Terminal Compromise - Winn Schwartau (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📗

a strong message to the American people:

We don’t trust you. The FYI, Freeflow of Your Information says

that passage of the Computer License Law will give the federal

government the unrestricted ability and right to invade our

privacy. Dr. Sean Kirschner, the chief ACLU counsel, is consid-

ering a lawsuit against the United States if the bill passes.

Kirschner maintains that ” . . .if the License Law goes into

effect, the streets will be full of Computers Cops handing out

tickets if your computer doesn’t have a license. The enforcement

clauses of the bill essentially give the police the right to

listen to your computer. That is a simple invasion of privacy,

and we will not permit a precedent to be set. We lost too much

freedom under Reagan.”

Proponents of the bill insist that the low fee, perhaps only $10

per year per computer, is intended to finance efforts at keeping

security technology apace with computer technology. “We have

learned our lesson the hard way, and we now need to address the

problem head on before it bites us again.” They cite the example

of England, where televisions have been licensed for years, with

the fees dedicated to supporting the arts and maintaining broad-

casting facilities.

“Does not apply,” says Dr. Kirschner. “With a television, there

isn’t an issue of privacy. A computer is like an electronic

diary, and that privacy must be respected at all costs.”

“And,” he adds, “that’s England, not the U.S.. They don’t have

freedom of the press, either.”

Kirschner vowed a highly visible fight if Congress ” . . .dares

to pass that vulgar law . . .”

* Monday, February 15 Scarsdale, New York

“ECCO reports are coming in.”

“At this hour?” Scott said sleepily.

“You want or no?” Tyrone Duncan answered with irritation.

“Yeah, yeah, I want,” Scott grumbled. “What time is it?”

“Four A.M. Why?”

“I won’t make the morning . . .”

“I’m giving you six hours lead. Quit bitching.”

“O.K., O.K., what is it?”

“Don’t sound so grateful.”

“Where the hell are you?” Scott asked sounding slightly more

awake.

“At the office.”

“At four?”

“You’re pushing your luck . . .”

“I’m ready.”

“It looks like your NEMO friends were right. There are bunches

of viruses. You can use this. ECCO received reports of a quar-

ter million computers going haywire yesterday. There’s gotta be

ten times that number that haven’t been reported.”

“Whose?”

“Everybody for Christ’s sake. American Gen, Compton Industries,

First Life, Banks, and, this is almost funny, the entire town of

Fallsworth, Idaho.”

“Excuse me?”

* Thursday, February 25 TOWN DISAPPEARS By Scott Mason

The town of Fallsworth, Idaho is facing a unique problem. It is

out of business.

Fallsworth, Idaho, population 433, has a computer population of

611.

But no one in the entire incorporation of Fallsworth has ever

bought or paid for a single piece of software or hardware.

Three years ago, the town counsel approved a plan to make this

small potato farming community the most computerized township in

the United States, and it seems that they succeeded. Apparently

the city hall of Fallsworth was contacted by representatives of

Apple Computer. Would they like to be part of an experiment?

Apple Computer provided every home and business in the Fallsworth

area with a computer and the necessary equipment to tie all of

the computers together into one town-wide network. The city was

a pilot program for the Electronic City of the future. The

residents of Fallsworth were trained to use the computers and

Apple and associated companies provided the township beta copies

of software to try out, play with and comment on.

Fallsworth, Idaho was truly the networked city.

Lily Williams and members of the other 172 households in Falls-

worth typed out their grocery lists on their computer, matching

them to known inventories and pricing from Malcolm Druckers’

General Store. When the orders arrived at the Drucker computer,

the goods just had to be loaded in the pick up truck. Druckers’

business increased 124% after the network was installed.

Doctors Stephenson, Viola and Freemont, the three town doctors

modem’ed prescriptions to Baker Pharmacy so the pills were ready

by the time their patients arrived.

Mack’s Messengers had cellular modems and portable computers

installed in their delivery trucks. They were so efficient, they

expanded their business into nearby Darbywell, Idaho, population,

5,010.

Today, Fallsworth, Idaho doesn’t use its computers. They lie

dormant. A town without life. They forgot how to live and work

and play and function without their computers. Who are the

slaves?

The viruses of Lotus, of dGraph. The viruses of Freedom struck,

and no one in the entire town had registration cards. The soft-

ware crisis has left Fallsworth and a hundred other small test

sites for big software firms out in the digital void.

Apple Computer promised to look into the matter but said that

customers who have paid for their products come first . . .

* Friday, March 5 FBI Building, Federal Square

Tyrone Duncan was as busy as he had ever been, attempting to

coordinate the FBI’s efforts in tracking down any of the increas-

ing number of computer criminals. And there were a lot of them at

the moment. The first Copy-Cat computer assaults were coming to

light, making it all that much more difficult to isolate the

Foster Plan activities from those other non-coordinated inci-

dents.

Tyrone, as did his counterparts in regional FBI offices nation-

wide, created teams of agents who concentrated on specific areas

of Homosoto’s assault as described by the Spook. Some special-

ized in tracing missing electronic funds, some in working with

the phone company through the NSA. More than any other goal, the

FBI wanted desperately to locate as many of the invisible agents

that the Spook, Miles Foster, had told Homosoto to use. Tyrone

doubted they would catch anywhere near the 3000 or more he was

told that were out there, but at this point any success was

welcome.

FBI agents toiled and interviewed and researched sixteen and

eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. There hadn’t been such

a blanket approval of overtime since the Kennedy assassination.

The FBI followed up the leads generated by the computers at the

NSA. Who and where were the likely associates of Homosoto and

Foster?

His phone rang – the private line that bypasses his secretary-

startling Tyrone from the deep thought in which he was immersed.

On a Saturday. As the voice on the other end of the phone ut-

tered its first sound, Tyrone knew that it was Bob Burnson.

Apparently he was in his office today as well.

“Afternoon, Bob,” Tyrone said vacantly.

“Gotcha at a bad time?” Burnson asked.

“No, no. Just going over something that may prove interesting.”

“Go ahead, make my day,” joked Burnson.

“I know you don’t want to know . . .”

“Then don’t tell me . . .”

“But Mason’s hackers are coming through for us.”

“Jeez, Ty,” whined Bob. “Do you have to . . .”

“Do you know anybody else that is capable of moving freely in

those circles? It’s not exactly our specialty,” reprimanded

Tyrone.

“In theory it’s great,” Bob reluctantly agreed, “but there are so

damn many exposures. They can mislead us, they’re not profes-

sionals, and worst of all, we don’t even know who they are, to

perform a background check.”

“Bob, you go over to the other side . . . playing desk man on

me?”

“Ty, I told you a while ago, I could only hang so far out before

the branches started shaking.”

“Then you don’t know anything.” Tyrone said in negotiation.

Keep Bob officially uninformed and unofficially informed. “You

don’t know that NEMO has helped to identify four of the black-

mailers and a handful of the Freedom Freaks. You don’t know that

we have gotten more reliable information from Mason’s kids than

from ECCO, CERT, NIST and NSA combined. They’re up in the clouds

with theory and conjecture and what-iffing themselves silly.

NEMO is in the streets. A remote control informer if you like.”

“What else don’t I know?”

“You don’t know that NEMO has been giving us security holes in

some of our systems. You don’t know that Mason’s and other

hackers have been working on the Freedom viruses.”

“Some systems? Why not all?”

“They still want to keep a few trapdoors for themselves.”

“See what I mean!” exclaimed Burnson. “They can’t be trusted.”

“They are not on our payroll. Besides, it’s them or no one,”

Tyrone calmly said. “They really would like to keep the real-bad

guys off of the playing field, as they put it.”

“And keep the spoils for their own use.”

“It’s a trade-off I thought was worthwhile.”

“I don’t happen to agree, and neither does the Director’s

office.”

“I thought you didn’t know . . .”

“Word gets around. We have to cap this one, Ty. It’s too hot.