already calling it—is proving so valuable that WormCam posts have been set up to monitor most of the world's political leaders, friendly and otherwise, the leaders of sundry religious and fa- natic groups, many of the world's larger corpora- tions, and so on.
WormCam technology is intimate and personal. We can watch an opponent in the most private of acts, if necessary. The potential for exposure of il- licit activities, even blackmail if we choose, is ob- vious. But more important is the picture we are now able to build up of an enemy's intentions. The
WormCam gives us information on an opponent's contacts—for instance weapons suppliers—and we can assess knowledge factors like his religious views, culture, level of education and training, his sources of information, the media outlets he uses.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the past the geography of the physical battlefield was our crucial intelli- gence target. With the WormCam, the geography of our enemy's mind is opened up....
Before I move on to some specific early suc- cesses of Ae WormCam teams, I want to touch on the future.
The present technology offers us a WormCam which is capable of high-resolution visual-spectrum imaging. Our scientists are working with the OurWorld people to upgrade this technology to al- low the capture of nonvisual-spectrum data—par- ticularly infrared, for nightdme working—and sound, by making the WormCam viewpoint sensi- tive to physical by-products of sound waves, so reducing our present reliance on lipreading. Fur- . thermore, we aim to make the remote viewpoints fully mobile, so we cto shadow a target in motion.
WormCam viewpoints arc in principle detecta- ble. and federal/OurWorld tiger teams are investi- gating hypothetical "anticams," ways in which an enemy might detect and perhaps blind a WormCam. This might conceivably be done, for instance, by injecting high-energy particles into a viewpoint, causing the wormhole to implode. But we don't be- lieve that this will be a serious obstacle- Remember, a WormCam placement is not a one-off event, lost on detection. Rather, we can place as many Worm- Cam viewpoints as we like in a given location, whether they are detected or not.
And besides, at present U.S. agencies have a monopoly on mis technology- Our opponents know we have achieved a remarkable upgrade in our intelligence-gathering capabilities, but they don't even know how we are doing it. Far from devel- oping capabilities to obstruct a WormCam, they don't yet know what they are looking for.
But, of course, our edge in WormCam technol- ogy cannot last forever, nor can the technology re- main covert. We must begin to plan for a transformed future in which the WormCam is pub- lic knowledge, and our own centers of power and command are as open to our opponents as theirs have become to us....
From OurWorld International News Hour, 28 January, 2037:
Kate Manzoni (to camera): m an eerie rerun of the Watergate scandal of sixty years ago, White House staff reporting to President Maria Juarez have been publicly accused of bur- gling the campaign headquarters of the Republican Party, thought to be Juarez's main opponents at the upcoming Presidential election of'2040.
The Republicans have claimed that revelations made by Juarez's people—concerning possible rule-breaking campaign-funding links between the GOP and various high-profile businesspeople— could only be based on information gathered by illegal means, such as a wiretap or a burglary.
The White House in response have challenged the Republicans to produce hard evidence of such an intrusion. Which the GOP has so far failed to do....
THE BRAIN STUD
As Kate watched, John Collins flew into Moscow Air- port.
At the airport Collins met a younger man. The Search Engine quickly pattern-recognized him as Andrei Popov. Popov, a Russian national, had links to armed insur- gency groups operating in all five countries bordering the Aral Sea—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Kate was getting closer.
With a growing sense of exhilaration, she flew the WormCam viewpoint alongside Collins and Popov as they traveled across Moscow—by bus, by subway, in cars and by foot, even through a snowstorm. She glimpsed the Kremlin and the old, ugly KGB building, as if this was some virtual tourist adventure.
But the poverty of the place was striking. Despite his choice of profession, Collins was an archetypal Ameri- can abroad; Kate saw his mounting frustration with mo- bile phone dropouts, his amazement at seeing subway ticket vendors using abacuses to compute change, his disgust at the filth he encountered in public toilets, his disbelieving impatience when he tried to call up the Search Engine and received no reply.
She felt a profound relief when Collins reached a small suburban Moscow airport and boarded a light plane, and she was able to initiate the system she thought of as the autopilot.
Here in the gloom of the Wormworks, sitting before a SoftScreen, she was flying the viewpoint using a joy- stick and some intelligent supporting software. Ingenious though the system was, ghosting a person's movements through a foreign city was intense, unforgiving work; a single slip of concentration could unravel hours of labor.
But WormCam tracking technology had advanced to the point where she could hook the remote viewpoint to various electronic signatures—for instance of Collins' aircraft. So now her WormCam viewpoint hovered, all but invisible, in the airplane cabin—still at Colhns' shoulder—as the plane lofted into me deepening Russian twilight, tracking her quarry without her intervention.
It ought to get easier. The Wormworks teens were working on ways of having a viewpoint track an indi- vidual person without the need for human guidance.... All that for the future.
She pushed back her chair, stood up and stretched. She was more tired than she'd realized; she couldn't remember when she'd last taken a break-
Absently she scanned the continuing WormCam im- ages. Night was falling over central Asia, and through the plane's small windows she could see how the land- scape was scarred, swaths of it brown wasteland, still uninhabitable four decades after the fall of the Soviet Union with its ugly contempt for the landscape and its people—
There was a hand on her shoulder, strong thumbs mas- saging a knot of muscles there. She was startled, but the touch was familiar, and she couldn't help but relax into it
Bobby kissed the crown of her head. "I knew I'd find you here. Do yo
u know what time it is?"
She glanced at a clock on the SoftScreen. "Late af- ternoon?"
He laughed. "Yes, Moscow time. But this is Seattle, Washington, western hemisphere, and on this side of the planet it's just after 10 A.M. You worked through the night. Again. I have the feeling you're avoiding me."
She said testily, "Bobby, you don't understand. I'm tracking this guy. It's a twenty-four-hour job. Collins is a CIA operative who seems to be opening up lines of communication between our government and various shadowy insurrectionists in the Aral Sea area. There's something going on out there the Administration doesn't want to tell us about."
"But," Bobby said with mock solemnity, "the WormCam sees all. -. ." He was wearing casual ski- country gear, bright, colorful, thermal-adaptive, very ex- pensive; in the warmth of this corner of the Wormworks, she could see how its artificial pores had opened up, revealing a faint brown sheen of tanned flesh. He leaned toward the SoftScreen, studied the image and her scrib- bled notes. "How long will Collins' flight take?"
"Hard to say. Hours."
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