“Caroline said you’d know what to do. Whatever’s on that drive, she said they were going to kill her over it. You have to figure it out.”
“I’m trying, but it’s like being given a puzzle without the top of the box.”
“So start lining up the edges,” replied Nina. “Do what you have to do to work your way in. I need to know what happened to my sister.”
“I want to understand all of this as well, but deciphering what we’re looking at is not that easy.”
“Neither was figuring out how to unlock the drive, but you did it,” she said, placing her hand again on his shoulder. “You can do this too.”
Nicholas liked the confidence she had in him.
“What can I do to help you?” she asked. “I’m not a computer person, but there must be something. Just name it.”
“How about some coffee? I think our long night is about to get much longer.”
When Nina returned with a pot and two mugs, she asked, “What have you found?”
He had been chewing on the top of a pen, an exercise that sometimes helped him focus. “Are you familiar with filter bubbles?”
“No.”
“It’s a term used to describe how search engines, Google in particular, are studying every online move you make and then tailoring what results get returned in response to your search queries. You and I could both conduct the exact same search and Google would kick back completely different results. If we each typed in ‘Egypt,’ you might get sightseeing and travel information, while I get information about politics and the Arab Spring. Everyone is being placed in their own bubble online.”
“But they’re not getting the same information,” Nina stated.
“Exactly. By controlling what you see, they can reinforce, or even shape, how you think. It’s like going to the library only to have the librarian hide half the card catalog when she sees you coming. Information is being filtered based on what computer algorithms think you want to read. The problem is you have no idea what’s being left out. However you see the world, whatever your politics or belief system is, you have to work to uncover any contradictory information.”
“So much for the Internet existing to bring people together,” she replied.
“Actually,” said Nicholas, “the Internet was created to be a military communications network that could withstand a nuclear first strike. It was developed in the 1950s, but didn’t transmit its first message until October 29, 1969. It was supposed to be the word
“How ironic.”
“Indeed,” he replied as he exited out of an article and scrolled through the other files. “Filter bubbles are only one kind of issue Caroline saved articles on. There’s a bunch of material on Internet legislation as well, Net neutrality, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act—”
“Why would she have saved all of those?” Nina wondered aloud.
“I can’t tell.”
“It must mean something. What’s Net neutrality?”
“Basically, it’s a move by elements within the government who want to have authority to censor the Internet,” replied Nicholas.
“That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not, and the PCNA Act is even worse.”
“I haven’t heard of that one either.”
“The PCNAA is also called the Internet ‘kill switch.’”
“That, I have heard of,” replied Nina. “That’s the law that would place a giant off button in the President’s office, right?”
Nicholas nodded. “And if there’s ever some sort of mega cyber attack, the President would have the ability and sole discretion to shut the Internet down.”
“Until the attack was gone?”
“For as long as the President saw fit. All he or she would have to do is keep renewing the state of cyber emergency.”
“You act like it’s that simple,” Nina said as she raised her hand and snapped her fingers. “Once the threat’s gone, the President would have to turn the Net back on. You can’t just continue to say there’s a state of emergency when there isn’t one.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think so?”
“Lobbying for the ability to censor the Web isn’t good in my opinion. I don’t like censorship of any kind, anywhere. I want the Net to be free and open. But I find it hard to believe that a U.S. President would claim there was an ongoing emergency and use it to keep people off the Internet when there really was no emergency at all.”
“Three days after the 9/11 attacks,” said Nicholas, “the President of the United States declared a national state of emergency. Over a decade later, it’s still in effect.”
“What?”
“The United States has been under a continuous state of emergency since 9/11.”
“And Congress just allows that?” asked Nina.
“It’s not something Congress votes on. Under the National Emergencies Act, the President is required only to inform them of his decision. The act was created so the President couldn’t establish a never-ending situation. A state of national emergency is only supposed to last for two years. The 9/11 state of emergency has been renewed repeatedly since it was established.”
“On what justification?”
Nicholas looked at her. “Terrorism.”
“But terrorism was around before 9/11,” said Nina, “and it’s going to continue to be around.”
“And so will America’s continuing state of national emergency.”
“I don’t understand that, though. Why? What’s the point? What power does it give them?”
“You hit the nail on the head. It’s about power. Supposedly, there are about five hundred legal provisions that can be bent or absolutely thrown out the window under a national state of emergency.”
“Such as?” she asked.
“The most famous are the ability to suspend two major Constitutional rights—the right to habeas corpus, which deals with unlawful detention, and the right of National Guard troops to appear before a grand jury.”
“Why would a National Guard soldier ever need to appear before a grand jury?”
“I’m not an attorney, but I would assume that because they’re citizen soldiers that they have some right to civilian courts and aren’t bound specifically by the military tribunal system,” Nicholas said with a shrug.
“But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“Well, when do charges normally get brought against a member of the military?”
“When they break the law,” Nina replied.
“Or,” Nicholas pointed out after thinking a moment, “when they refuse to obey.”
The look on the young woman’s face immediately changed. “If National Guard troops refuse to carry out actions against their fellow countrymen, the last thing the government would want is for those issues to be adjudicated in a civilian court.”
“Agreed,” he said. “There’s a school of thought that believes that buried within the Patriot Act are certain additional provisions the government can call upon only in a state of emergency and that is why it has been kept going. Again, I’m not a lawyer, but power is a heady drug. Only the very strong can resist its pull. Those with power tend most often to search out more in order to solidify their positions and prevent themselves from being dislodged. It’s how a republic slips from freedom into soft tyranny and eventually despotism.”
“But I still don’t understand why Caroline would be interested in all of this.”
Nicholas shrugged. “Maybe it had to do with what she was working on at ATS.”
“But all that is policy stuff. I thought she was on the tech end of things, working with Homeland Security and things like that.”
“That’s in here too,” he said as he opened another file, “and it makes a bit more sense, since DHS is
