WEBVTT 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 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 00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:17.180 hard cover. This story, and the whole text of "With a Little Help", 00:00:17.180 --> 00:00:21.529 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike, Non Commercial license. 00:00:21.529 --> 00:00:25.749 Copy it, share it, remix it. As Woody Guthrie said: 00:00:25.749 --> 00:00:32.529 "This song is copyrighted in the US under a seal of copyright number 154085 for 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 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, 00:00:40.162 --> 00:00:44.889 swing to it, yodel it. We wrote it: that's all we wanted to do." 00:00:56.489 --> 00:01:03.978 Wheaton: Scroogled by Cory Doctorow. Originally published in Radar Magazine, September, 2007. 00:01:03.978 --> 00:01:05.525 Read by Will Wheaton. 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." 00:01:14.695 --> 00:01:17.080 Cardinal Richelieu 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 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, 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 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 00:01:38.140 --> 00:01:43.380 left San Francisco a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, pot-bellied wreck -- 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. 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 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 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 00:02:05.970 --> 00:02:10.450 the third hour, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-aged couple 00:02:10.450 --> 00:02:11.170 ahead of him. 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." 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, 00:02:21.140 --> 00:02:27.290 carefully stowing it in its own overhead locker, and now he was stuck alternately wearing it 00:02:27.290 --> 00:02:29.230 and holding it. 00:02:29.230 --> 00:02:34.770 Googling at the border. Christ. Greg vested out from Google six months before, cashing 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. 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 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 00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:53.930 Googleplex, with its excellent 24-hour gym. 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 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 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 00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:13.610 had spent $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border, and 00:03:13.610 --> 00:03:19.940 hadn't caught a single terrorist. Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:21.110 Right. 00:03:21.110 --> 00:03:25.890 The DHS officers had bags under their eyes as they squinted at their screens, prodding 00:03:25.890 --> 00:03:31.110 mistrustfully at their keyboards with sausage fingers. No wonder it was taking four hours 00:03:31.110 --> 00:03:33.490 to get out of the goddamned airport. 00:03:33.490 --> 00:03:38.910 "Evening," he said, as he handed the man his sweaty passport. The man grunted and swiped 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 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. 00:03:50.610 --> 00:03:54.170 "Want to tell me about June, 1998?" 00:03:54.170 --> 00:03:59.209 Greg turned rotated his head this way and that. "I'm sorry?" 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 00:04:06.790 --> 00:04:12.790 Man. You posted, 'Would taking shrooms be a really bad idea?'" 00:04:12.790 --> 00:04:18.729 It was 3AM before they let him out of the "secondary screening" room. The interrogator 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 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. 00:04:29.139 --> 00:04:36.139 "I'd like to know more about your hobbies. Are you interested in model rocketry?" 00:04:36.259 --> 00:04:37.009 "What?" 00:04:37.009 --> 00:04:39.749 "Model rocketry." 00:04:39.749 --> 00:04:45.639 "No," Greg said. "No, I'm not." Thinking of all the explosives that model rocketry people 00:04:45.639 --> 00:04:47.849 surrounded themselves with. 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 00:04:52.870 --> 00:04:58.870 ads for model rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail." 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 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 00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:13.819 than what you told your father-confessor. He'd seen enough queries to know that. 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 00:05:20.229 --> 00:05:26.900 face and went on in a squeaky voice. "That would be unconstitutional. You weren't listening 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 00:05:33.240 --> 00:05:37.349 a brochure explaining it, I'll give it to you when we're through here." 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 00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:46.120 email from my friend who lives in Coulter, Iowa!" 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 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 00:05:57.830 --> 00:05:59.550 for you?" 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', 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 00:06:11.509 --> 00:06:15.610 coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:21.270 called "Jet Fuel." "Jet Fuel" and "Launch" -- that'd probably make Google barf up model 00:06:21.270 --> 00:06:27.300 rocket ads. Not that he would know -- he blocked all the ads in his browser. 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 00:06:32.029 --> 00:06:36.869 buried three screens deep in the search results for "Greg Lupinski," and Greg hadn't noticed 00:06:36.869 --> 00:06:38.599 them. 00:06:38.599 --> 00:06:43.259 "It was a Gulf War themed party," he said. "In the Castro." 00:06:43.259 --> 00:06:47.439 "And you're dressed as --?" 00:06:47.439 --> 00:06:53.449 "A suicide bomber." Just saying the words in an airport made him nervous, as though 00:06:53.449 --> 00:06:57.589 uttering them would cause the handcuffs to come out. 00:06:57.589 --> 00:06:58.779 "Come with me, Mr Lupinski." 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 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 00:07:11.649 --> 00:07:12.939 out of the Customs sterile area. 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 00:07:18.729 --> 00:07:23.240 the reason that he'd sought both night diving and deep diving specialist certification from 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 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 00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:37.569 he could, pursuing diving the way he pursued everything: thoroughly. 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 00:07:41.539 --> 00:07:47.399 from the secondary screening area. His suitcases stood alone by the baggage carousel. When 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 00:07:52.599 --> 00:07:55.509 his clothes stuck out from around the edges. 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 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:05.179 cotton Mexican shirt -- folded and fresh from his laundry-lady -- had a boot-print in the 00:08:05.179 --> 00:08:10.759 middle of it. His clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. Now they smelled of airports and 00:08:10.759 --> 00:08:11.289 machine oil. 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 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, 00:08:21.509 --> 00:08:26.379 turning the Victorian houses they called "painted ladies" vivid colors, was what it meant to 00:08:26.379 --> 00:08:27.499 be googled. 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 00:08:33.070 --> 00:08:39.389 person who he could talk to, and luckily, she was usually awake around now. 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 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: 00:08:49.149 --> 00:08:54.339 take her dogs and her girlfriend and head to Florence, for good. Learn Italian, take 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, 00:09:00.250 --> 00:09:04.889 she said, anywhere that he could reboot his existence. 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 00:09:10.029 --> 00:09:15.920 anything except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6AM by 350 pounds of drooling brown 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:17.220 canine. 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 00:09:21.449 --> 00:09:26.209 arms open, dropping the leashes and stamping on them with one sneaker, a practiced gesture. 00:09:26.209 --> 00:09:30.680 "Where's the rest of you? Dude, you look hawt!" 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 00:09:34.699 --> 00:09:41.699 googling. "Maya," he said. "Maya, what do you know about the DHS?" 00:09:42.190 --> 00:09:47.120 She stiffened and the dogs whined. She looked around, then nodded up at the tennis courts. 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 00:09:53.130 --> 00:09:57.089 points. Wide-angle webcam. Face away from it when you talk. Lip-readers." 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 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 00:10:08.350 --> 00:10:12.810 up on light standards and other power-ready poles around town. Especially not when measured 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 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 00:10:21.879 --> 00:10:25.610 been a day's worth of blogstorm while people looked out over their childhood streets or 00:10:25.610 --> 00:10:30.779 patrolled prostitution strolls, fingering johns, but it had blown over. 00:10:30.779 --> 00:10:35.220 Now he felt -- watched. 00:10:35.220 --> 00:10:39.870 Feeling silly, he kept his lips together and mumbled, "You're joking." 00:10:39.870 --> 00:10:45.120 "Come with me," she said, facing squarely away from the pole. 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 00:10:48.379 --> 00:10:52.959 in the kitchen as Maya fixed coffee for them -- barking, banging into the table and rocking 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 00:10:57.329 --> 00:11:01.180 her, then emerged, looking flustered. 00:11:01.180 --> 00:11:05.199 "It started with China," she said. "Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they 00:11:05.199 --> 00:11:10.350 went under Chinese jurisdiction. They could google everyone going through our servers." 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 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 00:11:20.060 --> 00:11:23.100 was collecting your info, forever. 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:27.550 "They were using us to build profiles of people. Not arresting them, you understand. But when 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 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." 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.519 Greg shook his head. "Why did they put the servers in China?" 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 00:11:45.589 --> 00:11:50.250 made a face. Somewhere along the way, Google had become obsessed with Yahoo, more worried 00:11:50.250 --> 00:11:54.889 about what the competition was doing than how they were performing. "So we did it. But 00:11:54.889 --> 00:11:57.129 a lot of us didn't like the idea." 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 00:12:02.490 --> 00:12:07.930 project." Googlers were supposed to devote 20 percent of their time to blue-sky projects. 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 00:12:13.160 --> 00:12:18.329 normalizes you. Your searches, your gmail histograms, your browsing patterns. All of 00:12:18.329 --> 00:12:19.560 it." 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:21.029 "The search ads?" 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 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." 00:12:33.300 --> 00:12:38.959 Greg felt sick. "Why? Don't tell me Yahoo was doing it already --" 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 00:12:46.769 --> 00:12:51.810 hate Google. We are overwhelmingly registered Democrat. So we're doing what we can to make 00:12:51.810 --> 00:12:58.209 peace with them before they clobber us. This isn't PII --" Personally Identifying Information, 00:12:58.209 --> 00:13:04.490 the toxic smog of the information age "-- it's just metadata. So it's only slightly 00:13:04.490 --> 00:13:05.810 evil." 00:13:05.810 --> 00:13:09.459 "If it's all so innocuous, why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?" 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 00:13:15.180 --> 00:13:20.199 spooks are like pubic lice. They get everywhere. Once we let them in, everything suddenly got 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 00:13:27.100 --> 00:13:31.750 in some Soviet ministry, with a political officer always there, watching everything. 00:13:31.750 --> 00:13:37.040 And the security clearance. Now we're divided into these two camps: the cleared and the 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 -- 00:13:44.470 --> 00:13:50.209 being a homo no longer disqualifies you for access to seekrit crap. No cleared person 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 00:13:55.100 --> 00:14:01.319 will get pulled off your project 'for security reasons', whatever that means." 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 00:14:07.290 --> 00:14:11.019 I might have ended up in Gitmo if it had gone badly, huh?" 00:14:11.019 --> 00:14:16.300 She was staring at him intently, her eyes flicking from side to side. He waited, but 00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:17.310 she didn't say anything. 00:14:17.310 --> 00:14:18.629 "What?" 00:14:18.629 --> 00:14:23.680 "What I'm about to tell you, you can't ever repeat it, OK?" 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?" 00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:38.110 "Nothing so simple. Here's the thing: the airport DHS scrutiny is a gating function. 00:14:38.949 --> 00:14:44.569 It lets the spooks narrow down their search criteria. Once you get pulled aside for secondary 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 00:14:51.470 --> 00:14:55.889 the webcams for your face and gait. Read your mail. Log your searches." 00:14:55.889 --> 00:14:58.160 "I thought you said the courts wouldn't let them --" 00:14:58.160 --> 00:15:03.550 "The courts won't let them indiscriminately google you. But once you get into the system, 00:15:03.550 --> 00:15:10.180 it becomes a selective search. All legal. And once they start googling you, they always 00:15:10.180 --> 00:15:10.860 find something." 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:15.870 "You mean to say they've got a boiler-room of midwestern housewives reading the email 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 00:15:20.069 --> 00:15:21.300 job." 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 00:15:28.999 --> 00:15:33.889 that checks for 'suspicious patterns' and gradually builds the case against you, using 00:15:33.889 --> 00:15:38.829 deviation from statistical norms to prove that you're guilty of something. It's just 00:15:38.829 --> 00:15:43.759 a variation of the way we spot search-spammers" -- the "optimizers" who tried to get their 00:15:43.759 --> 00:15:48.709 Viagra scams and Ponzi schemes to come to the top of the search results "-- but instead 00:15:48.709 --> 00:15:54.920 of lowering your search rank, we increase your probability of being sent to Syria. And 00:15:54.920 --> 00:16:00.240 of course, they google all of us, everyone who works on anything 'sensitive.'" 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 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 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 00:16:17.589 --> 00:16:23.069 reason for taking his fresh-minted computer science PhD from Stanford directly to Google. 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 00:16:31.860 --> 00:16:35.730 what it was like when we started censoring the Chinese search results, and we all asked 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 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 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 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." 00:16:57.899 --> 00:17:02.850 "Now what?" Greg pushed a dog away from him and Maya looked hurt. 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 00:17:09.040 --> 00:17:14.150 over your shoulder, all the time. You know the mission statement, right? 'Organize all 00:17:14.150 --> 00:17:19.420 human knowledge.' That's everything. Give it five years, we'll know how many turds were 00:17:19.420 --> 00:17:24.030 in the bowl before you flushed. Combine that with automated suspicion of anyone who matches 00:17:24.030 --> 00:17:28.510 a statistical picture of a bad guy and you're --" 00:17:28.510 --> 00:17:30.440 "I'm scroogled." 00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:30.690 "Totally." 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:37.680 "Thanks, Maya," he said. "Thanks anyway." 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 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 00:17:47.700 --> 00:17:51.250 girlfriend. She came back without the dogs. 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 00:17:57.320 --> 00:17:58.120 you." 00:17:58.120 --> 00:18:00.690 "But you're under constant scrutiny --" 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 00:18:06.930 --> 00:18:10.890 and stupider. I can googleclean you, Greg." 00:18:10.890 --> 00:18:12.810 "I don't want you to get into trouble." 00:18:12.810 --> 00:18:18.150 She shook her head. "I'm already doomed. I built the googlecleaner. Every day since then 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 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 00:18:27.370 --> 00:18:30.530 like me in the War on Abstract Nouns." 00:18:30.530 --> 00:18:36.770 Greg remembered the questioning at the airport. The search. His shirt, the bootprint in the 00:18:36.770 --> 00:18:38.430 middle of it. 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:41.520 "Do it," he said. 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 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 00:18:50.440 --> 00:18:55.500 showed up on a lot of his pages. They stayed subliminal mostly -- only clunkers like that 00:18:55.500 --> 00:18:59.860 Ann Coulter ringtone ad made it past his eyes into his brain. 00:18:59.860 --> 00:19:06.860 Now the clunkers were everywhere: Intelligent Design Facts, Online Seminary Degree, Terror 00:19:07.020 --> 00:19:14.020 Free Tomorrow, Porn Blocker Software, Homosexuality and Satan. He clicked through a couple of 00:19:14.060 --> 00:19:18.810 these and found himself in some kind of alternate universe Internet, full of weird opinions 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 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:25.950 vigilance. 00:19:25.950 --> 00:19:31.120 Then he started to notice something weird about the search results themselves. After 00:19:31.120 --> 00:19:35.150 unpacking his suitcase and opening his mail, he spent two weeks sitting at home on his 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 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 00:19:46.290 --> 00:19:49.570 low-fat cuisine couldn't possibly be as gross as it sounded. 00:19:49.570 --> 00:19:53.580 "Did you mean 'Hungarian Restaurants'?" 00:19:53.580 --> 00:20:00.580 He snorted. No, he'd meant "holistic restaurants," you dumbass search-engine. It nagged at him. 00:20:00.600 --> 00:20:04.880 He pulled up his search history and went back through the results, printing out the pages. 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:08.810 Then he logged out of his Google account and went back through the same searches, comparing 00:20:08.810 --> 00:20:14.350 the results to the logged-in pages. The differences were striking. A search for "democratic primary" 00:20:14.350 --> 00:20:19.420 pointed to anti-Hillary rants on angry blogs when he was logged in, and to information 00:20:19.420 --> 00:20:24.380 on volunteering for the DNC when he was logged out. Searching for "abortion clinic" while 00:20:24.380 --> 00:20:28.820 logged out listed the nearest Planned Parenthood office; searching while logged in gave him 00:20:28.820 --> 00:20:34.360 information about Campaign Life, ProLife.com, and the ProLife alliance. Good thing he wasn't 00:20:34.360 --> 00:20:34.610 pregnant. 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 00:20:38.580 --> 00:20:42.860 TiVos to record an episode of "Queer Eye" and then got inundated with suggestions for 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. 00:20:48.090 --> 00:20:52.780 Google had been experimenting with "personalized" search results before he left the country 00:20:52.780 --> 00:20:56.390 -- here it was, in all its glory. 00:20:56.390 --> 00:21:00.240 Google thought he was a conservative Christian Republican who supported the War on Terror 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:03.070 and many other abstract nouns. 00:21:03.070 --> 00:21:07.550 He logged out of Google -- that was simple. Five minutes later, he logged in again. His 00:21:07.550 --> 00:21:12.690 entire address book was in there. He logged out again. Logged back in. His calendar -- 00:21:12.690 --> 00:21:18.840 when was his parents' anniversary again? Logged out. Logged back in. Needed his bookmarked 00:21:18.840 --> 00:21:21.470 locations in Maps. Logged out. 00:21:21.470 --> 00:21:26.600 He stopped trying. Google was where his friendships lived -- all those people he stayed connected 00:21:26.600 --> 00:21:31.340 to on Orkut. It was where his relationships lived: all that archived email, all those 00:21:31.340 --> 00:21:37.570 addresses in his address-book. It was his family photos, his bookmarks. Hell, his search 00:21:37.570 --> 00:21:42.340 history -- his real search history -- was like an outboard brain, remembering which 00:21:42.340 --> 00:21:46.500 parts of the unplumbable Internet he cared about, so that he didn't have to remember 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:49.820 it the hard way, with the meat in his skull. 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 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 00:22:01.240 --> 00:22:02.960 have to stay logged in. 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 00:22:07.550 --> 00:22:14.140 at the toolbar clock: 4:13AM! Christ, who was pounding on his door at this hour? 00:22:14.140 --> 00:22:19.220 He shouted "Coming!" in a muzzy voice and pulled on a robe and slippers. He shuffled 00:22:19.220 --> 00:22:23.620 down the hallway, turning on lights as he went, squinting. At the door, he squinted 00:22:23.620 --> 00:22:27.460 through the peephole, peering at -- Maya. 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, 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 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 00:22:40.370 --> 00:22:45.010 a freebie Google Summer of Code sweatshirt, jeans, and a frown that started between her 00:22:45.010 --> 00:22:48.070 eyebrows and intensified all the way down her face. 00:22:48.070 --> 00:22:52.630 Maya was sheened with sweat, her hair sticking to her forehead. She scrubbed at her eyes, 00:22:52.630 --> 00:22:54.830 which were red and lined. 00:22:54.830 --> 00:22:57.610 "Pack a bag," she said, in a hoarse croak. 00:22:57.610 --> 00:22:58.660 "What?" 00:22:58.660 --> 00:23:01.980 "Whatever you can't live without. A couple changes of clothes. Anything you're sentimental 00:23:01.980 --> 00:23:06.360 about -- shoebox of pictures, your grandfather's razor, whatever. But keep it small, something 00:23:06.360 --> 00:23:09.170 you can carry. We're traveling light." 00:23:09.170 --> 00:23:09.840 "Maya, what are you --" 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 00:23:14.740 --> 00:23:15.280 no time." 00:23:15.280 --> 00:23:16.850 "Where do you want to --" 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 00:23:22.610 --> 00:23:24.660 yanking open drawers. 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." 00:23:29.520 --> 00:23:33.420 She glared at him and pushed her hair away from her face. "The googlecleaner lives. I 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. 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 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 00:23:47.420 --> 00:23:51.550 it six times to smear six very specific accounts." 00:23:51.550 --> 00:23:54.050 "Who's using it?" 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 00:23:58.100 --> 00:24:04.280 six candidates, four Republican and two Democrat, who were all in the running for the primaries. 00:24:04.280 --> 00:24:07.340 "Googlers are blackwashing political candidates?" 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 00:24:12.650 --> 00:24:17.290 IPs are all also used by Gmail users. And those Gmail users --" 00:24:17.290 --> 00:24:19.030 "You spied on gmail accounts?" 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, 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 00:24:27.410 --> 00:24:30.920 the dogs by the collars and looking down at the floor. 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 00:24:35.260 --> 00:24:37.500 again, and for a lot worse reasons that this. 00:24:37.500 --> 00:24:42.710 "It's our lobbying firm. The ones who invented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Remember 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 00:24:46.440 --> 00:24:51.190 full of registered Democrats' forever. We needed friends in Congress. These guys could 00:24:51.190 --> 00:24:52.410 do it for us." 00:24:52.410 --> 00:24:54.540 "But they're ruining politicians' careers!" 00:24:54.540 --> 00:24:58.020 "Yeah. They certainly are. And who benefits when they do that?" 00:24:58.020 --> 00:25:01.610 Laurie spoke, at last. "Other politicians." 00:25:01.610 --> 00:25:05.160 He felt his pulse beating in his temples. "We should tell someone." 00:25:05.160 --> 00:25:11.140 "Yeah," Maya said. "How? They know everything about us. They can see every search. Every 00:25:11.140 --> 00:25:15.120 email. Every time we've been caught on the webcams. Who is in our social network -- 00:25:15.120 --> 00:25:18.660 you know that if you've got more than fifteen Orkut buddies, it's statistically certain 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? 00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:28.230 Remember the airport? Imagine a lot more of that." 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. 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 00:25:38.570 --> 00:25:43.590 and raise dogs. Whatever. This is crazy --" 00:25:43.590 --> 00:25:47.000 "They came to see me today," she said. "At work. Two of the political officers -- the 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:52.420 minders who monitor our sensitive projects. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions." 00:25:52.420 --> 00:25:53.520 "About the googlecleaner?" 00:25:53.520 --> 00:25:58.650 "About my friends and family. About my search history. About my political beliefs." 00:25:58.650 --> 00:25:59.860 "Jesus." 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 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." 00:26:08.820 --> 00:26:11.500 "There's a Google office in Mexico, you know." 00:26:11.500 --> 00:26:15.030 "Are you coming, Greg? We're going now." 00:26:15.030 --> 00:26:18.460 "Laurie, what do you think of this?" 00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:24.150 Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. "Maya showed me what Google knows about me. 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 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 00:26:35.520 --> 00:26:41.140 the Stasi. They'd put everything about you in your file -- even unpatriotic jokes. Lately 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. 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." 00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:55.950 "We're going now, Greg. Now. Are you coming?" 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, 00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:03.690 OK?" 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 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:12.640 hug. "Be careful yourself," she whispered in his ear. 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 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, 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. 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 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 00:27:38.940 --> 00:27:44.470 flag on the other. "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," he said, by way of introduction. "'Exceeding 00:27:44.470 --> 00:27:50.630 authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information.' Ten years for 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 00:27:55.420 --> 00:28:01.390 that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies. And oh, what will 00:28:01.390 --> 00:28:06.160 come out in the trial. All the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile." 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 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. 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 00:28:18.730 --> 00:28:19.510 to hear from Maya. 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. 00:28:26.190 --> 00:28:30.580 "You can do that," the man said. "But hear me out first." 00:28:30.580 --> 00:28:35.100 Greg found his voice. "I'd like to see your badge." 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. 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 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 00:28:55.230 --> 00:28:59.700 with you first. There's an offer I'd like to make." 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 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 00:29:07.950 --> 00:29:10.580 all up. I'll go straight to them." 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 00:29:15.670 --> 00:29:19.710 office in the morning and spill everything you need. They'd try to find a confirming 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 00:29:57.270 --> 00:29:59.730 pass me a colander?" 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 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:08.000 chair, then undid his cuffs and rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his 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 00:30:13.120 --> 00:30:14.010 did things at the sink. 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. 00:30:21.010 --> 00:30:26.940 It made Greg relax, somehow. This guy had the social gracelessness of a nerd, felt like 00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:32.560 a real Googler, obsessed with the minutiae. He knew his way around a coffee-grinder, too. 00:30:32.560 --> 00:30:35.300 "We're drafting a team for Building 49 --" 00:30:35.300 --> 00:30:38.670 "There is no building 49," Greg said, automatically. 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 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 00:30:50.750 --> 00:30:55.260 efficient. Every time someone runs it, it clobbers the whole farm. And it's got plenty 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 00:31:00.760 --> 00:31:04.060 matter what you knew if you were back inside --" 00:31:04.060 --> 00:31:06.640 "No, I wouldn't," Greg said. "You're on crack." 00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:12.290 "Hear me out. There's money involved. Good work, too. Smart colleagues. A direction for 00:31:12.290 --> 00:31:16.030 your life. A chance to participate in the political life of your country --" 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 00:31:21.850 --> 00:31:28.740 smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you're even crazier than I thought." 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. 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, 00:31:44.500 --> 00:31:49.990 right? Every Google profile is a little scary under close inspection. Close inspection is 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, 00:31:54.360 --> 00:31:58.660 your brothers, your ex-girlfriends. Now that your search history is available to so many 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 00:32:04.380 --> 00:32:10.200 messages, your searches, all of it." He loaded the cafetiere and depressed the plunger, his 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 00:32:15.980 --> 00:32:21.040 mugs -- Google mugs, of course -- and passed them to him. 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 00:32:25.770 --> 00:32:32.260 cleanup. Preserve their privacy. That's all -- I promise you, that's all." 00:32:32.260 --> 00:32:36.750 Greg sipped the coffee, but didn't taste it. "And whichever candidates you don't clean 00:32:36.750 --> 00:32:38.120 --" 00:32:38.120 --> 00:32:42.640 "Yeah," the guy said. "Yeah, you're right. It'll be tough for them." 00:32:42.640 --> 00:32:44.000 "You can go now," Greg said. 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 00:32:51.610 --> 00:32:56.710 in the inside pocket and produced a small stack of paper, folded into quarters. He smoothed 00:32:56.710 --> 00:32:58.940 it out and put it on the table. 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 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 00:33:07.950 --> 00:33:11.990 history. Go ahead. In five years, everyone will have had their search history ruptured. 00:33:11.990 --> 00:33:12.800 We'll all be guilty." 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 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 00:33:24.850 --> 00:33:28.080 Greg had contributed to for the last three elections. 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 00:33:32.010 --> 00:33:34.790 package is very generous, too." 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 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. 00:33:45.780 --> 00:33:48.030 The man knew what he was doing. 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. 00:33:53.340 --> 00:33:58.780 Wonderful technology. Nothing in the world like it. When you worked at G, you had the 00:33:58.780 --> 00:34:04.760 best model train set in the universe to play with. Organizing all of human knowledge. 00:34:04.760 --> 00:34:08.109 "You can pick your team, of course," the man said. 00:34:08.109 --> 00:34:11.230 Greg poured himself another cup of delicious coffee. 00:34:11.230 --> 00:34:15.560 The new Congress took eleven working days to pass the Securing and Enumerating America's 00:34:15.560 --> 00:34:20.940 Communications and Hypertext Act, which authorized the DHS and the NSA to outsource up to 80 00:34:20.940 --> 00:34:25.340 percent of its intelligence and analysis work to private contractors. 00:34:25.340 --> 00:34:29.040 Theoretically, the contracts were open to a competitive bidding process, but within 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 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, 00:34:38.710 --> 00:34:42.389 you can bet that they would have caught them -- governments just aren't equipped to Do 00:34:42.389 --> 00:34:44.020 Search Right. 00:34:44.020 --> 00:34:48.179 Greg looked himself in the eye that morning as he shaved -- the security minders didn't 00:34:48.179 --> 00:34:52.320 like hacker-stubble, and they weren't shy about telling you so -- and realized that 00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:57.270 today was his first day as a de facto intelligence agent in the US government. 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 00:35:01.550 --> 00:35:02.000 spook? 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 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 00:35:12.520 --> 00:35:14.840 down and sipped. 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 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 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 00:35:26.890 --> 00:35:30.050 refrigerated for all that he hadn't changed a hair. 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 00:35:34.820 --> 00:35:35.560 and left the room. 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 00:35:41.550 --> 00:35:43.510 start World War III, right?" 00:35:43.510 --> 00:35:49.400 "Nothing so obvious," the man said, patting his shoulder. "Just a little search-job." 00:35:49.400 --> 00:35:49.650 "Yeah?" 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 00:35:54.190 --> 00:35:59.190 for Mexico. She knows certain things that are, as of today, classified. She needs to 00:35:59.190 --> 00:36:01.690 be briefed on her new responsibilities." 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. 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 00:36:10.770 --> 00:36:15.390 with her, being productive, or you can find out just how rotten life can get -- while 00:36:15.390 --> 00:36:20.210 she works here, being productive with your co-workers." 00:36:20.210 --> 00:36:23.830 Greg stared at him, his hands balled into fists. 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 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 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 00:36:39.320 --> 00:36:42.630 bunch of straight-edge code-grinders in Virginia?" 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 00:36:46.390 --> 00:36:51.190 stopped and kicked a wall so hard he felt something give way in his foot. 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. 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 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 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 00:37:11.080 --> 00:37:15.510 the Googlers in 49 only emerged for meals, and sometimes not even that. 00:37:15.510 --> 00:37:19.670 Swipe, swipe, swipe. 00:37:19.670 --> 00:37:22.630 "Greg, can I see you, please?" 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 00:37:26.990 --> 00:37:31.640 and Greg smelled his citrusy aftershave. It was the same cologne that his divemaster in 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 00:37:35.710 --> 00:37:39.840 name. Juan-Carlos? Juan-Luis? 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 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 00:37:49.140 --> 00:37:51.610 off," he said. 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 00:37:56.850 --> 00:37:58.000 wrong? Was he going to jail? 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:03.670 "It's Maya." The man turned him around, met his eyes with his bottomless basset-hound 00:38:03.670 --> 00:38:10.670 gaze. "It's Maya. Killed herself. In Guatemala. I'm sorry, Greg." 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 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, 00:38:23.550 --> 00:38:28.940 tiny and insignificant. He willed himself to tear at his hair, to drop to his knees 00:38:28.940 --> 00:38:30.770 and weep. 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." 00:38:36.220 --> 00:38:39.230 From a long way away, he heard the rumpled man insist. 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 00:38:44.630 --> 00:38:49.470 then the two pixels moved into Building 49 and the door swung shut behind them. 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, 00:39:07.820 --> 00:39:12.930 but in 2007, this was the most widely circulated "lifestyle" magazine in the US. They asked 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 00:39:18.580 --> 00:39:22.560 about the company selling out to some evil millionaire. If Google ever turned evil, it 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 00:39:27.220 --> 00:39:28.750 of a compelling technical challenge. 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 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 00:39:37.990 --> 00:39:42.270 in public, right?). I also had an incredibly productive conversation with the Electronic 00:39:42.270 --> 00:39:46.880 Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston, a profound and sharp-witted privacy lawyer. 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 00:39:51.260 --> 00:39:56.440 of these. For example, all the Microsoft employees I know are fantastic and smart and caring 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. 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 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 00:40:10.900 --> 00:40:12.020 can do bad.