1 00:00:01,550 --> 00:00:08,550 Doctorow: This story is from Cory Doctorow's new collection, "With a Little Help". Visit craphound.com/walh 2 00:00:08,920 --> 00:00:14,200 to buy the whole audio book on CD, a paperback copy in one of 4 covers, or a super-limited 3 00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:17,180 hard cover. This story, and the whole text of "With a Little Help", 4 00:00:17,180 --> 00:00:21,529 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike, Non Commercial license. 5 00:00:21,529 --> 00:00:25,749 Copy it, share it, remix it. As Woody Guthrie said: 6 00:00:25,749 --> 00:00:32,529 "This song is copyrighted in the US under a seal of copyright number 154085 for 7 00:00:32,529 --> 00:00:36,820 a period of 28 years, and anyone caught singing it without our permission will be a mighty 8 00:00:36,820 --> 00:00:39,670 good friend of ourn, because we don't give a dern. Publish it, write it , sing it, 9 00:00:40,162 --> 00:00:44,889 swing to it, yodel it. We wrote it: that's all we wanted to do." 10 00:00:56,489 --> 00:01:03,978 Wheaton: Scroogled by Cory Doctorow. Originally published in Radar Magazine, September, 2007. 11 00:01:03,978 --> 00:01:05,525 Read by Will Wheaton. 12 00:01:07,663 --> 00:01:13,510 "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him." 13 00:01:14,695 --> 00:01:17,080 Cardinal Richelieu 14 00:01:17,080 --> 00:01:21,830 Greg landed at SFO at 8PM, but by the time he made it to the front of the customs line 15 00:01:21,830 --> 00:01:27,450 it was after midnight. He had it good -- he'd been in first class, first off the plane, 16 00:01:27,450 --> 00:01:32,860 brown as a nut and loose-limbed after a month on the beach at Cabo, SCUBA diving three days 17 00:01:32,860 --> 00:01:38,140 a week, bumming around and flirting with French college girls the rest of the time. When he'd 18 00:01:38,140 --> 00:01:43,380 left San Francisco a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, pot-bellied wreck -- 19 00:01:43,380 --> 00:01:48,860 now he was a bronze god, drawing appreciative looks from the stews at the front of the plane. 20 00:01:48,860 --> 00:01:55,180 In the four hours he spent in the customs line, he fell from god back to man. His warm 21 00:01:55,180 --> 00:02:00,060 buzz wore off, the sweat ran down the crack of his ass, and his shoulders and neck grew 22 00:02:00,060 --> 00:02:05,970 so tense that his upper back felt like a tennis racket. The batteries on his iPod died after 23 00:02:05,970 --> 00:02:10,450 the third hour, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-aged couple 24 00:02:10,450 --> 00:02:11,170 ahead of him. 25 00:02:11,170 --> 00:02:14,880 "They've starting googling us at the border," she said. "I told you they'd do it." 26 00:02:14,880 --> 00:02:21,140 "I thought that didn't start until next month?" The man had brought a huge sombrero on board, 27 00:02:21,140 --> 00:02:27,290 carefully stowing it in its own overhead locker, and now he was stuck alternately wearing it 28 00:02:27,290 --> 00:02:29,230 and holding it. 29 00:02:29,230 --> 00:02:34,770 Googling at the border. Christ. Greg vested out from Google six months before, cashing 30 00:02:34,770 --> 00:02:39,880 in his options and "taking some me time," which turned out to be harder than he expected. 31 00:02:39,880 --> 00:02:44,340 Five months later, what he'd mostly done is fix his friends' PCs and websites, and watch 32 00:02:44,340 --> 00:02:50,370 daytime TV, and gain ten pounds, which he blamed on being at home, instead of in the 33 00:02:50,370 --> 00:02:53,930 Googleplex, with its excellent 24-hour gym. 34 00:02:53,930 --> 00:02:58,190 The writing had been on the wall. Google had a whole pod of lawyers in charge of dealing 35 00:02:58,190 --> 00:03:02,230 with the world's governments, and scumbag lobbyists on the Hill to try to keep the law 36 00:03:02,230 --> 00:03:07,880 from turning them into the world's best snitch. It was a losing battle. The US Government 37 00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:13,610 had spent $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border, and 38 00:03:13,610 --> 00:03:19,940 hadn't caught a single terrorist. Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search 39 00:03:19,940 --> 00:03:21,110 Right. 40 00:03:21,110 --> 00:03:25,890 The DHS officers had bags under their eyes as they squinted at their screens, prodding 41 00:03:25,890 --> 00:03:31,110 mistrustfully at their keyboards with sausage fingers. No wonder it was taking four hours 42 00:03:31,110 --> 00:03:33,490 to get out of the goddamned airport. 43 00:03:33,490 --> 00:03:38,910 "Evening," he said, as he handed the man his sweaty passport. The man grunted and swiped 44 00:03:38,910 --> 00:03:45,620 it, then stared at his screen, clicking. A lot. He had a little bit of dried food in 45 00:03:45,620 --> 00:03:50,610 the corner of his mouth and his tongue crept out and licked at it as he concentrated. 46 00:03:50,610 --> 00:03:54,170 "Want to tell me about June, 1998?" 47 00:03:54,170 --> 00:03:59,209 Greg turned rotated his head this way and that. "I'm sorry?" 48 00:03:59,209 --> 00:04:06,209 "You posted a message to alt.burningman on June 17, 1998 about your plan to attend Burning 49 00:04:06,790 --> 00:04:12,790 Man. You posted, 'Would taking shrooms be a really bad idea?'" 50 00:04:12,790 --> 00:04:18,729 It was 3AM before they let him out of the "secondary screening" room. The interrogator 51 00:04:18,729 --> 00:04:23,860 was an older man, so skinny he looked like he'd been carved out of wood. His questions 52 00:04:23,860 --> 00:04:29,139 went a lot further than the Burning Man shrooms. They were just the start of Greg's problems. 53 00:04:29,139 --> 00:04:36,139 "I'd like to know more about your hobbies. Are you interested in model rocketry?" 54 00:04:36,259 --> 00:04:37,009 "What?" 55 00:04:37,009 --> 00:04:39,749 "Model rocketry." 56 00:04:39,749 --> 00:04:45,639 "No," Greg said. "No, I'm not." Thinking of all the explosives that model rocketry people 57 00:04:45,639 --> 00:04:47,849 surrounded themselves with. 58 00:04:47,849 --> 00:04:52,870 The man made a note, clicked some more. "You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike of 59 00:04:52,870 --> 00:04:58,870 ads for model rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail." 60 00:04:58,870 --> 00:05:04,539 Greg felt his guts spasm. "You're looking at my searches and email?" He hadn't touched 61 00:05:04,539 --> 00:05:09,180 a keyboard in a month, but he knew that what you put into the searchbar was more intimate 62 00:05:09,180 --> 00:05:13,819 than what you told your father-confessor. He'd seen enough queries to know that. 63 00:05:13,819 --> 00:05:20,229 "Calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches." The man made a bitter lemon 64 00:05:20,229 --> 00:05:26,900 face and went on in a squeaky voice. "That would be unconstitutional. You weren't listening 65 00:05:26,900 --> 00:05:33,240 to me. We see the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have 66 00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:37,349 a brochure explaining it, I'll give it to you when we're through here." 67 00:05:37,349 --> 00:05:43,080 "But the ads don't mean anything -- I get ads for Ann Coulter ringtones whenever I get 68 00:05:43,080 --> 00:05:46,120 email from my friend who lives in Coulter, Iowa!" 69 00:05:46,120 --> 00:05:51,990 The man nodded. "I understand, sir. And that's just why I'm here talking to you, instead 70 00:05:51,990 --> 00:05:57,830 of just looking at this screen. Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently 71 00:05:57,830 --> 00:05:59,550 for you?" 72 00:05:59,550 --> 00:06:06,550 He thought for a moment. "OK, just do this. Go to Google and search for 'coffee fanciers', 73 00:06:06,569 --> 00:06:11,509 all right?" He'd been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their 74 00:06:11,509 --> 00:06:15,610 coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was 75 00:06:15,610 --> 00:06:21,270 called "Jet Fuel." "Jet Fuel" and "Launch" -- that'd probably make Google barf up model 76 00:06:21,270 --> 00:06:27,300 rocket ads. Not that he would know -- he blocked all the ads in his browser. 77 00:06:27,300 --> 00:06:32,029 They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Hallowe'en photos. They were 78 00:06:32,029 --> 00:06:36,869 buried three screens deep in the search results for "Greg Lupinski," and Greg hadn't noticed 79 00:06:36,869 --> 00:06:38,599 them. 80 00:06:38,599 --> 00:06:43,259 "It was a Gulf War themed party," he said. "In the Castro." 81 00:06:43,259 --> 00:06:47,439 "And you're dressed as --?" 82 00:06:47,439 --> 00:06:53,449 "A suicide bomber." Just saying the words in an airport made him nervous, as though 83 00:06:53,449 --> 00:06:57,589 uttering them would cause the handcuffs to come out. 84 00:06:57,589 --> 00:06:58,779 "Come with me, Mr Lupinski." 85 00:06:58,779 --> 00:07:05,779 The search lasted a long time. They swabbed him in places he didn't know he had. He asked 86 00:07:06,999 --> 00:07:11,649 about a lawyer. They told him that he could call all the lawyers he wanted once he was 87 00:07:11,649 --> 00:07:12,939 out of the Customs sterile area. 88 00:07:12,939 --> 00:07:18,729 "Good night, Mr Lupinski." This was a new interrogator, a man who'd wanted to know about 89 00:07:18,729 --> 00:07:23,240 the reason that he'd sought both night diving and deep diving specialist certification from 90 00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:27,789 the PADI instructor in Cabo. The guy implied that Greg had been training to be an al-Qaeda 91 00:07:27,789 --> 00:07:32,399 frogman, and didn't seem to believe that Greg had just wanted to do all the certifications 92 00:07:32,399 --> 00:07:37,569 he could, pursuing diving the way he pursued everything: thoroughly. 93 00:07:37,569 --> 00:07:41,539 But now the man with the frogman fantasy was bidding him a good night and releasing him 94 00:07:41,539 --> 00:07:47,399 from the secondary screening area. His suitcases stood alone by the baggage carousel. When 95 00:07:47,399 --> 00:07:52,599 he picked them up, he saw that they had been opened and then inexpertly closed. Some of 96 00:07:52,599 --> 00:07:55,509 his clothes stuck out from around the edges. 97 00:07:55,509 --> 00:08:00,439 At home, he saw that all the fake "pre-Colombian" statues had been broken, and that his white 98 00:08:00,439 --> 00:08:05,179 cotton Mexican shirt -- folded and fresh from his laundry-lady -- had a boot-print in the 99 00:08:05,179 --> 00:08:10,759 middle of it. His clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. Now they smelled of airports and 100 00:08:10,759 --> 00:08:11,289 machine oil. 101 00:08:11,289 --> 00:08:16,610 The mailman had dropped an entire milk-crate of mail off at his place that day, but he 102 00:08:16,610 --> 00:08:21,509 couldn't even begin to confront it. All he could think of, as the sun rose over the Mission, 103 00:08:21,509 --> 00:08:26,379 turning the Victorian houses they called "painted ladies" vivid colors, was what it meant to 104 00:08:26,379 --> 00:08:27,499 be googled. 105 00:08:27,499 --> 00:08:33,070 He wasn't going to sleep. No way. He needed to talk about this. And there was only one 106 00:08:33,070 --> 00:08:39,389 person who he could talk to, and luckily, she was usually awake around now. 107 00:08:39,389 --> 00:08:43,380 Maya had started at Google two years after him, but had gotten a much bigger grant of 108 00:08:43,380 --> 00:08:49,149 stock than he had. She knew exactly what she was going to do with it, too, once she vested: 109 00:08:49,149 --> 00:08:54,339 take her dogs and her girlfriend and head to Florence, for good. Learn Italian, take 110 00:08:54,339 --> 00:09:00,250 in the museums, sit in the cafes. It was she who'd convinced him to go to Mexico: anywhere, 111 00:09:00,250 --> 00:09:04,889 she said, anywhere that he could reboot his existence. 112 00:09:04,889 --> 00:09:10,029 Maya had two giant chocolate Labs and a very, very patient girlfriend who'd put up with 113 00:09:10,029 --> 00:09:15,920 anything except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6AM by 350 pounds of drooling brown 114 00:09:15,920 --> 00:09:17,220 canine. 115 00:09:17,220 --> 00:09:21,449 She went for her Mace as he jogged towards her, then did a double-take and threw her 116 00:09:21,449 --> 00:09:26,209 arms open, dropping the leashes and stamping on them with one sneaker, a practiced gesture. 117 00:09:26,209 --> 00:09:30,680 "Where's the rest of you? Dude, you look hawt!" 118 00:09:30,680 --> 00:09:34,699 He took the hug, suddenly self-conscious of the way he smelled after a night of invasive 119 00:09:34,699 --> 00:09:41,699 googling. "Maya," he said. "Maya, what do you know about the DHS?" 120 00:09:42,190 --> 00:09:47,120 She stiffened and the dogs whined. She looked around, then nodded up at the tennis courts. 121 00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:53,130 "Top of the light standard there, don't look, there. That's one of our muni WiFi access 122 00:09:53,130 --> 00:09:57,089 points. Wide-angle webcam. Face away from it when you talk. Lip-readers." 123 00:09:57,089 --> 00:10:04,060 He parsed this out slowly. Google's free municipal WiFi program was a hit in every city where 124 00:10:04,060 --> 00:10:08,350 it played, and in the grand scheme of things, it hadn't cost much to put WiFi access points 125 00:10:08,350 --> 00:10:12,810 up on light standards and other power-ready poles around town. Especially not when measured 126 00:10:12,810 --> 00:10:17,170 against the ability to serve ads to people based on where they were sitting. He hadn't 127 00:10:17,170 --> 00:10:21,879 paid much attention when they'd made the webcams on all those access points public -- there'd 128 00:10:21,879 --> 00:10:25,610 been a day's worth of blogstorm while people looked out over their childhood streets or 129 00:10:25,610 --> 00:10:30,779 patrolled prostitution strolls, fingering johns, but it had blown over. 130 00:10:30,779 --> 00:10:35,220 Now he felt -- watched. 131 00:10:35,220 --> 00:10:39,870 Feeling silly, he kept his lips together and mumbled, "You're joking." 132 00:10:39,870 --> 00:10:45,120 "Come with me," she said, facing squarely away from the pole. 133 00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:48,379 The dogs weren't happy about having their walks cut short, and they let it be known 134 00:10:48,379 --> 00:10:52,959 in the kitchen as Maya fixed coffee for them -- barking, banging into the table and rocking 135 00:10:52,959 --> 00:10:57,329 it. Maya's girlfriend Laurie called out from the bedroom and Maya went back to talk to 136 00:10:57,329 --> 00:11:01,180 her, then emerged, looking flustered. 137 00:11:01,180 --> 00:11:05,199 "It started with China," she said. "Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they 138 00:11:05,199 --> 00:11:10,350 went under Chinese jurisdiction. They could google everyone going through our servers." 139 00:11:10,350 --> 00:11:14,519 Greg knew what that meant: if you visited a page with Google ads on it, if you used 140 00:11:14,519 --> 00:11:20,060 Google maps, if you used Google mail -- even if you sent mail to a gmail account -- Google 141 00:11:20,060 --> 00:11:23,100 was collecting your info, forever. 142 00:11:23,100 --> 00:11:27,550 "They were using us to build profiles of people. Not arresting them, you understand. But when 143 00:11:27,550 --> 00:11:31,350 they had someone they wanted to arrest, they'd come to us for a profile and find a reason 144 00:11:31,350 --> 00:11:37,600 to bust them. There's hardly anything you can do on the net that isn't illegal in China." 145 00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,519 Greg shook his head. "Why did they put the servers in China?" 146 00:11:41,519 --> 00:11:45,589 "The government said they'd block them if they didn't. And Yahoo was there." They both 147 00:11:45,589 --> 00:11:50,250 made a face. Somewhere along the way, Google had become obsessed with Yahoo, more worried 148 00:11:50,250 --> 00:11:54,889 about what the competition was doing than how they were performing. "So we did it. But 149 00:11:54,889 --> 00:11:57,129 a lot of us didn't like the idea." 150 00:11:57,129 --> 00:12:02,490 She sipped her coffee and lowered her voice. One of the dogs whined. "I made it my 20 percent 151 00:12:02,490 --> 00:12:07,930 project." Googlers were supposed to devote 20 percent of their time to blue-sky projects. 152 00:12:07,930 --> 00:12:13,160 "Me and my pod. We call it the googlecleaner. It goes deep into the database and statistically 153 00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:18,329 normalizes you. Your searches, your gmail histograms, your browsing patterns. All of 154 00:12:18,329 --> 00:12:19,560 it." 155 00:12:19,560 --> 00:12:21,029 "The search ads?" 156 00:12:21,029 --> 00:12:27,889 "Ah," she grimaced. "Yes, the DHS. So we brokered a compromise with the DHS. They'd stop asking 157 00:12:27,889 --> 00:12:33,300 to go fishing in our search records and we'd let them see what ads got displayed for you." 158 00:12:33,300 --> 00:12:38,959 Greg felt sick. "Why? Don't tell me Yahoo was doing it already --" 159 00:12:38,959 --> 00:12:45,959 "No, no. Well, yes. Sure. Yahoo was already doing it. But that wasn't it. You know, Republicans 160 00:12:46,769 --> 00:12:51,810 hate Google. We are overwhelmingly registered Democrat. So we're doing what we can to make 161 00:12:51,810 --> 00:12:58,209 peace with them before they clobber us. This isn't PII --" Personally Identifying Information, 162 00:12:58,209 --> 00:13:04,490 the toxic smog of the information age "-- it's just metadata. So it's only slightly 163 00:13:04,490 --> 00:13:05,810 evil." 164 00:13:05,810 --> 00:13:09,459 "If it's all so innocuous, why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?" 165 00:13:09,459 --> 00:13:15,180 She sighed and hugged the dog that was butting her with his huge, anvil-shaped head. "The 166 00:13:15,180 --> 00:13:20,199 spooks are like pubic lice. They get everywhere. Once we let them in, everything suddenly got 167 00:13:20,199 --> 00:13:27,100 a lot more -- secret. Some of our meetings have to have spooks present, it's like being 168 00:13:27,100 --> 00:13:31,750 in some Soviet ministry, with a political officer always there, watching everything. 169 00:13:31,750 --> 00:13:37,040 And the security clearance. Now we're divided into these two camps: the cleared and the 170 00:13:37,040 --> 00:13:44,040 suspect. We all know who isn't cleared, but no one knows why. I'm cleared. Lucky me -- 171 00:13:44,470 --> 00:13:50,209 being a homo no longer disqualifies you for access to seekrit crap. No cleared person 172 00:13:50,209 --> 00:13:55,100 wants to even eat lunch with an un-clearable. And every now and again, one of your teammates 173 00:13:55,100 --> 00:14:01,319 will get pulled off your project 'for security reasons', whatever that means." 174 00:14:01,319 --> 00:14:07,290 Greg felt very tired. "So now I'm feeling lucky I got out of the airport alive. I suppose 175 00:14:07,290 --> 00:14:11,019 I might have ended up in Gitmo if it had gone badly, huh?" 176 00:14:11,019 --> 00:14:16,300 She was staring at him intently, her eyes flicking from side to side. He waited, but 177 00:14:16,300 --> 00:14:17,310 she didn't say anything. 178 00:14:17,310 --> 00:14:18,629 "What?" 179 00:14:18,629 --> 00:14:23,680 "What I'm about to tell you, you can't ever repeat it, OK?" 180 00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:30,680 "Um, OK? You're not going to tell me you're a deep-cover Al-Quaeda suicide bomber?" 181 00:14:31,110 --> 00:14:38,110 "Nothing so simple. Here's the thing: the airport DHS scrutiny is a gating function. 182 00:14:38,949 --> 00:14:44,569 It lets the spooks narrow down their search criteria. Once you get pulled aside for secondary 183 00:14:44,569 --> 00:14:51,470 at the border, you become a 'person of interest,' and they never, ever let up. They'll check 184 00:14:51,470 --> 00:14:55,889 the webcams for your face and gait. Read your mail. Log your searches." 185 00:14:55,889 --> 00:14:58,160 "I thought you said the courts wouldn't let them --" 186 00:14:58,160 --> 00:15:03,550 "The courts won't let them indiscriminately google you. But once you get into the system, 187 00:15:03,550 --> 00:15:10,180 it becomes a selective search. All legal. And once they start googling you, they always 188 00:15:10,180 --> 00:15:10,860 find something." 189 00:15:10,860 --> 00:15:15,870 "You mean to say they've got a boiler-room of midwestern housewives reading the email 190 00:15:15,870 --> 00:15:20,069 of everyone who ever got a second look at the border? Sounds like the world's shittiest 191 00:15:20,069 --> 00:15:21,300 job." 192 00:15:21,300 --> 00:15:28,300 "If only. No, this is all untouched by human hands. All your data is fed into a big hopper 193 00:15:28,999 --> 00:15:33,889 that checks for 'suspicious patterns' and gradually builds the case against you, using 194 00:15:33,889 --> 00:15:38,829 deviation from statistical norms to prove that you're guilty of something. It's just 195 00:15:38,829 --> 00:15:43,759 a variation of the way we spot search-spammers" -- the "optimizers" who tried to get their 196 00:15:43,759 --> 00:15:48,709 Viagra scams and Ponzi schemes to come to the top of the search results "-- but instead 197 00:15:48,709 --> 00:15:54,920 of lowering your search rank, we increase your probability of being sent to Syria. And 198 00:15:54,920 --> 00:16:00,240 of course, they google all of us, everyone who works on anything 'sensitive.'" 199 00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:05,129 "Naturally," Greg said. He felt like he was going to throw up. He felt like never using 200 00:16:05,129 --> 00:16:12,129 a search engine again. "How the hell did this happen? It's such a good place. 'Don't be 201 00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:17,589 evil,' right?" That was the corporate motto, and for Greg, it had been a huge part of his 202 00:16:17,589 --> 00:16:23,069 reason for taking his fresh-minted computer science PhD from Stanford directly to Google. 203 00:16:23,069 --> 00:16:30,069 Maya's laugh was bitter and cynical. "Don't be evil? Come on, Greg. Don't you remember 204 00:16:31,860 --> 00:16:35,730 what it was like when we started censoring the Chinese search results, and we all asked 205 00:16:35,730 --> 00:16:41,139 how that could be anything but evil? The company line was hilarious: 'We're not doing evil 206 00:16:41,139 --> 00:16:45,689 -- we're giving them access to a better search tool! If we showed them search results they 207 00:16:45,689 --> 00:16:51,740 couldn't get to, that would just frustrate them. It would be a bad user experience. If 208 00:16:51,740 --> 00:16:57,899 we hadn't lost our don't-be-evil cherry by then, we surely did the day we took that one." 209 00:16:57,899 --> 00:17:02,850 "Now what?" Greg pushed a dog away from him and Maya looked hurt. 210 00:17:02,850 --> 00:17:09,040 "Now you're a person of interest, Greg. Googlestalked. Now, you live your life with someone watching 211 00:17:09,040 --> 00:17:14,150 over your shoulder, all the time. You know the mission statement, right? 'Organize all 212 00:17:14,150 --> 00:17:19,420 human knowledge.' That's everything. Give it five years, we'll know how many turds were 213 00:17:19,420 --> 00:17:24,030 in the bowl before you flushed. Combine that with automated suspicion of anyone who matches 214 00:17:24,030 --> 00:17:28,510 a statistical picture of a bad guy and you're --" 215 00:17:28,510 --> 00:17:30,440 "I'm scroogled." 216 00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:30,690 "Totally." 217 00:17:30,680 --> 00:17:37,680 "Thanks, Maya," he said. "Thanks anyway." 218 00:17:38,140 --> 00:17:43,430 "Sit down," she said. The dog that had been bumping at his legs was at it again. Maya 219 00:17:43,430 --> 00:17:47,700 took both dogs down the hall to the bedroom and he heard her muffled argument with her 220 00:17:47,700 --> 00:17:51,250 girlfriend. She came back without the dogs. 221 00:17:51,250 --> 00:17:57,320 "I can fix this," she said in a whisper so low it was practically a hiss. "I can googleclean 222 00:17:57,320 --> 00:17:58,120 you." 223 00:17:58,120 --> 00:18:00,690 "But you're under constant scrutiny --" 224 00:18:00,690 --> 00:18:06,930 "By DHS agents. Once they fired all non-native-born Americans from the DHS, it got a lot fatter 225 00:18:06,930 --> 00:18:10,890 and stupider. I can googleclean you, Greg." 226 00:18:10,890 --> 00:18:12,810 "I don't want you to get into trouble." 227 00:18:12,810 --> 00:18:18,150 She shook her head. "I'm already doomed. I built the googlecleaner. Every day since then 228 00:18:18,150 --> 00:18:22,290 has been borrowed time -- now it's just a matter of waiting for someone to point out 229 00:18:22,290 --> 00:18:27,370 my expertise and history to the DHS and, oh, I don't know. Whatever it is they do to people 230 00:18:27,370 --> 00:18:30,530 like me in the War on Abstract Nouns." 231 00:18:30,530 --> 00:18:36,770 Greg remembered the questioning at the airport. The search. His shirt, the bootprint in the 232 00:18:36,770 --> 00:18:38,430 middle of it. 233 00:18:38,430 --> 00:18:41,520 "Do it," he said. 234 00:18:41,520 --> 00:18:46,240 The ads were weird. He hadn't really paid attention to them in years. The blocker got 235 00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:50,440 rid of most of them, but Google changed its code often enough that their little text ads 236 00:18:50,440 --> 00:18:55,500 showed up on a lot of his pages. They stayed subliminal mostly -- only clunkers like that 237 00:18:55,500 --> 00:18:59,860 Ann Coulter ringtone ad made it past his eyes into his brain. 238 00:18:59,860 --> 00:19:06,860 Now the clunkers were everywhere: Intelligent Design Facts, Online Seminary Degree, Terror 239 00:19:07,020 --> 00:19:14,020 Free Tomorrow, Porn Blocker Software, Homosexuality and Satan. He clicked through a couple of 240 00:19:14,060 --> 00:19:18,810 these and found himself in some kind of alternate universe Internet, full of weird opinions 241 00:19:18,810 --> 00:19:25,440 about the evils of being gay, the certainty of the young Earth, the need for eternal national 242 00:19:25,440 --> 00:19:25,950 vigilance. 243 00:19:25,950 --> 00:19:31,120 Then he started to notice something weird about the search results themselves. After 244 00:19:31,120 --> 00:19:35,150 unpacking his suitcase and opening his mail, he spent two weeks sitting at home on his 245 00:19:35,150 --> 00:19:40,970 ass, surfing. His pre-Mexico belly was reemerging, so he decided to do something about it. No 246 00:19:40,970 --> 00:19:46,290 burritos for lunch today -- he'd go to that holistic place Maya had told him about. Vegan 247 00:19:46,290 --> 00:19:49,570 low-fat cuisine couldn't possibly be as gross as it sounded. 248 00:19:49,570 --> 00:19:53,580 "Did you mean 'Hungarian Restaurants'?" 249 00:19:53,580 --> 00:20:00,580 He snorted. No, he'd meant "holistic restaurants," you dumbass search-engine. It nagged at him. 250 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:04,880 He pulled up his search history and went back through the results, printing out the pages. 251 00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:08,810 Then he logged out of his Google account and went back through the same searches, comparing 252 00:20:08,810 --> 00:20:14,350 the results to the logged-in pages. The differences were striking. A search for "democratic primary" 253 00:20:14,350 --> 00:20:19,420 pointed to anti-Hillary rants on angry blogs when he was logged in, and to information 254 00:20:19,420 --> 00:20:24,380 on volunteering for the DNC when he was logged out. Searching for "abortion clinic" while 255 00:20:24,380 --> 00:20:28,820 logged out listed the nearest Planned Parenthood office; searching while logged in gave him 256 00:20:28,820 --> 00:20:34,360 information about Campaign Life, ProLife.com, and the ProLife alliance. Good thing he wasn't 257 00:20:34,360 --> 00:20:34,610 pregnant. 258 00:20:34,450 --> 00:20:38,580 This was Maya's googlecleaner at work. It was like the stories of people who asked their 259 00:20:38,580 --> 00:20:42,860 TiVos to record an episode of "Queer Eye" and then got inundated with suggestions for 260 00:20:42,860 --> 00:20:48,090 other "gay shows" -- "My TiVo thinks I'm gay," was the title of one article he remembered. 261 00:20:48,090 --> 00:20:52,780 Google had been experimenting with "personalized" search results before he left the country 262 00:20:52,780 --> 00:20:56,390 -- here it was, in all its glory. 263 00:20:56,390 --> 00:21:00,240 Google thought he was a conservative Christian Republican who supported the War on Terror 264 00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:03,070 and many other abstract nouns. 265 00:21:03,070 --> 00:21:07,550 He logged out of Google -- that was simple. Five minutes later, he logged in again. His 266 00:21:07,550 --> 00:21:12,690 entire address book was in there. He logged out again. Logged back in. His calendar -- 267 00:21:12,690 --> 00:21:18,840 when was his parents' anniversary again? Logged out. Logged back in. Needed his bookmarked 268 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:21,470 locations in Maps. Logged out. 269 00:21:21,470 --> 00:21:26,600 He stopped trying. Google was where his friendships lived -- all those people he stayed connected 270 00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:31,340 to on Orkut. It was where his relationships lived: all that archived email, all those 271 00:21:31,340 --> 00:21:37,570 addresses in his address-book. It was his family photos, his bookmarks. Hell, his search 272 00:21:37,570 --> 00:21:42,340 history -- his real search history -- was like an outboard brain, remembering which 273 00:21:42,340 --> 00:21:46,500 parts of the unplumbable Internet he cared about, so that he didn't have to remember 274 00:21:46,500 --> 00:21:49,820 it the hard way, with the meat in his skull. 275 00:21:49,820 --> 00:21:54,330 Google had a copy of him -- all the parts of him that navigated the world and the people 276 00:21:54,330 --> 00:22:01,240 in it. Google owned that copy, and without it, he couldn't be himself anymore. He'd just 277 00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:02,960 have to stay logged in. 278 00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:07,550 Greg mashed the keys on the laptop next to his bed, bringing the screen to life. He squinted 279 00:22:07,550 --> 00:22:14,140 at the toolbar clock: 4:13AM! Christ, who was pounding on his door at this hour? 280 00:22:14,140 --> 00:22:19,220 He shouted "Coming!" in a muzzy voice and pulled on a robe and slippers. He shuffled 281 00:22:19,220 --> 00:22:23,620 down the hallway, turning on lights as he went, squinting. At the door, he squinted 282 00:22:23,620 --> 00:22:27,460 through the peephole, peering at -- Maya. 283 00:22:27,460 --> 00:22:31,160 He undid the chains and the deadbolt and yanked the door open and Maya rushed in past him, 284 00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:35,280 followed by the dogs, followed by her girlfriend, Laurie, whom he'd last seen at a Christmas 285 00:22:35,280 --> 00:22:40,370 party at Google, in a fabulous cocktail dress and an elaborate up-do. Now she was wearing 286 00:22:40,370 --> 00:22:45,010 a freebie Google Summer of Code sweatshirt, jeans, and a frown that started between her 287 00:22:45,010 --> 00:22:48,070 eyebrows and intensified all the way down her face. 288 00:22:48,070 --> 00:22:52,630 Maya was sheened with sweat, her hair sticking to her forehead. She scrubbed at her eyes, 289 00:22:52,630 --> 00:22:54,830 which were red and lined. 290 00:22:54,830 --> 00:22:57,610 "Pack a bag," she said, in a hoarse croak. 291 00:22:57,610 --> 00:22:58,660 "What?" 292 00:22:58,660 --> 00:23:01,980 "Whatever you can't live without. A couple changes of clothes. Anything you're sentimental 293 00:23:01,980 --> 00:23:06,360 about -- shoebox of pictures, your grandfather's razor, whatever. But keep it small, something 294 00:23:06,360 --> 00:23:09,170 you can carry. We're traveling light." 295 00:23:09,170 --> 00:23:09,840 "Maya, what are you --" 296 00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:14,740 She took him by the shoulders. "Do. It," she said. "Don't ask questions right now. There's 297 00:23:14,740 --> 00:23:15,280 no time." 298 00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:16,850 "Where do you want to --" 299 00:23:16,850 --> 00:23:22,610 "Mexico, probably. Don't know yet. Pack, dammit." She pushed past him into his bedroom and started 300 00:23:22,610 --> 00:23:24,660 yanking open drawers. 301 00:23:24,660 --> 00:23:29,520 "Maya," he said, sharply, "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on." 302 00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:33,420 She glared at him and pushed her hair away from her face. "The googlecleaner lives. I 303 00:23:33,420 --> 00:23:37,560 shut it down, walked away from it, after I did you. It was too dangerous to use anymore. 304 00:23:37,560 --> 00:23:41,800 But I still get buginizer notifications when new bugs get filed against it, I'm still in 305 00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:47,420 B as the project's owner. Someone filed eight bugs against it this week. Someone's used 306 00:23:47,420 --> 00:23:51,550 it six times to smear six very specific accounts." 307 00:23:51,550 --> 00:23:54,050 "Who's using it?" 308 00:23:54,050 --> 00:23:58,100 "Well, I'll give you a hint. Let me tell you who's been cleaned this week --" She listed 309 00:23:58,100 --> 00:24:04,280 six candidates, four Republican and two Democrat, who were all in the running for the primaries. 310 00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:07,340 "Googlers are blackwashing political candidates?" 311 00:24:07,340 --> 00:24:12,650 "Not Googlers. This is all coming from offsite. The IP block is registered in DC. And the 312 00:24:12,650 --> 00:24:17,290 IPs are all also used by Gmail users. And those Gmail users --" 313 00:24:17,290 --> 00:24:19,030 "You spied on gmail accounts?" 314 00:24:19,030 --> 00:24:22,490 "I'm leaving in two minutes, with or without you. You can interrupt me to ask me questions, 315 00:24:22,490 --> 00:24:27,410 or you can listen." She gave him another look. Laurie stood in the door of the bedroom, holding 316 00:24:27,410 --> 00:24:30,920 the dogs by the collars and looking down at the floor. 317 00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:35,260 "Good. OK. Yes. I did spy on their email. Of course I did. Everyone does it, now and 318 00:24:35,260 --> 00:24:37,500 again, and for a lot worse reasons that this. 319 00:24:37,500 --> 00:24:42,710 "It's our lobbying firm. The ones who invented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Remember 320 00:24:42,710 --> 00:24:46,440 them? It was a stink when we hired them, but Google couldn't afford to be 'that company 321 00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:51,190 full of registered Democrats' forever. We needed friends in Congress. These guys could 322 00:24:51,190 --> 00:24:52,410 do it for us." 323 00:24:52,410 --> 00:24:54,540 "But they're ruining politicians' careers!" 324 00:24:54,540 --> 00:24:58,020 "Yeah. They certainly are. And who benefits when they do that?" 325 00:24:58,020 --> 00:25:01,610 Laurie spoke, at last. "Other politicians." 326 00:25:01,610 --> 00:25:05,160 He felt his pulse beating in his temples. "We should tell someone." 327 00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:11,140 "Yeah," Maya said. "How? They know everything about us. They can see every search. Every 328 00:25:11,140 --> 00:25:15,120 email. Every time we've been caught on the webcams. Who is in our social network -- 329 00:25:15,120 --> 00:25:18,660 you know that if you've got more than fifteen Orkut buddies, it's statistically certain 330 00:25:18,660 --> 00:25:22,800 that you're no more than three steps to someone who's contributed money to a 'terrorist' cause? 331 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:28,230 Remember the airport? Imagine a lot more of that." 332 00:25:28,230 --> 00:25:34,190 "Maya," he said, carefully. "I think you're over-reacting. You don't need to go to Mexico. 333 00:25:34,190 --> 00:25:38,570 You can just quit. We can do a startup together or something. Or you can move to the country 334 00:25:38,570 --> 00:25:43,590 and raise dogs. Whatever. This is crazy --" 335 00:25:43,590 --> 00:25:47,000 "They came to see me today," she said. "At work. Two of the political officers -- the 336 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:52,420 minders who monitor our sensitive projects. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions." 337 00:25:52,420 --> 00:25:53,520 "About the googlecleaner?" 338 00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:58,650 "About my friends and family. About my search history. About my political beliefs." 339 00:25:58,650 --> 00:25:59,860 "Jesus." 340 00:25:59,860 --> 00:26:03,890 "They were sending me a message. They were letting me know that they were onto me. They're 341 00:26:03,890 --> 00:26:08,820 watching every click and every search. It's time to go -- time to get out of range." 342 00:26:08,820 --> 00:26:11,500 "There's a Google office in Mexico, you know." 343 00:26:11,500 --> 00:26:15,030 "Are you coming, Greg? We're going now." 344 00:26:15,030 --> 00:26:18,460 "Laurie, what do you think of this?" 345 00:26:18,460 --> 00:26:24,150 Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. "Maya showed me what Google knows about me. 346 00:26:24,150 --> 00:26:29,350 It's like there's a little me in there, a copy of me. Like I'm pinned down under a jar 347 00:26:29,350 --> 00:26:35,520 with a ball of ether. My parents left East Germany in '65 -- they used to tell me about 348 00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:41,140 the Stasi. They'd put everything about you in your file -- even unpatriotic jokes. Lately 349 00:26:41,140 --> 00:26:47,450 I've been feeling...watched. All the time. Like I can't live without leaving a trail. 350 00:26:47,450 --> 00:26:52,040 Like I'm throwing off a smog of data and it can't be gotten rid of." 351 00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,950 "We're going now, Greg. Now. Are you coming?" 352 00:26:55,950 --> 00:27:01,960 Greg looked at the dogs. "I've got some pesos left over," he said. "You take them. Be careful, 353 00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:03,690 OK?" 354 00:27:03,690 --> 00:27:07,340 She looked like she was going to slug him. Then she softened and gave him a ferocious 355 00:27:07,340 --> 00:27:12,640 hug. "Be careful yourself," she whispered in his ear. 356 00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:17,330 They came for him a week later. At home, in the middle of the night, just as he'd imagined 357 00:27:17,330 --> 00:27:23,920 it. Their knock was nothing like Maya's tentative, nervous thump. They went bang-bang-bang, confident, 358 00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:29,320 knowing that they had every right to be there and not caring who else came after them. 359 00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:34,750 Two men. One stayed by the door and didn't say anything. The other was a smiler, short 360 00:27:34,750 --> 00:27:38,940 and rumpled, in a sports coat with a small stain on one lapel and a cloisonn⊠American 361 00:27:38,940 --> 00:27:44,470 flag on the other. "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," he said, by way of introduction. "'Exceeding 362 00:27:44,470 --> 00:27:50,630 authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information.' Ten years for 363 00:27:50,630 --> 00:27:55,420 a first offense, ever since the PATRIOT Act extended it. I have it on the best of authority 364 00:27:55,420 --> 00:28:01,390 that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies. And oh, what will 365 00:28:01,390 --> 00:28:06,160 come out in the trial. All the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile." 366 00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:10,010 Greg had been playing this scene out in his head for a week. He'd had all kinds of brave 367 00:28:10,010 --> 00:28:14,830 things to say, planned out in advance. He'd even written some down, to see how they looked. 368 00:28:14,830 --> 00:28:18,730 It had given him something to do while the knots in his stomach tightened, while he waited 369 00:28:18,730 --> 00:28:19,510 to hear from Maya. 370 00:28:19,510 --> 00:28:26,190 "I'd like to call a lawyer," is all he managed. It came out in a whisper. 371 00:28:26,190 --> 00:28:30,580 "You can do that," the man said. "But hear me out first." 372 00:28:30,580 --> 00:28:35,100 Greg found his voice. "I'd like to see your badge." 373 00:28:35,100 --> 00:28:42,100 The man's basset-hound face lit up as he hissed a laugh. "Oh, Greg, buddy. I'm not a cop. 374 00:28:42,820 --> 00:28:49,820 I work for --" He named the DC firm in Google's employ. The inventors of swiftboating. "You're 375 00:28:50,100 --> 00:28:55,230 a Googler. You're part of the family. We couldn't send the police after you without talking 376 00:28:55,230 --> 00:28:59,700 with you first. There's an offer I'd like to make." 377 00:28:59,700 --> 00:29:03,290 Greg made coffee. It gave him something to do with his hands while he tried to find that 378 00:29:03,290 --> 00:29:07,950 bravery he'd been honing all week. "I'll go to the press," he said. "I've written this 379 00:29:07,950 --> 00:29:10,580 all up. I'll go straight to them." 380 00:29:10,580 --> 00:29:15,670 The guy nodded as if thinking it over. "Well, sure. You could walk into the Chronicle's 381 00:29:15,670 --> 00:29:19,710 office in the morning and spill everything you need. They'd try to find a confirming 382 00:29:19,710 --> 00:29:24,610 source. They won't find it. Maybe you'll try to show them what your profile looks like 383 00:29:24,610 --> 00:29:31,340 today? Well, tell you what, it looks just like it looked the day you landed at SFO. 384 00:29:31,340 --> 00:29:36,440 Greg, buddy, why don't you hear me out before you start trying to figure out how to fight 385 00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:42,150 me? I'm in the win-win business. I'm in the business of figuring out how to get all parties 386 00:29:42,150 --> 00:29:48,030 what they need. I'm very good at it. You don't even want to know what I'm billing Google 387 00:29:48,030 --> 00:29:52,330 for this little tete-a-tete. By the way, those are excellent beans, but you want to give 388 00:29:52,330 --> 00:29:57,270 them a little rinse first, takes some of the bitterness out and brings up the oils. Here, 389 00:29:57,270 --> 00:29:59,730 pass me a colander?" 390 00:29:59,730 --> 00:30:03,440 Greg watched in numb bemusement as the man took off his jacket and hung it over a kitchen 391 00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:08,000 chair, then undid his cuffs and rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his 392 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:13,120 pocket. Then he poured the beans back out of the grinder and into Greg's colander and 393 00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:14,010 did things at the sink. 394 00:30:14,010 --> 00:30:21,010 He was a little pudgy, and very pale. He needed a haircut -- had unruly curls at his neck. 395 00:30:21,010 --> 00:30:26,940 It made Greg relax, somehow. This guy had the social gracelessness of a nerd, felt like 396 00:30:26,940 --> 00:30:32,560 a real Googler, obsessed with the minutiae. He knew his way around a coffee-grinder, too. 397 00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:35,300 "We're drafting a team for Building 49 --" 398 00:30:35,300 --> 00:30:38,670 "There is no building 49," Greg said, automatically. 399 00:30:38,670 --> 00:30:45,010 "Yeah," the guy said, with a private little smile. "There's no Building 49. And we're 400 00:30:45,010 --> 00:30:50,750 putting together a team, with its own buginizer, to own googlecleaner. Maya's code wasn't very 401 00:30:50,750 --> 00:30:55,260 efficient. Every time someone runs it, it clobbers the whole farm. And it's got plenty 402 00:30:55,260 --> 00:31:00,760 of bugs. We've asked around and there's consensus on this. You'd be the right guy, and it wouldn't 403 00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:04,060 matter what you knew if you were back inside --" 404 00:31:04,060 --> 00:31:06,640 "No, I wouldn't," Greg said. "You're on crack." 405 00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:12,290 "Hear me out. There's money involved. Good work, too. Smart colleagues. A direction for 406 00:31:12,290 --> 00:31:16,030 your life. A chance to participate in the political life of your country --" 407 00:31:16,030 --> 00:31:21,850 Greg gave a bitter laugh. "Unbelievable," he said. "If you think I'm going to help you 408 00:31:21,850 --> 00:31:28,740 smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you're even crazier than I thought." 409 00:31:28,740 --> 00:31:35,740 "Greg," he said, "Greg, you're right. That was dumb. No one is going to do that anymore. 410 00:31:36,610 --> 00:31:43,610 We're just going to -- clean things up a little. For some select people. You know what I mean, 411 00:31:44,500 --> 00:31:49,990 right? Every Google profile is a little scary under close inspection. Close inspection is 412 00:31:49,990 --> 00:31:54,360 the order of the day in politics. You stand for office and they'll look at your kids, 413 00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:58,660 your brothers, your ex-girlfriends. Now that your search history is available to so many 414 00:31:58,660 --> 00:32:04,380 people, it won't be that hard to look into that too. Your Orkut network, your old Usenet 415 00:32:04,380 --> 00:32:10,200 messages, your searches, all of it." He loaded the cafetiere and depressed the plunger, his 416 00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:15,980 face screwed up in solemn concentration. He held out his hand and Greg got down two coffee 417 00:32:15,980 --> 00:32:21,040 mugs -- Google mugs, of course -- and passed them to him. 418 00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:25,770 "We're going to do for our friends just what Maya did for you. Just give them a little 419 00:32:25,770 --> 00:32:32,260 cleanup. Preserve their privacy. That's all -- I promise you, that's all." 420 00:32:32,260 --> 00:32:36,750 Greg sipped the coffee, but didn't taste it. "And whichever candidates you don't clean 421 00:32:36,750 --> 00:32:38,120 --" 422 00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:42,640 "Yeah," the guy said. "Yeah, you're right. It'll be tough for them." 423 00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:44,000 "You can go now," Greg said. 424 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:51,000 "Oh, Greg," the guy said. He plucked his jacket off his chair-back and shrugged it on, felt 425 00:32:51,610 --> 00:32:56,710 in the inside pocket and produced a small stack of paper, folded into quarters. He smoothed 426 00:32:56,710 --> 00:32:58,940 it out and put it on the table. 427 00:32:58,940 --> 00:33:03,180 Greg looked quickly and saw the rows of results he'd seen on the DHS man's screen, back at 428 00:33:03,180 --> 00:33:07,950 the airport, when this all started. "I don't care," he said. "Tell the world about my search 429 00:33:07,950 --> 00:33:11,990 history. Go ahead. In five years, everyone will have had their search history ruptured. 430 00:33:11,990 --> 00:33:12,800 We'll all be guilty." 431 00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:18,800 "It's not your history," the man said. He divided the stack into two piles, and pointed 432 00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:24,850 to names on the top sheet of each. One was Maya's. The other was a candidate whose campaign 433 00:33:24,850 --> 00:33:28,080 Greg had contributed to for the last three elections. 434 00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:32,010 "You get five weeks' vacation a year. You can go to Cabo for the SCUBA. The options 435 00:33:32,010 --> 00:33:34,790 package is very generous, too." 436 00:33:34,790 --> 00:33:39,800 The man sat down and drank some coffee. Greg tried some more of his own. It didn't taste 437 00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:45,780 so bad. It was, in fact, more delicious than anything that had ever come out of his kitchen. 438 00:33:45,780 --> 00:33:48,030 The man knew what he was doing. 439 00:33:48,030 --> 00:33:53,340 The best years of Greg's life had been spent at Google. Smart people. Amazing work environment. 440 00:33:53,340 --> 00:33:58,780 Wonderful technology. Nothing in the world like it. When you worked at G, you had the 441 00:33:58,780 --> 00:34:04,760 best model train set in the universe to play with. Organizing all of human knowledge. 442 00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:08,109 "You can pick your team, of course," the man said. 443 00:34:08,109 --> 00:34:11,230 Greg poured himself another cup of delicious coffee. 444 00:34:11,230 --> 00:34:15,560 The new Congress took eleven working days to pass the Securing and Enumerating America's 445 00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:20,940 Communications and Hypertext Act, which authorized the DHS and the NSA to outsource up to 80 446 00:34:20,940 --> 00:34:25,340 percent of its intelligence and analysis work to private contractors. 447 00:34:25,340 --> 00:34:29,040 Theoretically, the contracts were open to a competitive bidding process, but within 448 00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:33,389 the secure group at Google, in building 49, there was no question of who would win those 449 00:34:33,389 --> 00:34:38,710 contracts. If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border, 450 00:34:38,710 --> 00:34:42,389 you can bet that they would have caught them -- governments just aren't equipped to Do 451 00:34:42,389 --> 00:34:44,020 Search Right. 452 00:34:44,020 --> 00:34:48,179 Greg looked himself in the eye that morning as he shaved -- the security minders didn't 453 00:34:48,179 --> 00:34:52,320 like hacker-stubble, and they weren't shy about telling you so -- and realized that 454 00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:57,270 today was his first day as a de facto intelligence agent in the US government. 455 00:34:57,270 --> 00:35:01,550 How bad would it be? Wasn't it better to have Google doing this stuff than some ham-fisted 456 00:35:01,550 --> 00:35:02,000 spook? 457 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:07,380 He had himself convinced by the time he parked at the Googleplex, among the hybrid cars and 458 00:35:07,380 --> 00:35:12,520 bulging bike-racks. He stopped for an organic smoothie on the way to his desk, then sat 459 00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:14,840 down and sipped. 460 00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,540 The rumpled man hadn't been to the G since Greg went back to work, but it often felt 461 00:35:18,540 --> 00:35:22,870 like his influence was all around them in building 49. He wasn't any less rumpled today 462 00:35:22,870 --> 00:35:26,890 -- he could have been wrapped in saran-wrap on the day he brought Greg back to work and 463 00:35:26,890 --> 00:35:30,050 refrigerated for all that he hadn't changed a hair. 464 00:35:30,050 --> 00:35:34,820 "Hi, Greg," he said, sliding into the chair next to his. His podmates stood up in unison 465 00:35:34,820 --> 00:35:35,560 and left the room. 466 00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:41,550 "Just tell me what it is," Greg said. "Just spit it out. You want me to pwn NORAD and 467 00:35:41,550 --> 00:35:43,510 start World War III, right?" 468 00:35:43,510 --> 00:35:49,400 "Nothing so obvious," the man said, patting his shoulder. "Just a little search-job." 469 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:49,650 "Yeah?" 470 00:35:49,530 --> 00:35:54,190 "There's a person we want to find. A person who's left the country, apparently headed 471 00:35:54,190 --> 00:35:59,190 for Mexico. She knows certain things that are, as of today, classified. She needs to 472 00:35:59,190 --> 00:36:01,690 be briefed on her new responsibilities." 473 00:36:01,690 --> 00:36:06,310 Greg stood up. "I'm not going to find Maya for you." He pulled on his jacket. 474 00:36:06,310 --> 00:36:10,770 "There are plenty of people here who will. It's up to you, though. You can work here 475 00:36:10,770 --> 00:36:15,390 with her, being productive, or you can find out just how rotten life can get -- while 476 00:36:15,390 --> 00:36:20,210 she works here, being productive with your co-workers." 477 00:36:20,210 --> 00:36:23,830 Greg stared at him, his hands balled into fists. 478 00:36:23,830 --> 00:36:29,510 "Come on," the rumpled man said. "Greg, we both know how this goes. When you said yes 479 00:36:29,510 --> 00:36:35,100 to me in your kitchen, you lost the option of saying no. It's not so bad, is it? Who 480 00:36:35,100 --> 00:36:39,320 would you rather have doing the nation's intelligence: you and your pals here in the Valley, or a 481 00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:42,630 bunch of straight-edge code-grinders in Virginia?" 482 00:36:42,630 --> 00:36:46,390 Greg turned on his heel and left. He made it all the way to the parking lot before he 483 00:36:46,390 --> 00:36:51,190 stopped and kicked a wall so hard he felt something give way in his foot. 484 00:36:51,190 --> 00:36:57,190 Then he limped back to his desk, hung his jacket on his chair, and logged back in. 485 00:36:57,190 --> 00:37:01,580 It was a week later when his key-card failed to open the door to Building 49. The idiot 486 00:37:01,580 --> 00:37:07,040 red LED shone at him every time he swiped it. He swiped it and swiped it. Any other 487 00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:11,080 building and there'd be someone to tailgate on, people trickling in and out all day. But 488 00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:15,510 the Googlers in 49 only emerged for meals, and sometimes not even that. 489 00:37:15,510 --> 00:37:19,670 Swipe, swipe, swipe. 490 00:37:19,670 --> 00:37:22,630 "Greg, can I see you, please?" 491 00:37:22,630 --> 00:37:26,990 The rumpled man hadn't shaved in a couple of days. He put an arm around Greg's shoulders 492 00:37:26,990 --> 00:37:31,640 and Greg smelled his citrusy aftershave. It was the same cologne that his divemaster in 493 00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:35,710 Baja had worn when they went out to the bars in the evening. Greg couldn't remember his 494 00:37:35,710 --> 00:37:39,840 name. Juan-Carlos? Juan-Luis? 495 00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:44,380 The man's arm around his shoulders was firm, steering him away from the door, out onto 496 00:37:44,380 --> 00:37:49,140 the immaculate lawn, past the kitchen's herb garden. "We're giving you a couple of days 497 00:37:49,140 --> 00:37:51,610 off," he said. 498 00:37:51,610 --> 00:37:56,850 Greg felt a cold premonition that sank all the way to his balls. "Why?" Had he done something 499 00:37:56,850 --> 00:37:58,000 wrong? Was he going to jail? 500 00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:03,670 "It's Maya." The man turned him around, met his eyes with his bottomless basset-hound 501 00:38:03,670 --> 00:38:10,670 gaze. "It's Maya. Killed herself. In Guatemala. I'm sorry, Greg." 502 00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:18,130 Greg seemed to hurtle away from himself, to a place miles above, a Google Earth view of 503 00:38:18,130 --> 00:38:23,550 the Googleplex, looking down on himself and the rumpled man as a pair of dots, two pixels, 504 00:38:23,550 --> 00:38:28,940 tiny and insignificant. He willed himself to tear at his hair, to drop to his knees 505 00:38:28,940 --> 00:38:30,770 and weep. 506 00:38:30,770 --> 00:38:36,220 From a long way away, he heard himself say, "I don't need any time off. I'm OK." 507 00:38:36,220 --> 00:38:39,230 From a long way away, he heard the rumpled man insist. 508 00:38:39,230 --> 00:38:44,630 But one-pixel Greg wouldn't be turned aside. The argument persisted for a long time, and 509 00:38:44,630 --> 00:38:49,470 then the two pixels moved into Building 49 and the door swung shut behind them. 510 00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:07,820 Doctorow: This one came as a commission from Radar magazine -- now defunct, a casualty of the 2008 crash, 511 00:39:07,820 --> 00:39:12,930 but in 2007, this was the most widely circulated "lifestyle" magazine in the US. They asked 512 00:39:12,930 --> 00:39:18,580 me to write about "the day Google became evil." I didn't want to cheap out and just write 513 00:39:18,580 --> 00:39:22,560 about the company selling out to some evil millionaire. If Google ever turned evil, it 514 00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:27,220 would be because a) evil had a compelling business-model and b) evil lay at the end 515 00:39:27,220 --> 00:39:28,750 of a compelling technical challenge. 516 00:39:28,750 --> 00:39:33,500 I spent a lot of time talking off-the-record to Googlers, who are, to a one, the nicest 517 00:39:33,500 --> 00:39:37,990 people I know (OK, one exception springs to mind, but let's not air our dirty laundry 518 00:39:37,990 --> 00:39:42,270 in public, right?). I also had an incredibly productive conversation with the Electronic 519 00:39:42,270 --> 00:39:46,880 Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston, a profound and sharp-witted privacy lawyer. 520 00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:51,260 I wanted to capture a company that was full of good people who do bad. There are lots 521 00:39:51,260 --> 00:39:56,440 of these. For example, all the Microsoft employees I know are fantastic and smart and caring 522 00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:01,220 and principled. But ethically and technically, most of what comes out of Redmond is a train-wreck. 523 00:40:01,220 --> 00:40:06,200 It's anti-synergy: a firm that is far less than the sum of its parts. I could easily 524 00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:10,900 see Google turning into that. I wish I understood how groups of good people trying to do good 525 00:40:10,900 --> 00:40:12,020 can do bad.