Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton
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0:10 - 0:17Wheaton: Scroogled by Cory Doctorow. Originally published in Radar Magazine, September, 2007.
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0:18 - 0:19Read by Will Wheaton.
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0:21 - 0:28"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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0:28 - 0:29Cardinal Richelieu
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0:31 - 0:37Greg 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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0:37 - 0:41He had it good -- he'd been in first class, first off the plane,
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0:41 - 0:45brown as a nut and loose-limbed after a month on the beach at Cabo,
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0:45 - 0:51SCUBA diving three days a week, bumming around and flirting with French college girls the rest of the time.
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0:52 - 0:57When he'd left San Francisco a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, pot-bellied wreck --
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0:57 - 1:03now he was a bronze god, drawing appreciative looks from the stews at the front of the plane.
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1:04 - 1:08In the four hours he spent in the customs line, he fell from god back to man.
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1:08 - 1:13His warm buzz wore off, the sweat ran down the crack of his ass,
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1:13 - 1:18and his shoulders and neck grew so tense that his upper back felt like a tennis racket.
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1:18 - 1:22The batteries on his iPod died after the third hour, leaving him with nothing to do
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1:22 - 1:25except eavesdrop on the middle-aged couple ahead of him.
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1:25 - 1:29"They've starting googling us at the border," she said. "I told you they'd do it."
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1:30 - 1:32"I thought that didn't start until next month?"
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1:33 - 1:38The man had brought a huge sombrero on board, carefully stowing it in its own overhead locker,
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1:38 - 1:43and now he was stuck alternately wearing it and holding it.
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1:43 - 1:49Googling at the border. Christ. Greg vested out from Google six months before, cashing in his options
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1:49 - 1:54and "taking some me time," which turned out to be harder than he expected.
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1:54 - 2:00Five months later, what he'd mostly done is fix his friends' PCs and websites, and watch daytime TV,
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2:00 - 2:03and gain ten pounds, which he blamed on being at home,
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2:03 - 2:07instead of in the Googleplex, with its excellent 24-hour gym.
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2:08 - 2:10The writing had been on the wall.
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2:10 - 2:13Google had a whole pod of lawyers in charge of dealing with the world's governments,
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2:13 - 2:19and scumbag lobbyists on the Hill to try to keep the law from turning them into the world's best snitch.
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2:19 - 2:21It was a losing battle.
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2:21 - 2:27The Government had spent $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border,
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2:27 - 2:30and hadn't caught a single terrorist.
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2:30 - 2:35Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search Right.
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2:35 - 2:39The DHS officers had bags under their eyes
as they squinted at their screens, -
2:39 - 2:43prodding mistrustfully at their keyboards with sausage fingers.
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2:43 - 2:47No wonder it was taking four hours to get out of the goddamned airport.
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2:47 - 2:51"Evening," he said, as he handed the man his sweaty passport.
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2:51 - 2:57The man grunted and swiped it, then stared at his screen, clicking. A lot.
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2:58 - 3:01He had a little bit of dried food in the corner of his mouth
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3:01 - 3:04and his tongue crept out and licked at it as he concentrated.
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3:04 - 3:07"Want to tell me about June, 1998?"
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3:07 - 3:13Greg turned, rotated his head this way and that. "I'm sorry?"
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3:13 - 3:21"You posted a message to alt.burningman on June 17, 1998 about your plan to attend Burning Man.
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3:22 - 3:27You posted, 'Would taking shrooms be a really bad idea?'"
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3:28 - 3:32It was 3AM before they let him out of the "secondary screening" room.
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3:32 - 3:37The interrogator was an older man, so skinny he looked like he'd been carved out of wood
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3:37 - 3:41His questions went a lot further than the Burning Man shrooms.
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3:41 - 3:43They were just the start of Greg's problems.
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3:44 - 3:49"I'd like to know more about your hobbies. Are you interested in model rocketry?"
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3:50 - 3:51"What?"
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3:51 - 3:52"Model rocketry."
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3:53 - 3:56"No," Greg said. "No, I'm not."
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3:56 - 4:01Thinking of all the explosives that model rocketry people surrounded themselves with.
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4:02 - 4:04The man made a note, clicked some more.
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4:04 - 4:09"You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike of ads for model rocketry supplies
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4:09 - 4:12showing up alongside your search results and Google mail."
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4:13 - 4:17Greg felt his guts spasm. "You're looking at my searches and email?"
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4:18 - 4:20He hadn't touched a keyboard in a month,
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4:20 - 4:25but he knew that what you put into the searchbar was more intimate than what you told your father-confessor.
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4:25 - 4:27He'd seen enough queries to know that.
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4:28 - 4:32"Calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches."
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4:33 - 4:36The man made a bitter lemon face and went on in a squeaky voice.
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4:37 - 4:41"That would be unconstitutional. You weren't listening to me.
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4:41 - 4:47We see the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching.
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4:47 - 4:51I have a brochure explaining it, I'll give it to you when we're through here."
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4:51 - 4:56"But the ads don't mean anything -- I get ads for Ann Coulter ringtones
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4:56 - 5:00whenever I get email from my friend who lives in Coulter, Iowa!"
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5:00 - 5:08The 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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5:08 - 5:12Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently for you?"
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5:13 - 5:15He thought for a moment.
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5:16 - 5:21"OK, just do this. Go to Google and search for 'coffee fanciers', all right?"
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5:21 - 5:28He'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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5:28 - 5:32The blend they were going to launch with was called "Jet Fuel." "Jet Fuel" and "Launch"
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5:32 - 5:36-- that'd probably make Google barf up model rocket ads.
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5:36 - 5:39Not that he would know -- he blocked all the ads in his browser.
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5:40 - 5:45They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Hallowe'en photos.
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5:46 - 5:51They were buried three screens deep in the search results for "Greg Lupinski," and Greg hadn't noticed them.
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5:52 - 5:57"It was a Gulf War themed party," he said. "In the Castro."
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5:58 - 5:59"And you're dressed as --?"
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6:01 - 6:03"A suicide bomber."
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6:04 - 6:07Just saying the words in an airport made him nervous,
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6:07 - 6:10as though uttering them would cause the handcuffs to come out.
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6:11 - 6:13"Come with me, Mr Lupinski."
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6:15 - 6:20The search lasted a long time. They swabbed him in places he didn't know he had.
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6:20 - 6:22He asked about a lawyer.
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6:22 - 6:27They told him that he could call all the lawyers he wanted once he was out of the Customs sterile area.
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6:28 - 6:29"Good night, Mr Lupinski."
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6:29 - 6:32This was a new interrogator, a man who'd wanted to know about
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6:32 - 6:39the reason that he'd sought both night diving and deep diving specialist certification from the PADI instructor in Cabo.
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6:39 - 6:43The guy impliedthat Greg had been training to be an al-Qaeda frogman,
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6:43 - 6:47and didn't seem to believe that Greg had just wanted to do all the certifications he could,
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6:47 - 6:51pursuing diving the way he pursued everything: thoroughly.
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6:51 - 6:57But 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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6:57 - 7:01His suitcases stood alone by the baggage carousel.
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7:01 - 7:06When he picked them up, he saw that they had been opened and then inexpertly closed.
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7:06 - 7:09Some of his clothes stuck out from around the edges.
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7:09 - 7:14At home, he saw that all the fake "pre-Colombian" statues had been broken,
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7:14 - 7:20and 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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7:20 - 7:26His clothes no longer smelled of Mexico. Now they smelled of airports and machine oil.
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7:26 - 7:32The 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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7:32 - 7:39All 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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7:39 - 7:41was what it meant to be googled.
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7:41 - 7:46He wasn't going to sleep. No way. He needed to talk about this.
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7:46 - 7:52And there was only one person who he could talk to, and luckily, she was usually awake around now.
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7:53 - 7:59Maya had started at Google two years after him, but had gotten a much bigger grant of stock than he had.
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7:59 - 8:03She knew exactly what she was going to do with it, too, once she vested:
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8:03 - 8:07take her dogs and her girlfriend and head to Florence, for good.
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8:07 - 8:10Learn Italian, take in the museums, sit in the cafes.
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8:10 - 8:17It was she who'd convinced him to go to Mexico: anywhere, she said, anywhere that he could reboot his existence.
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8:19 - 8:25Maya had two giant chocolate Labs and a very, very patient girlfriend who'd put up with anything
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8:25 - 8:31except being dragged around Dolores Park at 6AM by 350 pounds of drooling brown canine
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8:31 - 8:36She went for her Mace as he jogged towards her, then did a double-take and threw her arms open,
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8:36 - 8:40dropping the leashes and stamping on them with one sneaker, a practiced gesture.
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8:41 - 8:44"Where's the rest of you? Dude, you look hawt!"
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8:44 - 8:49He took the hug, suddenly self-conscious of the way he smelled after a night of invasive googling.
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8:49 - 8:55"Maya," he said. "Maya, what do you know about the DHS?"
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8:56 - 9:01She stiffened and the dogs whined. She looked around, then nodded up at the tennis courts.
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9:02 - 9:07"Top of the light standard there, don't look, there. That's one of our muni WiFi access points.
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9:07 - 9:11Wide-angle webcam. Face away from it when you talk. Lip-readers."
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9:12 - 9:18He parsed this out slowly. Google's free municipal WiFi program was a hit in every city where it played,
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9:18 - 9:25and 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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9:25 - 9:30Especially not when measured against the ability to serve ads to people based on where they were sitting.
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9:31 - 9:35He hadn't paid much attention when they'd made the webcams on all those access points public
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9:35 - 9:39-- there'd been a day's worth of blogstorm while people looked out over their childhood streets
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9:39 - 9:44or patrolled prostitution strolls, fingering johns, but it had blown over.
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9:45 - 9:47Now he felt -- watched.
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9:49 - 9:52Feeling silly, he kept his lips together and
mumbled, "You're joking." -
9:54 - 9:57"Come with me," she said, facing squarely
away from the pole. -
9:59 - 10:01The dogs weren't happy about having their walks cut short,
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10:01 - 10:07and 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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10:08 - 10:14Maya's girlfriend Laurie called out from the bedroom and Maya went back to talk to her, then emerged, looking flustered.
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10:14 - 10:17"It started with China," she said.
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10:17 - 10:21"Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they went under Chinese jurisdiction.
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10:21 - 10:24They could google everyone going through our servers."
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10:24 - 10:25Greg knew what that meant:
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10:25 - 10:33if 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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10:33 - 10:36Google was collecting your info, forever.
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10:37 - 10:41"They were using us to build profiles of people. Not arresting them, you understand.
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10:41 - 10:46But 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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10:46 - 10:50There's hardly anything you can do on the net that isn't illegal in China."
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10:51 - 10:55Greg shook his head. "Why did they put the servers in China?"
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10:55 - 10:59"The government said they'd block them if they didn't. And Yahoo was there."
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10:59 - 11:00They both made a face.
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11:00 - 11:04Somewhere along the way, Google had become obsessed with Yahoo,
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11:04 - 11:07more worried about what the competition was doing than how they were performing.
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11:07 - 11:10"So we did it. But a lot of us didn't like the idea."
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11:11 - 11:14She sipped her coffee and lowered her voice. One of the dogs whined.
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11:15 - 11:17"I made it my 20 percent project."
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11:18 - 11:21Googlers were supposed to devote 20 percent of their time to blue-sky projects.
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11:22 - 11:24"Me and my pod. We call it the googlecleaner.
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11:25 - 11:28It goes deep into the database and statistically normalizes you.
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11:29 - 11:32Your searches, your gmail histograms, your browsing patterns. All of it."
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11:34 - 11:35"The search ads?"
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11:35 - 11:41"Ah," she grimaced. "Yes, the DHS. So we brokered a compromise with the DHS.
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11:41 - 11:46They'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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11:47 - 11:52Greg felt sick. "Why? Don't tell me Yahoo was doing it already --"
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11:53 - 12:01"No, no. Well, yes. Sure. Yahoo was already doing it. But that wasn't it. You know, Republicans hate Google.
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12:02 - 12:04We are overwhelmingly registered Democrat.
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12:04 - 12:07So we're doing what we can to make peace with them before they clobber us.
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12:08 - 12:16This isn't PII --" Personally Identifying Information, the toxic smog of the information age "-- it's just metadata.
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12:16 - 12:19So it's only slightly evil."
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12:20 - 12:23"If it's all so innocuous, why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?"
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12:23 - 12:27She sighed and hugged the dog that was butting her with his huge, anvil-shaped head.
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12:28 - 12:32"The spooks are like pubic lice. They get everywhere.
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12:32 - 12:36Once we let them in, everything suddenly got a lot more -- secret.
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12:37 - 12:40Some of our meetings have to have spooks present,
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12:40 - 12:45it's like being in some Soviet ministry, with a political officer always there, watching everything.
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12:45 - 12:52And the security clearance. Now we're divided into these camps: the cleared and the suspect.
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12:52 - 12:56We all know who isn't cleared, but no one knows why.
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12:56 - 13:02I'm cleared. Lucky me -- being a homo no longer disqualifies you for access to seekrit crap
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13:02 - 13:07No cleared person wants to even eat lunch with an un-clearable.
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13:07 - 13:14Every now and again, one of your teammates will get pulled off your project 'for security reasons', whatever that means."
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13:15 - 13:21Greg felt very tired. "So now I'm feeling lucky I got out of the airport alive.
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13:21 - 13:24I suppose I might have ended up in Gitmo if it had gone badly, huh?"
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13:25 - 13:29She was staring at him intently, her eyes flicking from side to side.
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13:29 - 13:32He waited, but she didn't say anything.
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13:32 - 13:34"What?"
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13:35 - 13:38"What I'm about to tell you, you can't ever repeat it, OK?"
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13:39 - 13:44"Um, OK? You're not going to tell me you're a deep-cover Al-Quaeda suicide bomber?"
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13:45 - 13:52"Nothing so simple. Here's the thing: the airport DHS scrutiny is a gating function.
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13:53 - 13:56It lets the spooks narrow down their search criteria.
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13:57 - 14:04Once 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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14:05 - 14:09They'll check the webcams for your face and gait. Read your mail. Log your searches."
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14:10 - 14:12"I thought you said the courts wouldn't let them --"
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14:12 - 14:15"The courts won't let them indiscriminately google you.
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14:16 - 14:20But once you get into the system, it becomes a selective search. All legal.
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14:20 - 14:25And once they start googling you, they always find something."
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14:26 - 14:32"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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14:32 - 14:34That sounds like the world's shittiest job."
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14:35 - 14:40"If only. No, this is all untouched by human hands.
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14:40 - 14:47All your data is fed into a big hopper that checks for 'suspicious patterns' and gradually builds the case against you,
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14:47 - 14:52using deviation from statistical norms to prove that you're guilty of something.
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14:53 - 14:55It's just a variation of the way we spot search-spammers"
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14:56 - 15:01-- 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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15:01 - 15:08-- but instead of lowering your search rank, we increase your probability of being sent to Syria.
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15:08 - 15:13And of course, they google all of us, everyone
who works on anything 'sensitive.'" -
15:14 - 15:20"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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15:21 - 15:27"How the hell did this happen? It's such a good place. 'Don't be evil,' right?"
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15:28 - 15:32That was the corporate motto, and for Greg, it had been a huge part of his reason
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15:32 - 15:36for taking his fresh-minted computer science PhD from Stanford directly to Google.
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15:37 - 15:44Maya's laugh was bitter and cynical. "Don't be evil? Come on, Greg.
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15:45 - 15:49Don't you remember what it was like when we started censoring the Chinese search results,
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15:49 - 15:52and we all asked how that could be anything but evil?
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15:52 - 15:58The company line was hilarious: 'We're not doing evil -- we're giving them access to a better search tool!
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15:58 - 16:02If we showed them search results they couldn't get to, that would just frustrate them.
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16:02 - 16:04It would be a bad user experience.
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16:05 - 16:11If 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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16:12 - 16:15"Now what?" Greg pushed a dog away from him and Maya looked hurt.
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16:16 - 16:20"Now you're a person of interest, Greg. Googlestalked.
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16:21 - 16:25Now, you live your life with someone watching over your shoulder, all the time.
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16:25 - 16:31You know the mission statement, right? 'Organize all human knowledge.' That's everything.
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16:31 - 16:35Give it five years, we'll know how many turds were in the bowl before you flushed.
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16:35 - 16:41Combine that with automated suspicion of anyone who matches a statistical picture of a bad guy and you're --"
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16:42 - 16:43"I'm scroogled."
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16:44 - 16:45"Totally."
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16:46 - 16:50"Thanks, Maya," he said. "Thanks anyway."
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16:51 - 16:56"Sit down," she said. The dog that had been bumping at his legs was at it again.
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16:57 - 17:02Maya took both dogs down the hall to the bedroom and he heard her muffled argument with her girlfriend.
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17:03 - 17:05She came back without the dogs.
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17:05 - 17:10"I can fix this," she said in a whisper so low it was practically a hiss.
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17:10 - 17:12"I can googleclean you."
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17:13 - 17:14"But you're under constant scrutiny --"
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17:14 - 17:16"By DHS agents.
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17:17 - 17:22Once they fired all non-native-born Americans from the DHS, it got a lot fatter and stupider.
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17:23 - 17:24I can googleclean you, Greg."
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17:25 - 17:26"I don't want you to get into trouble."
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17:27 - 17:31She shook her head. "I'm already doomed. I built the googlecleaner.
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17:31 - 17:33Every day since then has been borrowed time
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17:34 - 17:38-- now it's just a matter of waiting for someone to point out my expertise and history to the DHS
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17:38 - 17:40and, oh, I don't know.
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17:40 - 17:44Whatever it is they do to people like me in the War on Abstract Nouns."
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17:44 - 17:51Greg remembered the questioning at the airport. The search. His shirt, the bootprint in the middle of it.
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17:52 - 17:54"Do it," he said.
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17:55 - 17:59The ads were weird. He hadn't really paid attention to them in years.
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17:59 - 18:06The 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.
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18:06 - 18:13They stayed subliminal mostly -- only clunkers like that Ann Coulter ringtone ad made it past his eyes into his brain.
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18:14 - 18:20Now the clunkers were everywhere: Intelligent Design Facts, Online Seminary Degree,
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18:20 - 18:27Terror Free Tomorrow, Porn Blocker Software, Homosexuality and Satan.
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18:27 - 18:31He clicked through a couple of these and found himself in some kind of alternate universe Internet,
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18:31 - 18:37full of weird opinions about the evils of being gay, the certainty of the young Earth,
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18:37 - 18:40the need for eternal national vigilance.
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18:41 - 18:45Then he started to notice something weird about the search results themselves.
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18:45 - 18:50After unpacking his suitcase and opening his mail, he spent two weeks sitting at home on his ass, surfing,
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18:50 - 18:54His pre-Mexico belly was reemerging, so he decided to do something about it.
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18:54 - 18:59No burritos for lunch today -- he'd go to that holistic place Maya had told him about.
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18:59 - 19:04Vegan low-fat cuisine couldn't possibly be as gross as it sounded.
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19:05 - 19:07"Did you mean 'Hungarian Restaurants'?"
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19:07 - 19:15He snorted. No, he'd meant "holistic restaurants," you dumbass search-engine. It nagged at him.
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19:15 - 19:19He pulled up his search history and went back through the results, printing out the pages.
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19:19 - 19:22Then he logged out of his Google account and went back through the same searches,
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19:22 - 19:26comparing the results to the logged-in pages. The differences were striking.
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19:26 - 19:32A search for "democratic primary" pointed to anti-Hillary rants on angry blogs when he was logged in,
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19:32 - 19:36and to information on volunteering for the DNC when he was logged out.
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19:36 - 19:41Searching for "abortion clinic" while logged out listed the nearest Planned Parenthood office;
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19:41 - 19:48searching while logged in gave him information about Campaign Life, ProLife.com, and the ProLife alliance.
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19:48 - 19:50This was Maya's googlecleaner at work.
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19:50 - 19:55It was like the stories of people who asked their TiVos to record an episode of "Queer Eye"
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19:55 - 19:58and then got inundated with suggestions for other "gay shows"
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19:58 - 20:02-- "My TiVo thinks I'm gay,"was the title of one article he remembered.
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20:02 - 20:07Google had been experimenting with "personalized" search results before he left the country
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20:07 - 20:10-- here it was, in all its glory.
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20:10 - 20:13Google thought he was a conservative Christian Republican
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20:13 - 20:16who supported the War on Terror and many other abstract nouns.
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20:16 - 20:21He logged out of Google -- that was simple. Five minutes later, he logged in again.
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20:21 - 20:26His entire address book was in there. He logged out again. Logged back in.
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20:26 - 20:29His calendar -- when was his parents' anniversary again?
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20:30 - 20:32Logged out. Logged back in.
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20:32 - 20:35Needed his bookmarked locations in Maps. Logged out.
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20:35 - 20:39He stopped trying. Google was where his friendships lived
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20:39 - 20:43-- all those people he stayed connected to on Orkut. It was where his relationships lived:
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20:43 - 20:47all that archived email, all those addresses in his address-book.
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20:47 - 20:50It was his family photos, his bookmarks.
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20:50 - 20:55Hell, his search history -- his real search history -- was like an outboard brain,
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20:55 - 20:59remembering which parts of the unplumbable Internet he cared about,
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20:59 - 21:03so that he didn't have to remember it the hard way, with the meat in his skull.
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21:03 - 21:09Google had a copy of him -- all the parts of him that navigated the world and the people in it.
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21:09 - 21:14Google owned that copy, and without it, he couldn't be himself anymore.
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21:14 - 21:16He'd just have to stay logged in.
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21:16 - 21:21Greg mashed the keys on the laptop next to his bed, bringing the screen to life.
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21:21 - 21:28He squinted at the toolbar clock: 4:13AM! Christ, who was pounding on his door at this hour?
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21:28 - 21:32He shouted "Coming!" in a muzzy voice and pulled on a robe and slippers.
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21:32 - 21:36He shuffled down the hallway, turning on lights as he
went, squinting. -
21:36 - 21:41At the door, he squinted through the peephole, peering at -- Maya.
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21:41 - 21:45He undid the chains and the deadbolt and yanked the door open and Maya rushed in past him,
-
21:45 - 21:50followed by the dogs, followed by her girlfriend, Laurie, whom he'd last seen at a Christmas party at Google,
-
21:50 - 21:53in a fabulous cocktail dress and an elaborate up-do.
-
21:53 - 21:57Now she was wearing a freebie Google Summer of Code sweatshirt, jeans,
-
21:57 - 22:02and a frown that started between her eyebrows and intensified all the way down her face.
-
22:02 - 22:05Maya was sheened with sweat, her hair sticking to her forehead.
-
22:05 - 22:08She scrubbed at her eyes, which were red and lined.
-
22:09 - 22:11"Pack a bag," she said, in a hoarse croak.
-
22:11 - 22:12"What?"
-
22:12 - 22:15"Whatever you can't live without. A couple changes of clothes.
-
22:15 - 22:19Anything you're sentimental about -- shoebox of pictures, your grandfather's razor, whatever.
-
22:19 - 22:22But keep it small, something you can carry. We're traveling light."
-
22:23 - 22:24"Maya, what are you --"
-
22:24 - 22:29She took him by the shoulders. "Do. It," she said. "Don't ask questions right now. There's no time."
-
22:30 - 22:31"Where do you want to --"
-
22:31 - 22:34"Mexico, probably. Don't know yet. Pack, dammit."
-
22:34 - 22:38She pushed past him into his bedroom and started yanking open drawers.
-
22:38 - 22:43"Maya," he said, sharply, "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on."
-
22:43 - 22:46She glared at him and pushed her hair away from her face.
-
22:46 - 22:50"The googlecleaner lives. I shut it down, walked away from it, after I did you.
-
22:50 - 22:52It was too dangerous to use anymore.
-
22:52 - 22:55But I still get buginizer notifications when new bugs get filed against it,
-
22:55 - 22:57I'm still in B as the project's owner.
-
22:57 - 23:01Someone filed eight bugs against it this week.
-
23:01 - 23:06Someone's used it six times to smear six very specific accounts."
-
23:06 - 23:07"Who's using it?"
-
23:07 - 23:11"Well, I'll give you a hint. Let me tell you who's been cleaned this week --"
-
23:11 - 23:17She listed six candidates, four Republican and two Democrat, who were all in the running for the primaries.
-
23:18 - 23:20"Googlers are blackwashing political candidates?"
-
23:21 - 23:26"Not Googlers. This is all coming from offsite. The IP block is registered in DC.
-
23:26 - 23:31And the IPs are all also used by Gmail users. And those Gmail users --"
-
23:31 - 23:33"You spied on gmail accounts?"
-
23:33 - 23:35"I'm leaving in two minutes, with or without you.
-
23:35 - 23:37You can interrupt me to ask me questions, or you can listen."
-
23:38 - 23:39She gave him another look.
-
23:39 - 23:44Laurie stood in the door of the bedroom, holding the dogs by the collars and looking down at the floor.
-
23:45 - 23:48"Good. OK. Yes. I did spy on their email. Of course I did.
-
23:48 - 23:52Everyone does it, now and again, and for a lot worse reasons that this.
-
23:52 - 23:57"It's our lobbying firm. The ones who invented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Remember them?
-
23:57 - 24:02It was a stink when we hired them, but Google couldn't afford to be 'that company full of registered Democrats' forever.
-
24:02 - 24:06We needed friends in Congress. These guys could do it for us."
-
24:06 - 24:09"But they're ruining politicians' careers!"
-
24:09 - 24:12"Yeah. They certainly are. And who benefits when they do that?"
-
24:12 - 24:15Laurie spoke, at last. "Other politicians."
-
24:15 - 24:19He felt his pulse beating in his temples. "We should tell someone."
-
24:19 - 24:23"Yeah," Maya said. "How? They know everything about us.
-
24:23 - 24:28They can see every search. Every email. Every time we've been caught on the webcams.
-
24:28 - 24:31Who is in our social network -- you know that if you've got more than fifteen Orkut buddies,
-
24:31 - 24:37it's statistically certain that you're no more than three steps to someone who's contributed money to a 'terrorist' cause?
-
24:38 - 24:41Remember the airport? Imagine a lot more of that."
-
24:42 - 24:48"Maya," he said, carefully. "I think you're over-reacting. You don't need to go to Mexico.
-
24:48 - 24:51You can just quit. We can do a startup together or something.
-
24:51 - 24:56Or you can move to the country and raise dogs. Whatever. This is crazy --"
-
24:57 - 25:01"They came to see me today," she said. "At work. Two of the political officers
-
25:01 - 25:06-- the minders who monitor our sensitive projects. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions."
-
25:06 - 25:08"About the googlecleaner?"
-
25:08 - 25:12"About my friends and family. About my search history. About my political beliefs."
-
25:13 - 25:14"Jesus."
-
25:14 - 25:18"They were sending me a message. They were letting me know that they were onto me.
-
25:18 - 25:22They're watching every click and every search. It's time to go -- time to get out of range."
-
25:23 - 25:25"There's a Google office in Mexico, you know."
-
25:25 - 25:27"Are you coming, Greg? We're going now."
-
25:29 - 25:31"Laurie, what do you think of this?"
-
25:32 - 25:38Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. "Maya showed me what Google knows about me.
-
25:38 - 25:44It'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.
-
25:45 - 25:50My parents left East Germany in '65 -- they used to tell me about the Stasi.
-
25:50 - 25:54They'd put everything about you in your file -- even unpatriotic jokes.
-
25:55 - 26:01Lately I've been feeling...watched. All the time. Like I can't live without leaving a trail.
-
26:01 - 26:05Like I'm throwing off a smog of data and it can't be gotten rid of."
-
26:06 - 26:09"We're going now, Greg. Now. Are you coming?"
-
26:10 - 26:14Greg looked at the dogs. "I've got some pesos left over," he said.
-
26:14 - 26:16"You take them. Be careful, OK?"
-
26:17 - 26:19She looked like she was going to slug him.
-
26:19 - 26:25Then she softened and gave him a ferocious hug. "Be careful yourself," she whispered in his ear.
-
26:27 - 26:32They came for him a week later. At home, in the middle of the night, just as he'd imagined it.
-
26:32 - 26:35Their knock was nothing like Maya's tentative, nervous thump.
-
26:35 - 26:40They went bang-bang-bang, confident, knowing that they had every right to be there
-
26:40 - 26:42and not caring who else came after them.
-
26:43 - 26:46Two men. One stayed by the door and didn't say anything.
-
26:46 - 26:52The other was a smiler, short and rumpled, in a sports coat with a small stain on one lapel
-
26:52 - 26:54and an American flag on the other.
-
26:54 - 26:58"Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," he said, by way of introduction.
-
26:58 - 27:03"'Exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information.
-
27:03 - 27:07Ten years for a first offense, ever since the PATRIOT Act extended it.
-
27:07 - 27:12I have it on the best of authority that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies.
-
27:13 - 27:19And oh, what will come out in the trial. All the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile."
-
27:20 - 27:23Greg had been playing this scene out in his head for a week.
-
27:23 - 27:26He'd had all kinds of brave things to say, planned out in advance.
-
27:26 - 27:29He'd even written some down, to see how they looked.
-
27:29 - 27:32It had given him something to do while the knots in his stomach tightened,
-
27:32 - 27:34while he waited to hear from Maya.
-
27:35 - 27:40"I'd like to call a lawyer," is all he managed. It came out in a whisper.
-
27:40 - 27:43"You can do that," the man said. "But hear me out first."
-
27:44 - 27:48Greg found his voice. "I'd like to see your badge."
-
27:49 - 27:58The man's basset-hound face lit up as he hissed a laugh. "Oh, Greg, buddy. I'm not a cop. I work for --"
-
27:58 - 28:03He named the DC firm in Google's employ. The inventors of swiftboating.
-
28:04 - 28:07"You're a Googler. You're part of the family.
-
28:07 - 28:12We wouldn't send the police after you without talking with you first. There's an offer I'd like to make."
-
28:13 - 28:15Greg made coffee.
-
28:15 - 28:19It gave him something to do with his hands while he tried to find that bravery he'd been honing all week.
-
28:19 - 28:24"I'll go to the press," he said. "I've written this all up. I'll go straight to them."
-
28:25 - 28:27The guy nodded as if thinking it over.
-
28:27 - 28:32"Well, sure. You could walk into the Chronicle's office in the morning and spill everything you need.
-
28:32 - 28:36They'd try to find a confirming source. They won't find it.
-
28:36 - 28:39Maybe you'll try to show them what your profile looks like today?
-
28:39 - 28:44Well, tell you what, it looks just like it looked the day you landed at SFO.
-
28:45 - 28:51Greg, buddy, why don't you hear me out before you start trying to figure out how to fight me?
-
28:51 - 28:57I'm in the win-win business. I'm in the business of figuring out how to get all parties what they need.
-
28:58 - 29:03I'm very good at it. You don't even want to know what I'm billing Google for this little tete-a-tete.
-
29:03 - 29:07By the way, those are excellent beans, but you want to give them a little rinse first,
-
29:07 - 29:12takes some of the bitterness out and brings up the oils. Here, pass me a colander?"
-
29:13 - 29:18Greg watched in numb bemusement as the man took off his jacket and hung it over a kitchen chair,
-
29:18 - 29:23then undid his cuffs and rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his pocket.
-
29:23 - 29:28Then he poured the beans back out of the grinder and into Greg's colander and did things at the sink.
-
29:29 - 29:35He was a little pudgy, and very pale. He needed a haircut -- he had unruly curls at his neck.
-
29:35 - 29:37It made Greg relax, somehow.
-
29:38 - 29:43This guy had the social gracelessness of a nerd, felt like a real Googler, obsessed with the minutiae.
-
29:43 - 29:46He knew his way around a coffee-grinder, too.
-
29:46 - 29:49"We're drafting a team for Building 49 --"
-
29:49 - 29:52"There is no building 49," Greg said, automatically.
-
29:52 - 29:58"Yeah," the guy said, with a private little smile. "There's no Building 49.
-
29:59 - 30:03And we're putting together a team, with its own buginizer, to own googlecleaner.
-
30:03 - 30:08Maya's code wasn't very efficient. Every time someone runs it, it clobbers the whole farm.
-
30:08 - 30:13And it's got plenty of bugs. We've asked around and there's consensus on this.
-
30:13 - 30:17You'd be the right guy, and it wouldn't matter what you knew if you were back inside --"
-
30:18 - 30:20"No, I wouldn't," Greg said. "You're on crack."
-
30:20 - 30:27"Hear me out. There's money involved. Good work, too. Smart colleagues. A direction for your life.
-
30:27 - 30:30A chance to participate in the political life of your country --"
-
30:30 - 30:35Greg gave a bitter laugh. "Unbelievable," he said.
-
30:35 - 30:41"If you think I'm going to help you smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you're even crazier than I thought."
-
30:42 - 30:50"Greg," he said, "Greg, you're right. That was dumb. No one is going to do that anymore.
-
30:50 - 30:58We're just going to -- clean things up a little. For some select people. You know what I mean, right?
-
30:58 - 31:02Every Google profile is a little scary under close inspection.
-
31:03 - 31:06Close inspection is the order of the day in politics.
-
31:06 - 31:10You stand for office and they'll look at your kids, your brothers, your ex-girlfriends.
-
31:10 - 31:16Now that your search history is available to so many people, it won't be that hard to look into that too.
-
31:16 - 31:21Your Orkut network, your old Usenet messages, your searches, all of it."
-
31:21 - 31:27He loaded the cafetiere and depressed the plunger, his face screwed up in solemn concentration.
-
31:27 - 31:34He held out his hand and Greg got down two coffee mugs -- Google mugs, of course -- and passed them to him.
-
31:35 - 31:40"We're going to do for our friends just what Maya did for you. Just give them a little cleanup.
-
31:40 - 31:45Preserve their privacy. That's all -- I promise you, that's all."
-
31:46 - 31:48Greg sipped the coffee, but didn't taste it.
-
31:49 - 31:51"And whichever candidates you don't clean --"
-
31:51 - 31:56"Yeah," the guy said. "Yeah, you're right. It'll be tough for them."
-
31:57 - 31:58"You can go now," Greg said.
-
31:59 - 32:05"Oh, Greg," the guy said. He plucked his jacket off his chair-back and shrugged it on,
-
32:05 - 32:10felt in the inside pocket and produced a small stack of paper, folded into quarters.
-
32:10 - 32:12He smoothed it out and put it on the table.
-
32:13 - 32:17Greg looked quickly and saw the rows of results he'd seen on the DHS man's screen,
-
32:17 - 32:19back at the airport, when this all started.
-
32:20 - 32:23"I don't care," he said. "Tell the world about my search history. Go ahead.
-
32:23 - 32:27In five years, everyone will have had their search history ruptured. We'll all be guilty."
-
32:28 - 32:32"It's not your history," the man said. He divided the stack into two piles,
-
32:32 - 32:35and pointed to names on the top sheet of each.
-
32:35 - 32:37One was Maya's.
-
32:37 - 32:41The other was a candidate whose campaign Greg had contributed to for the last three elections.
-
32:41 - 32:45"You get five weeks' vacation a year. You can go to Cabo for the SCUBA.
-
32:45 - 32:48The options package is very generous, too."
-
32:49 - 32:54The man sat down and drank some coffee. Greg tried some more of his own. It didn't taste so bad.
-
32:55 - 32:59It was, in fact, more delicious than anything that had ever come out of his kitchen.
-
32:59 - 33:01The man knew what he was doing.
-
33:02 - 33:04The best years of Greg's life had been spent at Google.
-
33:04 - 33:11Smart people. Amazing work environment. Wonderful technology. Nothing in the world like it.
-
33:12 - 33:15When you worked at G, you had the best model train set in the universe to play with.
-
33:15 - 33:17Organizing all of human knowledge.
-
33:18 - 33:21"You can pick your team, of course," the man said.
-
33:21 - 33:25Greg poured himself another cup of delicious coffee.
-
33:25 - 33:27The new Congress took eleven working days
-
33:27 - 33:31to pass the Securing and Enumerating America's Communications and Hypertext Act,
-
33:31 - 33:39which authorized the DHS and the NSA to outsource up to 80 percent of its intelligence and analysis work to private contractors.
-
33:39 - 33:44Theoretically, the contracts were open to a competitive bidding process, but within the secure group at Google,
-
33:44 - 33:48in building 49, there was no question of who would win those contracts.
-
33:48 - 33:53If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border,
-
33:53 - 33:57you can bet that they would have caught them -- governments just aren't equipped to Do Search Right.
-
33:58 - 34:01Greg looked himself in the eye that morning as he shaved
-
34:01 - 34:05-- the security minders didn't like hacker-stubble, and they weren't shy about telling you so --
-
34:05 - 34:11and realized that today was his first day as a de facto intelligence agent in the US government.
-
34:11 - 34:16How bad would it be? Wasn't it better to have Google doing this stuff than some ham-fisted spook?
-
34:17 - 34:23He had himself convinced by the time he parked at the Googleplex, among the hybrid cars and bulging bike-racks.
-
34:23 - 34:27He stopped for an organic smoothie on the way to his desk, then sat down and sipped.
-
34:29 - 34:32The rumpled man hadn't been to the G since Greg went back to work,
-
34:32 - 34:35but it often felt like his influence was all around them in building 49.
-
34:35 - 34:37He wasn't any less rumpled today
-
34:37 - 34:44-- 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.
-
34:44 - 34:47"Hi, Greg," he said, sliding into the chair next to his.
-
34:47 - 34:50His podmates stood up in unison and left the room.
-
34:50 - 34:57"Just tell me what it is," Greg said. "Just spit it out. You want me to pwn NORAD and start World War III, right?"
-
34:57 - 35:02"Nothing so obvious," the man said, patting his shoulder. "Just a little search-job."
-
35:03 - 35:04"Yeah?"
-
35:04 - 35:09"There's a person we want to find. A person who's left the country, apparently headed for Mexico.
-
35:09 - 35:13She knows certain things that are, as of today, classified.
-
35:13 - 35:15She needs to be briefed on her new responsibilities."
-
35:15 - 35:20Greg stood up. "I'm not going to find Maya for you." He pulled on his jacket.
-
35:20 - 35:24"There are plenty of people here who will. It's up to you, though.
-
35:24 - 35:29You can work here with her, being productive, or you can find out just how rotten life can get
-
35:29 - 35:32-- while she works here, being productive with your co-workers."
-
35:34 - 35:37Greg stared at him, his hands balled into fists.
-
35:37 - 35:42"Come on," the rumpled man said. "Greg, we both know how this goes.
-
35:42 - 35:48When you said yes to me in your kitchen, you lost the option of saying no. It's not so bad, is it?
-
35:48 - 35:53Who would you rather have doing the nation's intelligence: you and your pals here in the Valley,
-
35:53 - 35:56or a bunch of straight-edge code-grinders in Virginia?"
-
35:56 - 35:58Greg turned on his heel and left.
-
35:58 - 36:04He 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.
-
36:05 - 36:10Then he limped back to his desk, hung his jacket on his chair, and logged back in.
-
36:11 - 36:15It was a week later when his key-card failed to open the door to Building 49.
-
36:15 - 36:20The idiot red LED shone at him every time he swiped it. He swiped it and swiped it.
-
36:20 - 36:25Any other building and there'd be someone to tailgate on, people trickling in and out all day.
-
36:25 - 36:29But the Googlers in 49 only emerged for meals, and sometimes not even that.
-
36:29 - 36:33Swipe, swipe, swipe.
-
36:33 - 36:36"Greg, can I see you, please?"
-
36:36 - 36:39The rumpled man hadn't shaved in a couple of days.
-
36:39 - 36:43He put an arm around Greg's shoulders and Greg smelled his citrusy aftershave.
-
36:44 - 36:48It was the same cologne that his divemaster in Baja had worn when they went out to the bars in the evening.
-
36:48 - 36:53Greg couldn't remember his name. Juan-Carlos? Juan-Luis?
-
36:54 - 36:58The man's arm around his shoulders was firm, steering him away from the door,
-
36:58 - 37:01out onto the immaculate lawn, past the kitchen's herb garden.
-
37:02 - 37:04"We're giving you a couple of days off," he said.
-
37:05 - 37:09Greg felt a cold premonition that sank all the way to his balls.
-
37:09 - 37:12"Why?" Had he done something wrong? Was he going to jail?
-
37:13 - 37:18"It's Maya." The man turned him around, met his eyes with his bottomless basset-hound gaze.
-
37:18 - 37:25"It's Maya. Killed herself. In Guatemala. I'm sorry, Greg."
-
37:27 - 37:33Greg seemed to hurtle away from himself, to a place miles above, a Google Earth view of the Googleplex,
-
37:33 - 37:39looking down on himself and the rumpled man as a pair of dots, two pixels, tiny and insignificant.
-
37:39 - 37:44He willed himself to tear at his hair, to drop to his knees and weep.
-
37:44 - 37:49From a long way away, he heard himself say, "I don't need any time off. I'm OK."
-
37:50 - 37:53From a long way away, he heard the rumpled man insist.
-
37:53 - 37:55But one-pixel Greg wouldn't be turned aside.
-
37:55 - 38:04The argument persisted for a long time, and then the two pixels moved into Building 49 and the door swung shut behind them.
-
38:15 - 38:21Doctorow: This one came as a commission from Radar magazine -- now defunct, a casualty of the 2008 crash,
-
38:21 - 38:26but in 2007, it was the most widely circulated "lifestyle" magazine in the US.
-
38:26 - 38:31They asked me to write about "the day Google became evil."
-
38:31 - 38:35I didn't want to cheap out and just write about the company selling out to some evil millionaire.
-
38:35 - 38:39If Google ever turned evil, it would be because a) evil had a compelling business-model
-
38:39 - 38:43and b) evil lay at the end of a compelling technical challenge.
-
38:43 - 38:48I spent a lot of time talking off-the-record to Googlers, who are, to a one, the nicest people I know
-
38:48 - 38:53(OK, one exception springs to mind, but let's not air our dirty laundry in public, right?).
-
38:53 - 38:58I also had an incredibly productive conversation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston,
-
38:58 - 39:01a profound and sharp-witted privacy lawyer.
-
39:01 - 39:06I wanted to capture a company that was full of good people who do bad. There are lots of these.
-
39:06 - 39:11For example, all the Microsoft employees I know are fantastic and smart and caring and principled.
-
39:11 - 39:15But ethically and technically, most of what comes out of Redmond is a train-wreck.
-
39:15 - 39:19It's anti-synergy: a firm that is far less than the sum of its parts.
-
39:19 - 39:22I could easily see Google turning into that.
-
39:22 - 39:26I wish I understood how groups of good people trying to do good can do bad.
- Title:
- Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton
- Description:
-
This "video" is just a support for multilingual subtitling of the audio recording of Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" short story, from his With a Little Help collection, as read by Wil Wheaton.Sources:With a Little Help
craphound.com/walh
(collection of all versions of all stories, and description of the publishing project);Audio of Will Wheaton's recording downloadable from craphound.com/walh/audiobook/download-audiobook
Translations of "Scroogled" and derived works: craphound.com/?p=1902 - Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- Captions Requested
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" read by Wil Wheaton |