“And so this explains the success of the government’s crackdown of the resistance movement,” he said. “They track the driving activities of everyone suspected, and know of their whereabouts.”
“Right.”
“But Mrs Anderson, I am familiar with this city. I rarely use the computer.”
“That doesn’t matter. Your car’s computer is in constant interface with the central server. It does that for traffic control and so it will be ready to supply you with assistance if you turn it on in the middle of a trip.”
“We must warn others immediately! It may be too late to save me, but perhaps not too late to save others.” “Don’t write yourself off yet,” I said.
Again, wild hope flared in his face. “And why?”
“I’ll explain what I know about this stuff, and we’ll see if we can’t work something out. I’m a computer programmer, so I get all kinds of publications. Some of them are semi-underground things.”
“Yes?”
“Well, about five years ago, there was a drive-by shooting in a bad section of my city. Two young men were killed, the gunman got away, and there were no reliable witnesses. No hope was held out for catching them.”
“This pertains to our discussion of the directional computers?” Chantlo inquired with great politeness.
“I swear it does. Just listen. The directional computers had been installed in all cars for less than a year at that time. And somebody got the idea that if you went into the main server, you could get a listing of every car that was on the street at the time of the drive-by shooting. So the police gave the computer the address and the time, and the computer gave them all of the cars that had been there. So then they asked for the speeds of all of the cars listed. The computer told them that most of the cars had been at zero miles per hour, which means they were parked. Two cars had been moving, and they got details on where and how. One was parked but accelerated rapidly out of the area. The police figured that the driver was a witness, and didn’t want to get involved. And the second car had driven slowly into the area, slowed almost to a stop right where the shooting had taken place, and then sped away. That had to be the car.”
Chantlo was listening with rapt fascination. “Yes, please go on.”
“So the police cross-referenced the computer signatures of the two cars into the vehicle registration database. They got names and addresses of the owners. They searched the houses and found the murder weapon. The gunman and his driver were arrested and sent to jail.”
“Impressive,” Chantlo observed. “But I am surprised that, in America, such surveillance was allowed.”
“Well, there was a lot of controversy at the time,” I admitted. “It was all over the news that the police had been able to tell where everyone was. But the police were required to get a court order allowing them to access the server. All information from the server had to be printed out into a judge’s hands, who destroyed everything that didn’t directly pertain to the investigation. And an appeals court could be called upon to examine the court order and agree that it was justified. If it didn’t, the evidence was thrown out of court.”
Chantlo was nodding. “I see. And this system of safeguards is not in place in Thusbammanna.”
“Right. It probably never occurred to the Americans who sold the system that your government would use it for surveillance of political enemies.”
Chantlo digested this in silence for a minute. Then he looked at me. “You indicated that this could help me in some way?”
“Maybe. You have to understand: in America, some people just don’t like the fact that the government can tell where they are. Most people are satisfied with the judicial safeguards, but some aren’t. So there was some interest in how to disconnect your car’s computer. The obvious answer is to smash it, but that’s going to be suspicious in court if you’re brought in on other charges. So some computer hackers began playing around with reprogramming them, so the computer says you were somewhere where you weren’t. I’ve read some of the articles.”
“I begin to see what you are thinking,” Chantlo said.
“Don’t get too hopeful,” I warned him. “The state government eventually put security safeguards into the main server so that it couldn’t be hacked into. But the safeguards are very recent—yours may not have them.”
“So your intent is to—er—‘hack’ into the government’s computer server?”
“Right. And establish that you weren’t where they thought you were.”
“Oh!” he said with deep emotion. “Oh, Mrs. Anderson! If you could do that, my family would be grateful forever!”
I grinned excitedly. “Do you have a garage?”
“I can borrow one quickly.”
He began giving me directions on how to reach the garage, and my mind kept working at the concept. “You know,” I said, “from the first moment at the airport, I wondered why in the world your government would buy this road guidance system, when your country has so many other basic needs.”
He scowled. “Many of us wondered the same,” he said. “Their stated reasons, that of encouraging tourism, and relieving traffic congestion, lacked conviction. And now we know: it is the basis of their success in crushing the resistance movement.”
“But they have so little money!”
“It is a question of priorities, Mrs. Anderson. They prefer to let the people starve. Maintaining power is their only priority. If they discovered a surveillance system that would enable them to crush the resistance, they would produce the money for it in any way necessary.”
“But why would America sell it to them?”
“It was a straightforward purchase,” he explained. “Thusbammanna had the money, and an American company had a system they no longer needed. If anyone asked, I am sure Thusbammanna would have mentioned tourism and traffic congestion, but I am certain that questions were never raised.”
It was dark and dank in the garage, and the chair he found for me was rickety and uncomfortable. Vermin had scuttled out of the way when he turned on the light. And for all we knew, we could be raided by security police at any time. And watching Chantlo, in his agonized hopefulness, put a crushing, almost debilitating weight on me.
We had taken a very roundabout way to get to this garage. Chantlo had had us stop off at several busy intersections, and had me wait while he walked down the street, stopped in at various places, then hurried back. When I had asked what he was doing, he merely said that he was spreading the word about the computer monitoring devices through some “message centers.”
I set my notebook computer on one of the fenders of my rental car, and looked at the main computer assembly under the hood. This was what worried me. I mean, I had been a hacker almost since before I could talk, but connecting up properly was crucial. My memory of those articles, scanned for pleasure from a computer Bulletin Board System when I was taking a break, was hazy at best.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”
“Indeed, yes.”
I burrowed into a side pocket of my computer carrying case and pulled out a bag of computer junk. Duane always called it my Techno-Nerd Packet, because it had all kinds of computer accessories that I carried around, figuring I might need them sometime.
The car’s computer had a diagnostic port, and I rummaged through my bag, searching for a connector that would fit. I was most worried about that, although I figured I could probably jury-rig something if I had to.
Murphy’s Law: it was the second-to-last connector in my bag. But it fit, and we were in business. I booted my computer, and chortled in triumph as the startup diagnostics verified the connection.
My memory of the article stank, but I had confidence in my hacking abilities. In no time, I was in the central computer. I chuckled. “Why even bother looking for the back door, when the front door is wide open?” I commented.