Chapter 17

This chapter is dedicated to Waterstone's, the national UK booksellingchain. Waterstone's is a chain of stores, but each one has the feel of agreat independent store, with tons of personality, great stock (especiallyaudiobooks!), and knowledgeable staff.
WaterstonesSo we told her. I found it really fun, actually. Teaching people how touse technology is always exciting. It's so cool to watch people figure outhow the technology around them can be used to make their lives better.
Ange was great too — we made an excellent team. We'd trade off ex-plaining how it all worked. Barbara was pretty good at this stuff to beginwith, of course.
It turned out that she'd covered the crypto wars, the period in the earlynineties when civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Founda-tion fought for the right of Americans to use strong crypto. I dimly knewabout that period, but Barabara explained it in a way that made me getgoose-pimples.
It's unbelievable today, but there was a time when the governmentclassed crypto as a munition and made it illegal for anyone to export oruse it on national security grounds. Get that? We used to have illegalmath in this country.
The National Security Agency were the real movers behind the ban.
They had a crypto standard that they said was strong enough forbankers and their customers to use, but not so strong that the mafiawould be able to keep its books secret from them. The standard, DES-56,was said to be practically unbreakable. Then one of EFF's millionaire co-founders built a $250,000 DES-56 cracker that could break the cipher intwo hours.
Still the NSA argued that it should be able to keep American citizensfrom possessing secrets it couldn't pry into. Then EFF dealt its death-223blow. In 1995, they represented a Berkeley mathematics grad studentcalled Dan Bernstein in court. Bernstein had written a crypto tutorial thatcontained computer code that could be used to make a cipher strongerthan DES-56. Millions of times stronger. As far as the NSA was con-cerned, that made his article into a weapon, and therefore unpublishable.
Well, it may be hard to get a judge to understand crypto and what itmeans, but it turned out that the average Appeals Court judge isn't realenthusiastic about telling grad students what kind of articles they're al-lowed to write. The crypto wars ended with a victory for the good guyswhen the 9th Circuit Appellate Division Court ruled that code was aform of expression protected under the First Amendment — "Congressshall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." If you've everbought something on the Internet, or sent a secret message, or checkedyour bank-balance, you used crypto that EFF legalized. Good thing, too:
the NSA just isn't that smart. Anything they know how to crack, you canbe sure that terrorists and mobsters can get around too.
Barbara had been one of the reporters who'd made her reputationfrom covering the issue. She'd cut her teeth covering the tail end of thecivil rights movement in San Francisco, and she recognized the similaritybetween the fight for the Constitution in the real world and the fight incyberspace.
So she got it. I don't think I could have explained this stuff to my par-ents, but with Barbara it was easy. She asked smart questions about ourcryptographic protocols and security procedures, sometimes asking stuffI didn't know the answer to — sometimes pointing out potential breaksin our procedure.
We plugged in the Xbox and got it online. There were four open WiFinodes visible from the board room and I told it to change between themat random intervals. She got this too — once you were actually pluggedinto the Xnet, it was just like being on the Internet, only some stuff was alittle slower, and it was all anonymous and unsniffable.
"So now what?" I said as we wound down. I'd talked myself dry and Ihad a terrible acid feeling from the coffee. Besides, Ange kept squeezingmy hand under the table in a way that made me want to break away andfind somewhere private to finish making up for our first fight.
"Now I do journalism. You go away and I research all the thingsyou've told me and try to confirm them to the extent that I can. I'll letyou see what I'm going to publish and I'll let you know when it's goingto go live. I'd prefer that you not talk about this with anyone else now,224because I want the scoop and because I want to make sure that I get thestory before it goes all muddy from press speculation and DHS spin.
"I will have to call the DHS for comment before I go to press, but I'll dothat in a way that protects you to whatever extent possible. I'll also besure to let you know before that happens.
"One thing I need to be clear on: this isn't your story anymore. It'smine. You were very generous to give it to me and I'll try to repay thegift, but you don't get the right to edit anything out, to change it, or tostop me. This is now in motion and it won't stop. Do you understandthat?"I hadn't thought about it in those terms but once she said it, it was ob-vious. It meant that I had launched and I wouldn't be able to recall therocket. It was going to fall where it was aimed, or it would go off course,but it was in the air and couldn't be changed now. Sometime in the nearfuture, I would stop being Marcus — I would be a public figure. I'd bethe guy who blew the whistle on the DHS.
I'd be a dead man walking.
I guess Ange was thinking along the same lines, because she'd gone acolor between white and green.
"Let's get out of here," she said.
Ange's mom and sister were out again, which made it easy to decidewhere we were going for the evening. It was past supper time, but myparents had known that I was meeting with Barbara and wouldn't giveme any grief if I came home late.
When we got to Ange's, I had no urge to plug in my Xbox. I had hadall the Xnet I could handle for one day. All I could think about wasAnge, Ange, Ange. Living without Ange. Knowing Ange was angry withme. Ange never going to talk to me again. Ange never going to kiss meagain.
She'd been thinking the same. I could see it in her eyes as we shut thedoor to her bedroom and looked at each other. I was hungry for her, likeyou'd hunger for dinner after not eating for days. Like you'd thirst for aglass of water after playing soccer for three hours straight.
Like none of that. It was more. It was something I'd never felt before. Iwanted to eat her whole, devour her.
225Up until now, she'd been the sexual one in our relationship. I'd let herset and control the pace. It was amazingly erotic to have her grab me andtake off my shirt, drag my face to hers.
But tonight I couldn't hold back. I wouldn't hold back.
The door clicked shut and I reached for the hem of her t-shirt andyanked, barely giving her time to lift her arms as I pulled it over herhead. I tore my own shirt over my head, listening to the cotton crackle asthe stitches came loose.
Her eyes were shining, her mouth open, her breathing fast and shal-low. Mine was too, my breath and my heart and my blood all roaring inmy ears.
I took off the rest of our clothes with equal zest, throwing them intothe piles of dirty and clean laundry on the floor. There were books andpapers all over the bed and I swept them aside. We landed on the un-made bedclothes a second later, arms around one another, squeezing likewe would pull ourselves right through one another. She moaned into mymouth and I made the sound back, and I felt her voice buzz in my vocalchords, a feeling more intimate than anything I'd ever felt before.
She broke away and reached for the bedstand. She yanked open thedrawer and threw a white pharmacy bag on the bed before me. I lookedinside. Condoms. Trojans. One dozen spermicidal. Still sealed. I smiledat her and she smiled back and I opened the box.
I'd thought about what it would be like for years. A hundred times aday I'd imagined it. Some days, I'd thought of practically nothing else.
It was nothing like I expected. Parts of it were better. Parts of it werelots worse. While it was going on, it felt like an eternity. Afterwards, itseemed to be over in the blink of an eye.
Afterwards, I felt the same. But I also felt different. Something hadchanged between us.
It was weird. We were both shy as we put our clothes on and putteredaround the room, looking away, not meeting each other's eyes. Iwrapped the condom in a kleenex from a box beside the bed and took itinto the bathroom and wound it with toilet paper and stuck it deep intothe trash-can.
When I came back in, Ange was sitting up in bed and playing with herXbox. I sat down carefully beside her and took her hand. She turned toface me and smiled. We were both worn out, trembly.
226"Thanks," I said.
She didn't say anything. She turned her face to me. She was grinninghugely, but fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.
I hugged her and she grabbed tightly onto me. "You're a good man,Marcus Yallow," she whispered. "Thank you."I didn't know what to say, but I squeezed her back. Finally, we parted.
She wasn't crying any more, but she was still smiling.
She pointed at my Xbox, on the floor beside the bed. I took the hint. Ipicked it up and plugged it in and logged in.
Same old same old. Lots of email. The new posts on the blogs I readstreamed in. Spam. God did I get a lot of spam. My Swedish mailbox wasrepeatedly "joe-jobbed" — used as the return address for spams sent tohundreds of millions of Internet accounts, so that all the bounces andangry messages came back to me. I didn't know who was behind it.
Maybe the DHS trying to overwhelm my mailbox. Maybe it was justpeople pranking. The Pirate Party had pretty good filters, though, andthey gave anyone who wanted it 500 gigabytes of email storage, so Iwasn't likely to be drowned any time soon.
I filtered it all out, hammering on the delete key. I had a separate mail-box for stuff that came in encrypted to my public key, since that waslikely to be Xnet-related and possibly sensitive. Spammers hadn't figuredout that using public keys would make their junk mail more plausibleyet, so for now this worked well.
There were a couple dozen encrypted messages from people in theweb of trust. I skimmed them — links to videos and pics of new abusesfrom the DHS, horror stories about near-escapes, rants about stuff I'dblogged. The usual.
Then I came to one that was only encrypted to my public key. Thatmeant that no one else could read it, but I had no idea who had writtenit. It said it came from Masha, which could either be a handle or a name— I couldn't tell which.
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M1k3y>
You don't know me, but I know you.
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227I was arrested the day that the bridge blew. They questioned me. Theydecided I was innocent. They offered me a job: help them hunt down theterrorists who'd killed my neighbors.
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It sounded like a good deal at the time. Little did I realize that my ac-tual job would turn out to be spying on kids who resented their city be-ing turned into a police state.
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I infiltrated Xnet on the day it launched. I am in your web of trust. If Iwanted to spill my identity, I could send you email from an addressyou'd trust. Three addresses, actually. I'm totally inside your network asonly another 17-year-old can be. Some of the email you've gotten hasbeen carefully chosen misinformation from me and my handlers.
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They don't know who you are, but they're coming close. They continueto turn people, to compromise them. They mine the social network sitesand use threats to turn kids into informants. There are hundreds ofpeople working for the DHS on Xnet right now. I have their names,handles and keys. Private and public.
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Within days of the Xnet launch, we went to work on exploiting Para-noidLinux. The exploits so far have been small and insubstantial, but abreak is inevitable. Once we have a zero-day break, you're dead.
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I think it's safe to say that if my handlers knew that I was typing this,my ass would be stuck in Gitmo-by-the-Bay until I was an old woman.
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Even if they don't break ParanoidLinux, there are poisoned Para-noidXbox distros floating around. They don't match the checksums, buthow many people look at the checksums? Besides me and you? Plenty ofkids are already dead, though they don't know it.
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All that remains is for my handlers to figure out the best time to bustyou to make the biggest impact in the media. That time will be sooner,not later. Believe.
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228You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this.
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I am too.
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Here's where I come from. I signed up to fight terrorists. Instead, I'mspying on Americans who believe things that the DHS doesn't like. Notpeople who plan on blowing up bridges, but protestors. I can't do itanymore.
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But neither can you, whether or not you know it. Like I say, it's only amatter of time until you're in chains on Treasure Island. That's not if,that's when.
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So I'm through here. Down in Los Angeles, there are some people.
They say they can keep me safe if I want to get out.
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I want to get out.
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I will take you with me, if you want to come. Better to be a fighter thana martyr. If you come with me, we can figure out how to win together.
I'm as smart as you. Believe.
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What do you say?
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Here's my public key.
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MashaWhen in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Ever hear that rhyme? It's not good advice, but at least it's easy to fol-low. I leapt off the bed and paced back and forth. My heart thudded andmy blood sang in a cruel parody of the way I'd felt when we got home.
This wasn't sexual excitement, it was raw terror.
"What?" Ange said. "What?"229I pointed at the screen on my side of the bed. She rolled over andgrabbed my keyboard and scribed on the touchpad with her fingertip.
She read in silence.
I paced.
"This has to be lies," she said. "The DHS is playing games with yourhead."I looked at her. She was biting her lip. She didn't look like she believedit.
"You think?""Sure. They can't beat you, so they're coming after you using Xnet.""Yeah."I sat back down on the bed. I was breathing fast again.
"Chill out," she said. "It's just head-games. Here."She never took my keyboard from me before, but now there was a newintimacy between us. She hit reply and typed,>
Nice try.
She was writing as M1k3y now, too. We were together in a way thatwas different from before.
"Go ahead and sign it. We'll see what she says."I didn't know if that was the best idea, but I didn't have any betterones. I signed it and encrypted it with my private key and the public keyMasha had provided.
The reply was instant.
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I thought you'd say something like that.
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Here's a hack you haven't thought of. I can anonymously tunnel videoover DNS. Here are some links to clips you might want to look at beforeyou decide I'm full of it. These people are all recording each other, all thetime, as insurance against a back-stab. It's pretty easy to snoop off themas they snoop on each other.
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Masha230Attached was source-code for a little program that appeared to do ex-actly what Masha claimed: pull video over the Domain Name Serviceprotocol.
Let me back up a moment here and explain something. At the end ofthe day, every Internet protocol is just a sequence of text sent back andforth in a proscribed order. It's kind of like getting a truck and putting acar in it, then putting a motorcycle in the car's trunk, then attaching a bi-cycle to the back of the motorcycle, then hanging a pair of Rollerbladeson the back of the bike. Except that then, if you want, you can attach thetruck to the Rollerblades.
For example, take Simple Mail Transport Protocol, or SMTP, which isused for sending email.
Here's a sample conversation between me and my mail server, sendinga message to myself:
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HELO littlebrother.com.se250 mail.pirateparty.org.se Hello mail.pirateparty.org.se, pleased tomeet you>
MAIL FROM:m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se250 2.1.0 m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se… Sender ok>
RCPT TO:m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se250 2.1.5 m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se… Recipient ok>
DATA354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself>
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout>
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250 2.0.0 k5SMW0xQ006174 Message accepted for deliveryQUIT221 2.0.0 mail.pirateparty.org.se closing connectionConnection closed by foreign host.
231This conversation's grammar was defined in 1982 by Jon Postel, one ofthe Internet's heroic forefathers, who used to literally run the most im-portant servers on the net under his desk at the University of SouthernCalifornia, back in the paleolithic era.
Now, imagine that you hooked up a mail-server to an IM session. Youcould send an IM to the server that said "HELO littlebrother.com.se" andit would reply with "250 mail.pirateparty.org.se Hellomail.pirateparty.org.se, pleased to meet you." In other words, you couldhave the same conversation over IM as you do over SMTP. With theright tweaks, the whole mail-server business could take place inside of achat. Or a web-session. Or anything else.
This is called "tunneling." You put the SMTP inside a chat "tunnel."You could then put the chat back into an SMTP tunnel if you wanted tobe really weird, tunneling the tunnel in another tunnel.
In fact, every Internet protocol is susceptible to this process. It's cool,because it means that if you're on a network with only Web access, youcan tunnel your mail over it. You can tunnel your favorite P2P over it.
You can even tunnel Xnet — which itself is a tunnel for dozens of proto-cols — over it.
Domain Name Service is an interesting and ancient Internet protocol,dating back to 1983. It's the way that your computer converts acomputer's name — like pirateparty.org.se — to the IP number that com-puters actually use to talk to each other over the net, like 204.11.50.136. Itgenerally works like magic, even though it's got millions of moving parts— every ISP runs a DNS server, as do most governments and lots ofprivate operators. These DNS boxes all talk to each other all the time,making and filling requests to each other so no matter how obscure thename is you feed to your computer, it will be able to turn it into anumber.
Before DNS, there was the HOSTS file. Believe it or not, this was asingle document that listed the name and address of every single computerconnected to the Internet. Every computer had a copy of it. This file waseventually too big to move around, so DNS was invented, and ran on aserver that used to live under Jon Postel's desk. If the cleaners knockedout the plug, the entire Internet lost its ability to find itself. Seriously.
The thing about DNS today is that it's everywhere. Every network hasa DNS server living on it, and all of those servers are configured to talkto each other and to random people all over the Internet.
232What Masha had done was figure out a way to tunnel a video-stream-ing system over DNS. She was breaking up the video into billions ofpieces and hiding each of them in a normal message to a DNS server. Byrunning her code, I was able to pull the video from all those DNS serv-ers, all over the Internet, at incredible speed. It must have looked bizarreon the network histograms, like I was looking up the address of everycomputer in the world.
But it had two advantages I appreciated at once: I was able to get thevideo with blinding speed — as soon as I clicked the first link, I startedto receive full-screen pictures, without any jitter or stuttering — and Ihad no idea where it was hosted. It was totally anonymous.
At first I didn't even clock the content of the video. I was totallyfloored by the cleverness of this hack. Streaming video from DNS? Thatwas so smart and weird, it was practically perverted.
Gradually, what I was seeing began to sink in.
It was a board-room table in a small room with a mirror down onewall. I knew that room. I'd sat in that room, while Severe-Haircut wo-man had made me speak my password aloud. There were five comfort-able chairs around the table, each with a comfortable person, all in DHSuniform. I recognized Major General Graeme Sutherland, the DHS BayArea commander, along with Severe Haircut. The others were new tome. They all watched a video screen at the end of the table, on whichthere was an infinitely more familiar face.
Kurt Rooney was known nationally as the President's chief strategist,the man who returned the party for its third term, and who was steam-ing towards a fourth. They called him "Ruthless" and I'd seen a news re-port once about how tight a rein he kept his staffers on, calling them,IMing them, watching their every motion, controlling every step. He wasold, with a lined face and pale gray eyes and a flat nose with broad,flared nostrils and thin lips, a man who looked like he was smellingsomething bad all the time.
He was the man on the screen. He was talking, and everyone else wasfocused on his screen, everyone taking notes as fast as they could type,trying to look smart.
"— say that they're angry with authority, but we need to show thecountry that it's terrorists, not the government, that they need to blame.
Do you understand me? The nation does not love that city. As far asthey're concerned, it is a Sodom and Gomorrah of fags and atheists whodeserve to rot in hell. The only reason the country cares what they think233in San Francisco is that they had the good fortune to have been blown tohell by some Islamic terrorists.
"These Xnet children are getting to the point where they might start tobe useful to us. The more radical they get, the more the rest of the nationunderstands that there are threats everywhere."His audience finished typing.
"We can control that, I think," Severe Haircut Lady said. "Our peoplein the Xnet have built up a lot of influence. The Manchurian Bloggers arerunning as many as fifty blogs each, flooding the chat channels, linkingto each other, mostly just taking the party line set by this M1k3y. Butthey've already shown that they can provoke radical action, even whenM1k3y is putting the brakes on."Major General Sutherland nodded. "We have been planning to leavethem underground until about a month before the midterms." I guessedthat meant the mid-term elections, not my exams. "That's per the originalplan. But it sounds like —""We've got another plan for the midterms," Rooney said. "Need-to-know, of course, but you should all probably not plan on traveling forthe month before. Cut the Xnet loose now, as soon as you can. So long asthey're moderates, they're a liability. Keep them radical."The video cut off.
Ange and I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the screen. Angereached out and started the video again. We watched it. It was worse thesecond time.
I tossed the keyboard aside and got up.
"I am so sick of being scared," I said. "Let's take this to Barbara andhave her publish it all. Put it all on the net. Let them take me away. Atleast I'll know what's going to happen then. At least then I'll have a littlecertainty in my life."Ange grabbed me and hugged me, soothed me. "I know baby, I know.
It's all terrible. But you're focusing on the bad stuff and ignoring thegood stuff. You've created a movement. You've outflanked the jerks inthe White House, the crooks in DHS uniforms. You've put yourself in aposition where you could be responsible for blowing the lid off of the en-tire rotten DHS thing.
"Sure they're out to get you. Course they are. Have you ever doubted itfor a moment? I always figured they were. But Marcus, they don't knowwho you are. Think about that. All those people, money, guns and spies,234and you, a seventeen year old high school kid — you're still beatingthem. They don't know about Barbara. They don't know about Zeb.
You've jammed them in the streets of San Francisco and humiliated thembefore the world. So stop moping, all right? You're winning.""They're coming for me, though. You see that. They're going to put mein jail forever. Not even jail. I'll just disappear, like Darryl. Maybe worse.
Maybe Syria. Why leave me in San Francisco? I'm a liability as long asI'm in the USA."She sat down on the bed with me.
"Yeah," she said. "That.""That.""Well, you know what you have to do, right?""What?" She looked pointedly at my keyboard. I could see the tearsrolling down her cheeks. "No! You're out of your mind. You think I'mgoing to run off with some nut off the Internet? Some spy?""You got a better idea?"I kicked a pile of her laundry into the air. "Whatever. Fine. I'll talk toher some more.""You talk to her," Ange said. "You tell her you and your girlfriend aregetting out.""What?""Shut up, dickhead. You think you're in danger? I'm in just as muchdanger, Marcus. It's called guilt by association. When you go, I go." Shehad her jaw thrust out at a mutinous angle. "You and I — we're togethernow. You have to understand that."We sat down on the bed together.
"Unless you don't want me," she said, finally, in a small voice.
"You're kidding me, right?""Do I look like I'm kidding?""There's no way I would voluntarily go without you, Ange. I couldnever have asked you to come, but I'm ecstatic that you offered."She smiled and tossed me my keyboard.
"Email this Masha creature. Let's see what this chick can do for us."I emailed her, encrypting the message, waiting for a reply. Angenuzzled me a little and I kissed her and we necked. Something about the235danger and the pact to go together — it made me forget the awkward-ness of having sex, made me freaking horny as hell.
We were half naked again when Masha's email arrived.
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Two of you? Jesus, like it won't be hard enough already.
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I don't get to leave except to do field intelligence after a big Xnet hit.
You get me? The handlers watch my every move, but I go off the leashwhen something big happens with Xnetters. I get sent into the field then.
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You do something big. I get sent to it. I get us both out. All three of us,if you insist.
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Make it fast, though. I can't send you a lot of email, understand? Theywatch me. They're closing in on you. You don't have a lot of time.
Weeks? Maybe just days.
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I need you to get me out. That's why I'm doing this, in case you'rewondering. I can't escape on my own. I need a big Xnet distraction.
That's your department. Don't fail me, M1k3y, or we're both dead. Yourgirlie too.
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MashaMy phone rang, making us both jump. It was my mom wanting toknow when I was coming home. I told her I was on my way. She didn'tmention Barbara. We'd agreed that we wouldn't talk about any of thisstuff on the phone. That was my dad's idea. He could be as paranoid asme.
"I have to go," I said.
"Our parents will be —""I know," I said. "I saw what happened to my parents when theythought I was dead. Knowing that I'm a fugitive isn't going to be muchbetter. But they'd rather I be a fugitive than a prisoner. That's what Ithink. Anyway, once we disappear, Barbara can publish without worry-ing about getting us into trouble."236We kissed at the door of her room. Not one of the hot, sloppy numberswe usually did when parting ways. A sweet kiss this time. A slow kiss. Agoodbye kind of kiss.
BART rides are introspective. When the train rocks back and forth andyou try not to make eye contact with the other riders and you try not toread the ads for plastic surgery, bail bondsmen and AIDS testing, whenyou try to ignore the graffiti and not look too closely at the stuff in thecarpeting. That's when your mind starts to really churn and churn.
You rock back and forth and your mind goes over all the things you'veoverlooked, plays back all the movies of your life where you're no hero,where you're a chump or a sucker.
Your brain comes up with theories like this one:
If the DHS wanted to catch M1k3y, what better way than to lure him into theopen, panic him into leading some kind of big, public Xnet event? Wouldn't thatbe worth the chance of a compromising video leaking?
Your brain comes up with stuff like that even when the train ride onlylasts two or three stops. When you get off, and you start moving, theblood gets running and sometimes your brain helps you out again.
Sometimes your brain gives you solutions in addition to problems.