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Wheaton: Scroogled by Cory Doctorow. Originally published in Radar Magazine, September, 2007.

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Read by Will Wheaton.

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"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."

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Cardinal Richelieu

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Greg landed at SFO at 8PM, but by the time he made it to the front of the customs line it was after midnight.

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He had it good -- he'd been in first class, first off the plane,

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brown as a nut and loose-limbed after a month on the beach at Cabo,

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SCUBA diving three days a week, bumming around and flirting with French college girls the rest of the time.

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When he'd left San Francisco a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, pot-bellied wreck --

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now he was a bronze god, drawing appreciative looks from the stews at the front of the plane.

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In the four hours he spent in the customs line, he fell from god back to man.

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His warm buzz wore off, the sweat ran down the crack of his ass,

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and his shoulders and neck grew so tense that his upper back felt like a tennis racket.

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The batteries on his iPod died after the third hour, leaving him with nothing to do

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except eavesdrop on the middle-aged couple ahead of him.

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"They've starting googling us at the border," she said. "I told you they'd do it."

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"I thought that didn't start until next month?"

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The man had brought a huge sombrero on board, carefully stowing it in its own overhead locker,

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and now he was stuck alternately wearing it and holding it.

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Googling at the border. Christ. Greg vested out from Google six months before, cashing in his options

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and "taking some me time," which turned out to be harder than he expected.

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Five months later, what he'd mostly done is fix his friends' PCs and websites, and watch daytime TV,

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and gain ten pounds, which he blamed on being at home,

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instead of in the Googleplex, with its excellent 24-hour gym.

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The writing had been on the wall.

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Google had a whole pod of lawyers in charge of dealing with the world's governments,

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and scumbag lobbyists on the Hill to try to keep the law from turning them into the world's best snitch.

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It was a losing battle.

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The Government had spent $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border,

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and hadn't caught a single terrorist.

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Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search Right.

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The DHS officers had bags under their eyes
as they squinted at their screens,

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prodding mistrustfully at their keyboards with sausage fingers.

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No wonder it was taking four hours to get out of the goddamned airport.

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"Evening," he said, as he handed the man his sweaty passport.

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The man grunted and swiped it, then stared at his screen, clicking. A lot.

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He had a little bit of dried food in the corner of his mouth

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and his tongue crept out and licked at it as he concentrated.

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"Want to tell me about June, 1998?"

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Greg turned, rotated his head this way and that. "I'm sorry?"

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"You posted a message to alt.burningman on June 17, 1998 about your plan to attend Burning Man.

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You posted, 'Would taking shrooms be a really bad idea?'"

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It was 3AM before they let him out of the "secondary screening" room.

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The interrogator was an older man, so skinny he looked like he'd been carved out of wood

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His questions went a lot further than the Burning Man shrooms.

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They were just the start of Greg's problems.

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"I'd like to know more about your hobbies. Are you interested in model rocketry?"

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"What?"

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"Model rocketry."

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"No," Greg said. "No, I'm not."

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Thinking of all the explosives that model rocketry people surrounded themselves with.

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The man made a note, clicked some more.

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"You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike of ads for model rocketry supplies

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showing up alongside your search results and Google mail."

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Greg felt his guts spasm. "You're looking at my searches and email?"

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He hadn't touched a keyboard in a month,

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but he knew that what you put into the searchbar was more intimate than what you told your father-confessor.

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He'd seen enough queries to know that.

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"Calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches."

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The man made a bitter lemon face and went on in a squeaky voice.

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"That would be unconstitutional. You weren't listening to me.

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We see the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching.

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I have a brochure explaining it, I'll give it to you when we're through here."

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"But the ads don't mean anything -- I get ads for Ann Coulter ringtones

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whenever I get email from my friend who lives in Coulter, Iowa!"

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The man nodded. "I understand, sir. And that's just why I'm here talking to you, instead of just looking at this screen.

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Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently for you?"

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He thought for a moment.

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"OK, just do this. Go to Google and search for 'coffee fanciers', all right?"

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He'd been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service.

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The blend they were going to launch with was called "Jet Fuel." "Jet Fuel" and "Launch"

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-- that'd probably make Google barf up model rocket ads.

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Not that he would know -- he blocked all the ads in his browser.

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They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Hallowe'en photos.

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They were buried three screens deep in the search results for "Greg Lupinski," and Greg hadn't noticed them.

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"It was a Gulf War themed party," he said. "In the Castro."

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"And you're dressed as --?"

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"A suicide bomber."

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Just saying the words in an airport made him nervous,

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as though uttering them would cause the handcuffs to come out.

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"Come with me, Mr Lupinski."

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The search lasted a long time. They swabbed him in places he didn't know he had.

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He asked about a lawyer.

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They told him that he could call all the lawyers he wanted once he was out of the Customs sterile area.

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"Good night, Mr Lupinski."

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This was a new interrogator, a man who'd wanted to know about

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the reason that he'd sought both night diving and deep diving specialist certification from the PADI instructor in Cabo.

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The guy impliedthat Greg had been training to be an al-Qaeda frogman,

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and didn't seem to believe that Greg had just wanted to do all the certifications he could,

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pursuing diving the way he pursued everything: thoroughly.

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But now the man with the frogman fantasy was bidding him a good night and releasing him from the secondary screening area.

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His suitcases stood alone by the baggage carousel.

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When he picked them up, he saw that they had been opened and then inexpertly closed.

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Some of his clothes stuck out from around the edges.

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At home, he saw that all the fake "pre-Colombian" statues had been broken,

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and that his white cotton Mexican shirt -- folded and fresh from his laundry-lady -- had a boot-print in the middle of it.

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His clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. Now they smelled of airports and machine oil.

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The mailman had dropped an entire milk-crate of mail off at his place that day, but he couldn't even begin to confront it.

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All he could think of, as the sun rose over the Mission, turning the Victorian houses they called "painted ladies" vivid colors,

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was what it meant to be googled.

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He wasn't going to sleep. No way. He needed to talk about this.

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And there was only one person who he could talk to, and luckily, she was usually awake around now.

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Maya had started at Google two years after him, but had gotten a much bigger grant of stock than he had.

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She knew exactly what she was going to do with it, too, once she vested:

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take her dogs and her girlfriend and head to Florence, for good.

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Learn Italian, take in the museums, sit in the cafes.

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It was she who'd convinced him to go to Mexico: anywhere, she said, anywhere that he could reboot his existence.

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Maya had two giant chocolate Labs and a very, very patient girlfriend who'd put up with anything

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except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6AM by 350 pounds of drooling brown canine

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She went for her Mace as he jogged towards her, then did a double-take and threw her arms open,

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dropping the leashes and stamping on them with one sneaker, a practiced gesture.

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"Where's the rest of you? Dude, you look hawt!"

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He took the hug, suddenly self-conscious of the way he smelled after a night of invasive googling.

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"Maya," he said. "Maya, what do you know about the DHS?"

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She stiffened and the dogs whined. She looked around, then nodded up at the tennis courts.

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"Top of the light standard there, don't look, there. That's one of our muni WiFi access points.

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Wide-angle webcam. Face away from it when you talk. Lip-readers."

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He parsed this out slowly. Google's free municipal WiFi program was a hit in every city where it played,

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and in the grand scheme of things, it hadn't cost much to put WiFi access points up on light standards and other power-ready poles around town.

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Especially not when measured against the ability to serve ads to people based on where they were sitting.

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He hadn't paid much attention when they'd made the webcams on all those access points public

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-- there'd been a day's worth of blogstorm while people looked out over their childhood streets

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or patrolled prostitution strolls, fingering johns, but it had blown over.

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Now he felt -- watched.

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Feeling silly, he kept his lips together and
mumbled, "You're joking."

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"Come with me," she said, facing squarely
away from the pole.

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The dogs weren't happy about having their walks cut short,

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and they let it be known in the kitchen as Maya fixed coffee for them -- barking, banging into the table and rocking it.

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Maya's girlfriend Laurie called out from the bedroom and Maya went back to talk to her, then emerged, looking flustered.

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"It started with China," she said.

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"Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they went under Chinese jurisdiction.

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They could google everyone going through our servers."

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Greg knew what that meant:

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if you visited a page with Google ads on it, if you used Google maps, if you used Google mail -- even if you sent mail to a gmail account --

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Google was collecting your info, forever.

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"They were using us to build profiles of people. Not arresting them, you understand.

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But when they had someone they wanted to arrest, they'd come to us for a profile and find a reason to bust them.

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There's hardly anything you can do on the net that isn't illegal in China."

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Greg shook his head. "Why did they put the servers in China?"

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"The government said they'd block them if they didn't. And Yahoo was there."

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They both made a face.

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Somewhere along the way, Google had become obsessed with Yahoo,

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more worried about what the competition was doing than how they were performing.

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"So we did it. But a lot of us didn't like the idea."

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She sipped her coffee and lowered her voice. One of the dogs whined.

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"I made it my 20 percent project."

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Googlers were supposed to devote 20 percent of their time to blue-sky projects.

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"Me and my pod. We call it the googlecleaner.

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It goes deep into the database and statistically normalizes you.

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Your searches, your gmail histograms, your browsing patterns. All of it."

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"The search ads?"

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"Ah," she grimaced. "Yes, the DHS. So we brokered a compromise with the DHS.

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They'd stop asking to go fishing in our search records and we'd let them see what ads got displayed for you."

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Greg felt sick. "Why? Don't tell me Yahoo was doing it already --"

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"No, no. Well, yes. Sure. Yahoo was already doing it. But that wasn't it. You know, Republicans hate Google.

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We are overwhelmingly registered Democrat.

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So we're doing what we can to make peace with them before they clobber us.

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This isn't PII --" Personally Identifying Information, the toxic smog of the information age "-- it's just metadata.

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So it's only slightly evil."

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"If it's all so innocuous, why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?"

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She sighed and hugged the dog that was butting her with his huge, anvil-shaped head.

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"The spooks are like pubic lice. They get everywhere.

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Once we let them in, everything suddenly got a lot more -- secret.

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Some of our meetings have to have spooks present,

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it's like being in some Soviet ministry, with a political officer always there, watching everything.

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And the security clearance. Now we're divided into these camps: the cleared and the suspect.

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We all know who isn't cleared, but no one knows why.

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I'm cleared. Lucky me -- being a homo no longer disqualifies you for access to seekrit crap

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No cleared person wants to even eat lunch with an un-clearable.

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Every now and again, one of your teammates will get pulled off your project 'for security reasons', whatever that means."

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Greg felt very tired. "So now I'm feeling lucky I got out of the airport alive.

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I suppose I might have ended up in Gitmo if it had gone badly, huh?"

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She was staring at him intently, her eyes flicking from side to side.

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He waited, but she didn't say anything.

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"What?"

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"What I'm about to tell you, you can't ever repeat it, OK?"

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"Um, OK? You're not going to tell me you're a deep-cover Al-Quaeda suicide bomber?"

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"Nothing so simple. Here's the thing: the airport DHS scrutiny is a gating function.

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It lets the spooks narrow down their search criteria.

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Once you get pulled aside for secondary at the border, you become a 'person of interest,' and they never, ever let up.

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They'll check the webcams for your face and gait. Read your mail. Log your searches."

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"I thought you said the courts wouldn't let them --"

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"The courts won't let them indiscriminately google you.

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But once you get into the system, it becomes a selective search. All legal.

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And once they start googling you, they always find something."

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"You mean to say they've got a boiler-room of midwestern housewives reading the email of everyone who ever got a second look at the border?

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That sounds like the world's shittiest job."

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"If only. No, this is all untouched by human hands.

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All your data is fed into a big hopper that checks for 'suspicious patterns' and gradually builds the case against you,

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using deviation from statistical norms to prove that you're guilty of something.

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It's just a variation of the way we spot search-spammers"

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-- the "optimizers" who tried to get their Viagra scams and Ponzi schemes to come to the top of the search results "

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-- but instead of lowering your search rank, we increase your probability of being sent to Syria.

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And of course, they google all of us, everyone
who works on anything 'sensitive.'"

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"Naturally," Greg said. He felt like he was going to throw up. He felt like never using a search engine again.

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"How the hell did this happen? It's such a good place. 'Don't be evil,' right?"

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That was the corporate motto, and for Greg, it had been a huge part of his reason

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for taking his fresh-minted computer science PhD from Stanford directly to Google.

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Maya's laugh was bitter and cynical. "Don't be evil? Come on, Greg.

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Don't you remember what it was like when we started censoring the Chinese search results,

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and we all asked how that could be anything but evil?

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The company line was hilarious: 'We're not doing evil -- we're giving them access to a better search tool!

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If we showed them search results they couldn't get to, that would just frustrate them.

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It would be a bad user experience.

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If we hadn't lost our don't-be-evil cherry by then, we surely did the day we took that one."

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"Now what?" Greg pushed a dog away from him and Maya looked hurt.

207
00:16:16,321 --> 00:16:19,828
"Now you're a person of interest, Greg. Googlestalked.

208
00:16:20,557 --> 00:16:24,735
Now, you live your life with someone watching over your shoulder, all the time.

209
00:16:25,402 --> 00:16:30,529
You know the mission statement, right? 'Organize all human knowledge.' That's everything.

210
00:16:31,176 --> 00:16:35,171
Give it five years, we'll know how many turds were in the bowl before you flushed.

211
00:16:35,171 --> 00:16:41,395
Combine that with automated suspicion of anyone who matches a statistical picture of a bad guy and you're --"

212
00:16:42,271 --> 00:16:43,471
"I'm scroogled."

213
00:16:44,031 --> 00:16:45,123
"Totally."

214
00:16:46,460 --> 00:16:50,164
"Thanks, Maya," he said. "Thanks anyway."

215
00:16:51,491 --> 00:16:56,275
"Sit down," she said. The dog that had been bumping at his legs was at it again.

216
00:16:56,956 --> 00:17:02,239
Maya took both dogs down the hall to the bedroom and he heard her muffled argument with her girlfriend.

217
00:17:02,933 --> 00:17:04,717
She came back without the dogs.

218
00:17:05,483 --> 00:17:09,690
"I can fix this," she said in a whisper so low it was practically a hiss.

219
00:17:10,348 --> 00:17:11,686
"I can googleclean you."

220
00:17:12,553 --> 00:17:14,460
"But you're under constant scrutiny --"

221
00:17:14,460 --> 00:17:15,914
"By DHS agents.

222
00:17:16,621 --> 00:17:21,708
Once they fired all non-native-born Americans from the DHS, it got a lot fatter and stupider.

223
00:17:22,520 --> 00:17:24,012
I can googleclean you, Greg."

224
00:17:24,804 --> 00:17:26,157
"I don't want you to get into trouble."

225
00:17:26,714 --> 00:17:30,866
She shook her head. "I'm already doomed. I built the googlecleaner.

226
00:17:30,866 --> 00:17:33,211
Every day since then has been borrowed time

227
00:17:33,792 --> 00:17:38,139
-- now it's just a matter of waiting for someone to point out my expertise and history to the DHS

228
00:17:38,139 --> 00:17:39,739
and, oh, I don't know.

229
00:17:39,747 --> 00:17:43,572
Whatever it is they do to people like me in the War on Abstract Nouns."

230
00:17:44,379 --> 00:17:51,428
Greg remembered the questioning at the airport. The search. His shirt, the bootprint in the middle of it.

231
00:17:52,228 --> 00:17:53,966
"Do it," he said.

232
00:17:55,235 --> 00:17:58,986
The ads were weird. He hadn't really paid attention to them in years.

233
00:17:59,007 --> 00:18:06,420
The blocker got rid of most of them, but Google changed its code often enough that their little text ads showed up on a lot of his pages.

234
00:18:06,424 --> 00:18:12,967
They stayed subliminal mostly -- only clunkers like that Ann Coulter ringtone ad made it past his eyes into his brain.

235
00:18:13,629 --> 00:18:20,285
Now the clunkers were everywhere: Intelligent Design Facts, Online Seminary Degree,

236
00:18:20,285 --> 00:18:26,754
Terror Free Tomorrow, Porn Blocker Software, Homosexuality and Satan.

237
00:18:26,754 --> 00:18:31,342
He clicked through a couple of these and found himself in some kind of alternate universe Internet,

238
00:18:31,342 --> 00:18:36,934
full of weird opinions about the evils of being gay, the certainty of the young Earth,

239
00:18:36,934 --> 00:18:39,980
the need for eternal national vigilance.

240
00:18:40,847 --> 00:18:44,528
Then he started to notice something weird about the search results themselves.

241
00:18:44,528 --> 00:18:50,222
After unpacking his suitcase and opening his mail, he spent two weeks sitting at home on his ass, surfing,

242
00:18:50,222 --> 00:18:54,424
His pre-Mexico belly was reemerging, so he decided to do something about it.

243
00:18:54,424 --> 00:18:59,482
No burritos for lunch today -- he'd go to that holistic place Maya had told him about.

244
00:18:59,482 --> 00:19:03,855
Vegan low-fat cuisine couldn't possibly be as gross as it sounded.

245
00:19:04,593 --> 00:19:06,523
"Did you mean 'Hungarian Restaurants'?"

246
00:19:07,292 --> 00:19:14,563
He snorted. No, he'd meant "holistic restaurants," you dumbass search-engine. It nagged at him.

247
00:19:14,563 --> 00:19:18,716
He pulled up his search history and went back through the results, printing out the pages.

248
00:19:18,747 --> 00:19:22,293
Then he logged out of his Google account and went back through the same searches,

249
00:19:22,293 --> 00:19:26,212
comparing the results to the logged-in pages. The differences were striking.

250
00:19:26,212 --> 00:19:32,242
A search for "democratic primary" pointed to anti-Hillary rants on angry blogs when he was logged in,

251
00:19:32,242 --> 00:19:36,324
and to information on volunteering for the DNC when he was logged out.

252
00:19:36,324 --> 00:19:41,177
Searching for "abortion clinic" while logged out listed the nearest Planned Parenthood office;

253
00:19:41,177 --> 00:19:47,890
searching while logged in gave him information about Campaign Life, ProLife.com, and the ProLife alliance.

254
00:19:47,890 --> 00:19:50,498
This was Maya's googlecleaner at work.

255
00:19:50,498 --> 00:19:54,662
It was like the stories of people who asked their TiVos to record an episode of "Queer Eye"

256
00:19:54,662 --> 00:19:58,160
and then got inundated with suggestions for other "gay shows"

257
00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:02,266
-- "My TiVo thinks I'm gay,"was the title of one article he remembered.

258
00:20:02,266 --> 00:20:06,899
Google had been experimenting with "personalized" search results before he left the country

259
00:20:06,899 --> 00:20:09,655
-- here it was, in all its glory.

260
00:20:09,655 --> 00:20:12,582
Google thought he was a conservative Christian Republican

261
00:20:12,582 --> 00:20:16,425
who supported the War on Terror and many other abstract nouns.

262
00:20:16,425 --> 00:20:21,107
He logged out of Google -- that was simple. Five minutes later, he logged in again.

263
00:20:21,107 --> 00:20:25,628
His entire address book was in there. He logged out again. Logged back in.

264
00:20:25,628 --> 00:20:29,270
His calendar -- when was his parents' anniversary again?

265
00:20:29,823 --> 00:20:32,010
Logged out. Logged back in.

266
00:20:32,010 --> 00:20:34,758
Needed his bookmarked locations in Maps. Logged out.

267
00:20:35,358 --> 00:20:38,919
He stopped trying. Google was where his friendships lived

268
00:20:38,919 --> 00:20:43,406
-- all those people he stayed connected to on Orkut. It was where his relationships lived:

269
00:20:43,406 --> 00:20:47,112
all that archived email, all those addresses in his address-book.

270
00:20:47,112 --> 00:20:49,690
It was his family photos, his bookmarks.

271
00:20:49,690 --> 00:20:55,368
Hell, his search history -- his real search history -- was like an outboard brain,

272
00:20:55,368 --> 00:20:59,026
remembering which parts of the unplumbable Internet he cared about,

273
00:20:59,026 --> 00:21:02,946
so that he didn't have to remember it the hard way, with the meat in his skull.

274
00:21:02,946 --> 00:21:08,801
Google had a copy of him -- all the parts of him that navigated the world and the people in it.

275
00:21:08,801 --> 00:21:13,956
Google owned that copy, and without it, he couldn't be himself anymore.

276
00:21:13,956 --> 00:21:16,251
He'd just have to stay logged in.

277
00:21:16,251 --> 00:21:20,736
Greg mashed the keys on the laptop next to his bed, bringing the screen to life.

278
00:21:20,736 --> 00:21:27,652
He squinted at the toolbar clock: 4:13AM! Christ, who was pounding on his door at this hour?

279
00:21:27,652 --> 00:21:32,021
He shouted "Coming!" in a muzzy voice and pulled on a robe and slippers.

280
00:21:32,021 --> 00:21:35,876
He shuffled down the hallway, turning on lights as he
went, squinting.

281
00:21:35,876 --> 00:21:40,671
At the door, he squinted through the peephole, peering at -- Maya.

282
00:21:41,224 --> 00:21:45,086
He undid the chains and the deadbolt and yanked the door open and Maya rushed in past him,

283
00:21:45,086 --> 00:21:50,252
followed by the dogs, followed by her girlfriend, Laurie, whom he'd last seen at a Christmas party at Google,

284
00:21:50,252 --> 00:21:53,212
in a fabulous cocktail dress and an elaborate up-do.

285
00:21:53,212 --> 00:21:57,136
Now she was wearing a freebie Google Summer of Code sweatshirt, jeans,

286
00:21:57,136 --> 00:22:01,532
and a frown that started between her eyebrows and intensified all the way down her face.

287
00:22:01,532 --> 00:22:05,259
Maya was sheened with sweat, her hair sticking to her forehead.

288
00:22:05,259 --> 00:22:08,068
She scrubbed at her eyes, which were red and lined.

289
00:22:08,699 --> 00:22:11,060
"Pack a bag," she said, in a hoarse croak.

290
00:22:11,060 --> 00:22:11,914
"What?"

291
00:22:12,421 --> 00:22:14,783
"Whatever you can't live without. A couple changes of clothes.

292
00:22:14,783 --> 00:22:18,932
Anything you're sentimental about -- shoebox of pictures, your grandfather's razor, whatever.

293
00:22:18,932 --> 00:22:22,127
But keep it small, something you can carry. We're traveling light."

294
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:23,934
"Maya, what are you --"

295
00:22:23,934 --> 00:22:29,364
She took him by the shoulders. "Do. It," she said. "Don't ask questions right now. There's no time."

296
00:22:29,887 --> 00:22:31,125
"Where do you want to --"

297
00:22:31,125 --> 00:22:34,087
"Mexico, probably. Don't know yet. Pack, dammit."

298
00:22:34,087 --> 00:22:37,647
She pushed past him into his bedroom and started yanking open drawers.

299
00:22:38,339 --> 00:22:42,512
"Maya," he said, sharply, "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on."

300
00:22:43,281 --> 00:22:45,669
She glared at him and pushed her hair away from her face.

301
00:22:45,669 --> 00:22:49,702
"The googlecleaner lives. I shut it down, walked away from it, after I did you.

302
00:22:49,702 --> 00:22:51,571
It was too dangerous to use anymore.

303
00:22:51,571 --> 00:22:55,333
But I still get buginizer notifications when new bugs get filed against it,

304
00:22:55,333 --> 00:22:57,484
I'm still in B as the project's owner.

305
00:22:57,484 --> 00:23:00,547
Someone filed eight bugs against it this week.

306
00:23:00,547 --> 00:23:05,704
Someone's used it six times to smear six very specific accounts."

307
00:23:06,427 --> 00:23:07,480
"Who's using it?"

308
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:11,254
"Well, I'll give you a hint. Let me tell you who's been cleaned this week --"

309
00:23:11,254 --> 00:23:17,191
She listed six candidates, four Republican and two Democrat, who were all in the running for the primaries.

310
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:20,412
"Googlers are blackwashing political candidates?"

311
00:23:21,012 --> 00:23:26,260
"Not Googlers. This is all coming from offsite. The IP block is registered in DC.

312
00:23:26,260 --> 00:23:31,020
And the IPs are all also used by Gmail users. And those Gmail users --"

313
00:23:31,020 --> 00:23:33,089
"You spied on gmail accounts?"

314
00:23:33,089 --> 00:23:34,819
"I'm leaving in two minutes, with or without you.

315
00:23:34,819 --> 00:23:37,318
You can interrupt me to ask me questions, or you can listen."

316
00:23:37,779 --> 00:23:39,032
She gave him another look.

317
00:23:39,032 --> 00:23:43,914
Laurie stood in the door of the bedroom, holding the dogs by the collars and looking down at the floor.

318
00:23:44,590 --> 00:23:47,991
"Good. OK. Yes. I did spy on their email. Of course I did.

319
00:23:47,991 --> 00:23:51,701
Everyone does it, now and again, and for a lot worse reasons that this.

320
00:23:52,362 --> 00:23:56,911
"It's our lobbying firm. The ones who invented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Remember them?

321
00:23:56,911 --> 00:24:02,253
It was a stink when we hired them, but Google couldn't afford to be 'that company full of registered Democrats' forever.

322
00:24:02,253 --> 00:24:05,980
We needed friends in Congress. These guys could do it for us."

323
00:24:05,980 --> 00:24:08,564
"But they're ruining politicians' careers!"

324
00:24:08,564 --> 00:24:11,641
"Yeah. They certainly are. And who benefits when they do that?"

325
00:24:11,641 --> 00:24:15,041
Laurie spoke, at last. "Other politicians."

326
00:24:15,041 --> 00:24:18,536
He felt his pulse beating in his temples. "We should tell someone."

327
00:24:19,151 --> 00:24:23,044
"Yeah," Maya said. "How? They know everything about us.

328
00:24:23,044 --> 00:24:27,653
They can see every search. Every email. Every time we've been caught on the webcams.

329
00:24:27,653 --> 00:24:31,482
Who is in our social network -- you know that if you've got more than fifteen Orkut buddies,

330
00:24:31,482 --> 00:24:36,789
it's statistically certain that you're no more than three steps to someone who's contributed money to a 'terrorist' cause?

331
00:24:37,589 --> 00:24:40,977
Remember the airport? Imagine a lot more of that."

332
00:24:41,684 --> 00:24:47,711
"Maya," he said, carefully. "I think you're over-reacting. You don't need to go to Mexico.

333
00:24:47,711 --> 00:24:51,306
You can just quit. We can do a startup together or something.

334
00:24:51,306 --> 00:24:56,016
Or you can move to the country and raise dogs. Whatever. This is crazy --"

335
00:24:56,769 --> 00:25:00,800
"They came to see me today," she said. "At work. Two of the political officers

336
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:06,055
-- the minders who monitor our sensitive projects. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions."

337
00:25:06,055 --> 00:25:07,539
"About the googlecleaner?"

338
00:25:07,539 --> 00:25:12,023
"About my friends and family. About my search history. About my political beliefs."

339
00:25:12,639 --> 00:25:13,631
"Jesus."

340
00:25:13,631 --> 00:25:17,529
"They were sending me a message. They were letting me know that they were onto me.

341
00:25:17,529 --> 00:25:22,130
They're watching every click and every search. It's time to go -- time to get out of range."

342
00:25:22,791 --> 00:25:24,984
"There's a Google office in Mexico, you know."

343
00:25:24,984 --> 00:25:27,391
"Are you coming, Greg? We're going now."

344
00:25:28,590 --> 00:25:30,855
"Laurie, what do you think of this?"

345
00:25:31,717 --> 00:25:37,683
Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. "Maya showed me what Google knows about me.

346
00:25:37,683 --> 00:25:44,432
It's like there's a little me in there, a copy of me. Like I'm pinned down under a jar with a ball of ether.

347
00:25:44,939 --> 00:25:50,163
My parents left East Germany in '65 -- they used to tell me about the Stasi.

348
00:25:50,163 --> 00:25:54,061
They'd put everything about you in your file -- even unpatriotic jokes.

349
00:25:54,707 --> 00:26:01,383
Lately I've been feeling...watched. All the time. Like I can't live without leaving a trail.

350
00:26:01,383 --> 00:26:05,156
Like I'm throwing off a smog of data and it can't be gotten rid of."

351
00:26:06,017 --> 00:26:08,840
"We're going now, Greg. Now. Are you coming?"

352
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:13,818
Greg looked at the dogs. "I've got some pesos left over," he said.

353
00:26:13,818 --> 00:26:16,425
"You take them. Be careful, OK?"

354
00:26:17,271 --> 00:26:19,386
She looked like she was going to slug him.

355
00:26:19,386 --> 00:26:25,272
Then she softened and gave him a ferocious hug. "Be careful yourself," she whispered in his ear.

356
00:26:27,086 --> 00:26:31,695
They came for him a week later. At home, in the middle of the night, just as he'd imagined it.

357
00:26:31,695 --> 00:26:35,232
Their knock was nothing like Maya's tentative, nervous thump.

358
00:26:35,232 --> 00:26:39,905
They went bang-bang-bang, confident, knowing that they had every right to be there

359
00:26:39,905 --> 00:26:42,165
and not caring who else came after them.

360
00:26:43,041 --> 00:26:46,089
Two men. One stayed by the door and didn't say anything.

361
00:26:46,089 --> 00:26:52,267
The other was a smiler, short and rumpled, in a sports coat with a small stain on one lapel

362
00:26:52,267 --> 00:26:54,406
and an American flag on the other.

363
00:26:54,406 --> 00:26:57,835
"Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," he said, by way of introduction.

364
00:26:57,835 --> 00:27:02,951
"'Exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information.

365
00:27:02,951 --> 00:27:07,297
Ten years for a first offense, ever since the PATRIOT Act extended it.

366
00:27:07,297 --> 00:27:12,479
I have it on the best of authority that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies.

367
00:27:13,294 --> 00:27:19,361
And oh, what will come out in the trial. All the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile."

368
00:27:20,076 --> 00:27:22,633
Greg had been playing this scene out in his head for a week.

369
00:27:22,633 --> 00:27:25,950
He'd had all kinds of brave things to say, planned out in advance.

370
00:27:25,950 --> 00:27:28,628
He'd even written some down, to see how they looked.

371
00:27:28,628 --> 00:27:32,076
It had given him something to do while the knots in his stomach tightened,

372
00:27:32,076 --> 00:27:33,760
while he waited to hear from Maya.

373
00:27:34,990 --> 00:27:39,716
"I'd like to call a lawyer," is all he managed. It came out in a whisper.

374
00:27:39,716 --> 00:27:43,265
"You can do that," the man said. "But hear me out first."

375
00:27:44,126 --> 00:27:47,920
Greg found his voice. "I'd like to see your badge."

376
00:27:48,642 --> 00:27:58,342
The man's basset-hound face lit up as he hissed a laugh. "Oh, Greg, buddy. I'm not a cop. I work for --"

377
00:27:58,342 --> 00:28:03,482
He named the DC firm in Google's employ. The inventors of swiftboating.

378
00:28:03,974 --> 00:28:06,767
"You're a Googler. You're part of the family.

379
00:28:06,767 --> 00:28:12,386
We wouldn't send the police after you without talking with you first. There's an offer I'd like to make."

380
00:28:13,278 --> 00:28:14,531
Greg made coffee.

381
00:28:14,531 --> 00:28:19,314
It gave him something to do with his hands while he tried to find that bravery he'd been honing all week.

382
00:28:19,314 --> 00:28:23,671
"I'll go to the press," he said. "I've written this all up. I'll go straight to them."

383
00:28:24,501 --> 00:28:26,659
The guy nodded as if thinking it over.

384
00:28:26,659 --> 00:28:31,992
"Well, sure. You could walk into the Chronicle's office in the morning and spill everything you need.

385
00:28:31,992 --> 00:28:35,661
They'd try to find a confirming source. They won't find it.

386
00:28:36,353 --> 00:28:39,155
Maybe you'll try to show them what your profile looks like today?

387
00:28:39,155 --> 00:28:44,194
Well, tell you what, it looks just like it looked the day you landed at SFO.

388
00:28:44,917 --> 00:28:50,733
Greg, buddy, why don't you hear me out before you start trying to figure out how to fight me?

389
00:28:51,409 --> 00:28:57,056
I'm in the win-win business. I'm in the business of figuring out how to get all parties what they need.

390
00:28:57,702 --> 00:29:03,395
I'm very good at it. You don't even want to know what I'm billing Google for this little tete-a-tete.

391
00:29:03,395 --> 00:29:07,343
By the way, those are excellent beans, but you want to give them a little rinse first,

392
00:29:07,343 --> 00:29:12,269
takes some of the bitterness out and brings up the oils. Here, pass me a colander?"

393
00:29:13,038 --> 00:29:17,846
Greg watched in numb bemusement as the man took off his jacket and hung it over a kitchen chair,

394
00:29:17,846 --> 00:29:22,648
then undid his cuffs and rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his pocket.

395
00:29:22,648 --> 00:29:28,210
Then he poured the beans back out of the grinder and into Greg's colander and did things at the sink.

396
00:29:28,979 --> 00:29:35,204
He was a little pudgy, and very pale. He needed a haircut -- he had unruly curls at his neck.

397
00:29:35,204 --> 00:29:37,165
It made Greg relax, somehow.

398
00:29:37,902 --> 00:29:43,290
This guy had the social gracelessness of a nerd, felt like a real Googler, obsessed with the minutiae.

399
00:29:43,290 --> 00:29:45,542
He knew his way around a coffee-grinder, too.

400
00:29:46,049 --> 00:29:48,923
"We're drafting a team for Building 49 --"

401
00:29:48,923 --> 00:29:52,128
"There is no building 49," Greg said, automatically.

402
00:29:52,128 --> 00:29:57,971
"Yeah," the guy said, with a private little smile. "There's no Building 49.

403
00:29:58,617 --> 00:30:02,975
And we're putting together a team, with its own buginizer, to own googlecleaner.

404
00:30:02,975 --> 00:30:08,383
Maya's code wasn't very efficient. Every time someone runs it, it clobbers the whole farm.

405
00:30:08,383 --> 00:30:12,532
And it's got plenty of bugs. We've asked around and there's consensus on this.

406
00:30:12,532 --> 00:30:17,056
You'd be the right guy, and it wouldn't matter what you knew if you were back inside --"

407
00:30:17,732 --> 00:30:20,160
"No, I wouldn't," Greg said. "You're on crack."

408
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:26,855
"Hear me out. There's money involved. Good work, too. Smart colleagues. A direction for your life.

409
00:30:26,855 --> 00:30:29,637
A chance to participate in the political life of your country --"

410
00:30:29,637 --> 00:30:34,575
Greg gave a bitter laugh. "Unbelievable," he said.

411
00:30:34,575 --> 00:30:41,038
"If you think I'm going to help you smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you're even crazier than I thought."

412
00:30:42,053 --> 00:30:49,785
"Greg," he said, "Greg, you're right. That was dumb. No one is going to do that anymore.

413
00:30:50,431 --> 00:30:58,017
We're just going to -- clean things up a little. For some select people. You know what I mean, right?

414
00:30:58,017 --> 00:31:02,216
Every Google profile is a little scary under close inspection.

415
00:31:02,908 --> 00:31:05,585
Close inspection is the order of the day in politics.

416
00:31:06,139 --> 00:31:10,283
You stand for office and they'll look at your kids, your brothers, your ex-girlfriends.

417
00:31:10,283 --> 00:31:15,864
Now that your search history is available to so many people, it won't be that hard to look into that too.

418
00:31:16,494 --> 00:31:20,643
Your Orkut network, your old Usenet messages, your searches, all of it."

419
00:31:21,105 --> 00:31:26,570
He loaded the cafetiere and depressed the plunger, his face screwed up in solemn concentration.

420
00:31:27,139 --> 00:31:33,710
He held out his hand and Greg got down two coffee mugs -- Google mugs, of course -- and passed them to him.

421
00:31:34,648 --> 00:31:40,263
"We're going to do for our friends just what Maya did for you. Just give them a little cleanup.

422
00:31:40,263 --> 00:31:44,976
Preserve their privacy. That's all -- I promise you, that's all."

423
00:31:45,683 --> 00:31:48,266
Greg sipped the coffee, but didn't taste it.

424
00:31:48,835 --> 00:31:50,904
"And whichever candidates you don't clean --"

425
00:31:51,488 --> 00:31:55,711
"Yeah," the guy said. "Yeah, you're right. It'll be tough for them."

426
00:31:56,572 --> 00:31:58,241
"You can go now," Greg said.

427
00:31:59,056 --> 00:32:04,831
"Oh, Greg," the guy said. He plucked his jacket off his chair-back and shrugged it on,

428
00:32:04,831 --> 00:32:09,612
felt in the inside pocket and produced a small stack of paper, folded into quarters.

429
00:32:09,612 --> 00:32:12,093
He smoothed it out and put it on the table.

430
00:32:12,816 --> 00:32:16,775
Greg looked quickly and saw the rows of results he'd seen on the DHS man's screen,

431
00:32:16,775 --> 00:32:18,828
back at the airport, when this all started.

432
00:32:19,551 --> 00:32:22,969
"I don't care," he said. "Tell the world about my search history. Go ahead.

433
00:32:22,969 --> 00:32:26,936
In five years, everyone will have had their search history ruptured. We'll all be guilty."

434
00:32:27,705 --> 00:32:32,122
"It's not your history," the man said. He divided the stack into two piles,

435
00:32:32,122 --> 00:32:34,870
and pointed to names on the top sheet of each.

436
00:32:34,870 --> 00:32:36,584
One was Maya's.

437
00:32:36,584 --> 00:32:41,381
The other was a candidate whose campaign Greg had contributed to for the last three elections.

438
00:32:41,381 --> 00:32:45,233
"You get five weeks' vacation a year. You can go to Cabo for the SCUBA.

439
00:32:45,233 --> 00:32:48,019
The options package is very generous, too."

440
00:32:48,742 --> 00:32:54,114
The man sat down and drank some coffee. Greg tried some more of his own. It didn't taste so bad.

441
00:32:54,821 --> 00:32:59,192
It was, in fact, more delicious than anything that had ever come out of his kitchen.

442
00:32:59,192 --> 00:33:01,076
The man knew what he was doing.

443
00:33:01,660 --> 00:33:04,158
The best years of Greg's life had been spent at Google.

444
00:33:04,158 --> 00:33:10,784
Smart people. Amazing work environment. Wonderful technology. Nothing in the world like it.

445
00:33:11,537 --> 00:33:15,203
When you worked at G, you had the best model train set in the universe to play with.

446
00:33:15,203 --> 00:33:17,195
Organizing all of human knowledge.

447
00:33:18,363 --> 00:33:21,464
"You can pick your team, of course," the man said.

448
00:33:21,464 --> 00:33:24,619
Greg poured himself another cup of delicious coffee.

449
00:33:25,203 --> 00:33:26,996
The new Congress took eleven working days

450
00:33:26,996 --> 00:33:31,374
to pass the Securing and Enumerating America's Communications and Hypertext Act,

451
00:33:31,374 --> 00:33:38,719
which authorized the DHS and the NSA to outsource up to 80 percent of its intelligence and analysis work to private contractors.

452
00:33:39,288 --> 00:33:44,196
Theoretically, the contracts were open to a competitive bidding process, but within the secure group at Google,

453
00:33:44,196 --> 00:33:47,987
in building 49, there was no question of who would win those contracts.

454
00:33:47,987 --> 00:33:52,639
If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border,

455
00:33:52,639 --> 00:33:57,237
you can bet that they would have caught them -- governments just aren't equipped to Do Search Right.

456
00:33:57,898 --> 00:34:00,549
Greg looked himself in the eye that morning as he shaved

457
00:34:00,549 --> 00:34:04,926
-- the security minders didn't like hacker-stubble, and they weren't shy about telling you so --

458
00:34:04,926 --> 00:34:10,514
and realized that today was his first day as a de facto intelligence agent in the US government.

459
00:34:11,175 --> 00:34:16,304
How bad would it be? Wasn't it better to have Google doing this stuff than some ham-fisted spook?

460
00:34:17,073 --> 00:34:22,511
He had himself convinced by the time he parked at the Googleplex, among the hybrid cars and bulging bike-racks.

461
00:34:22,511 --> 00:34:27,488
He stopped for an organic smoothie on the way to his desk, then sat down and sipped.

462
00:34:28,611 --> 00:34:31,726
The rumpled man hadn't been to the G since Greg went back to work,

463
00:34:31,726 --> 00:34:35,043
but it often felt like his influence was all around them in building 49.

464
00:34:35,043 --> 00:34:37,179
He wasn't any less rumpled today

465
00:34:37,179 --> 00:34:43,680
-- he could have been wrapped in saran-wrap on the day he brought Greg back to work and refrigerated for all that he hadn't changed a hair.

466
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:46,958
"Hi, Greg," he said, sliding into the chair next to his.

467
00:34:46,958 --> 00:34:49,872
His podmates stood up in unison and left the room.

468
00:34:49,872 --> 00:34:56,811
"Just tell me what it is," Greg said. "Just spit it out. You want me to pwn NORAD and start World War III, right?"

469
00:34:57,348 --> 00:35:02,399
"Nothing so obvious," the man said, patting his shoulder. "Just a little search-job."

470
00:35:03,229 --> 00:35:04,336
"Yeah?"

471
00:35:04,337 --> 00:35:08,948
"There's a person we want to find. A person who's left the country, apparently headed for Mexico.

472
00:35:08,948 --> 00:35:12,585
She knows certain things that are, as of today, classified.

473
00:35:12,585 --> 00:35:15,058
She needs to be briefed on her new responsibilities."

474
00:35:15,058 --> 00:35:19,806
Greg stood up. "I'm not going to find Maya for you." He pulled on his jacket.

475
00:35:19,806 --> 00:35:23,715
"There are plenty of people here who will. It's up to you, though.

476
00:35:23,715 --> 00:35:28,947
You can work here with her, being productive, or you can find out just how rotten life can get

477
00:35:28,947 --> 00:35:32,163
-- while she works here, being productive with your co-workers."

478
00:35:33,793 --> 00:35:36,510
Greg stared at him, his hands balled into fists.

479
00:35:37,448 --> 00:35:42,140
"Come on," the rumpled man said. "Greg, we both know how this goes.

480
00:35:42,140 --> 00:35:48,456
When you said yes to me in your kitchen, you lost the option of saying no. It's not so bad, is it?

481
00:35:48,456 --> 00:35:52,590
Who would you rather have doing the nation's intelligence: you and your pals here in the Valley,

482
00:35:52,590 --> 00:35:55,689
or a bunch of straight-edge code-grinders in Virginia?"

483
00:35:55,689 --> 00:35:58,104
Greg turned on his heel and left.

484
00:35:58,472 --> 00:36:04,220
He made it all the way to the parking lot before he stopped and kicked a wall so hard he felt something give way in his foot.

485
00:36:04,958 --> 00:36:09,959
Then he limped back to his desk, hung his jacket on his chair, and logged back in.

486
00:36:10,974 --> 00:36:14,607
It was a week later when his key-card failed to open the door to Building 49.

487
00:36:14,607 --> 00:36:20,416
The idiot red LED shone at him every time he swiped it. He swiped it and swiped it.

488
00:36:20,416 --> 00:36:24,684
Any other building and there'd be someone to tailgate on, people trickling in and out all day.

489
00:36:24,684 --> 00:36:29,189
But the Googlers in 49 only emerged for meals, and sometimes not even that.

490
00:36:29,189 --> 00:36:33,051
Swipe, swipe, swipe.

491
00:36:33,051 --> 00:36:35,710
"Greg, can I see you, please?"

492
00:36:36,479 --> 00:36:38,733
The rumpled man hadn't shaved in a couple of days.

493
00:36:38,733 --> 00:36:43,234
He put an arm around Greg's shoulders and Greg smelled his citrusy aftershave.

494
00:36:43,987 --> 00:36:48,246
It was the same cologne that his divemaster in Baja had worn when they went out to the bars in the evening.

495
00:36:48,246 --> 00:36:52,902
Greg couldn't remember his name. Juan-Carlos? Juan-Luis?

496
00:36:53,825 --> 00:36:57,713
The man's arm around his shoulders was firm, steering him away from the door,

497
00:36:57,713 --> 00:37:01,153
out onto the immaculate lawn, past the kitchen's herb garden.

498
00:37:01,922 --> 00:37:04,323
"We're giving you a couple of days off," he said.

499
00:37:05,077 --> 00:37:08,533
Greg felt a cold premonition that sank all the way to his balls.

500
00:37:08,533 --> 00:37:12,447
"Why?" Had he done something wrong? Was he going to jail?

501
00:37:13,247 --> 00:37:18,214
"It's Maya." The man turned him around, met his eyes with his bottomless basset-hound gaze.

502
00:37:18,214 --> 00:37:24,959
"It's Maya. Killed herself. In Guatemala. I'm sorry, Greg."

503
00:37:26,834 --> 00:37:33,051
Greg seemed to hurtle away from himself, to a place miles above, a Google Earth view of the Googleplex,

504
00:37:33,051 --> 00:37:39,096
looking down on himself and the rumpled man as a pair of dots, two pixels, tiny and insignificant.

505
00:37:39,112 --> 00:37:43,972
He willed himself to tear at his hair, to drop to his knees and weep.

506
00:37:43,972 --> 00:37:49,294
From a long way away, he heard himself say, "I don't need any time off. I'm OK."

507
00:37:49,770 --> 00:37:52,971
From a long way away, he heard the rumpled man insist.

508
00:37:52,971 --> 00:37:55,367
But one-pixel Greg wouldn't be turned aside.

509
00:37:55,367 --> 00:38:03,576
The argument persisted for a long time, and then the two pixels moved into Building 49 and the door swung shut behind them.

510
00:38:15,499 --> 00:38:21,363
Doctorow: This one came as a commission from Radar magazine -- now defunct, a casualty of the 2008 crash,

511
00:38:21,363 --> 00:38:26,160
but in 2007, it was the most widely circulated "lifestyle" magazine in the US.

512
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:30,769
They asked me to write about "the day Google became evil."

513
00:38:30,769 --> 00:38:34,926
I didn't want to cheap out and just write about the company selling out to some evil millionaire.

514
00:38:34,926 --> 00:38:39,382
If Google ever turned evil, it would be because a) evil had a compelling business-model

515
00:38:39,382 --> 00:38:42,924
and b) evil lay at the end of a compelling technical challenge.

516
00:38:42,924 --> 00:38:48,229
I spent a lot of time talking off-the-record to Googlers, who are, to a one, the nicest people I know

517
00:38:48,229 --> 00:38:52,982
(OK, one exception springs to mind, but let's not air our dirty laundry in public, right?).

518
00:38:52,982 --> 00:38:58,203
I also had an incredibly productive conversation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston,

519
00:38:58,203 --> 00:39:00,664
a profound and sharp-witted privacy lawyer.

520
00:39:00,664 --> 00:39:05,656
I wanted to capture a company that was full of good people who do bad. There are lots of these.

521
00:39:05,656 --> 00:39:11,248
For example, all the Microsoft employees I know are fantastic and smart and caring and principled.

522
00:39:11,248 --> 00:39:15,149
But ethically and technically, most of what comes out of Redmond is a train-wreck.

523
00:39:15,149 --> 00:39:19,178
It's anti-synergy: a firm that is far less than the sum of its parts.

524
00:39:19,178 --> 00:39:21,682
I could easily see Google turning into that.

525
00:39:21,682 --> 00:39:26,081
I wish I understood how groups of good people trying to do good can do bad.