‘To invade citizens’ privacy?’ Kate asked.
Mavens shook his head. ‘Any technology is open to abuse. There would have to be controls. But – you may not believe it, Ms. Manzoni – on the whole we civil servants are pretty clean.
‘And we need all the help we can get. These are increasingly difficult times, as you must know, Ms. Manzoni.’
‘The Wormwood.’
‘Yes.’ He frowned, looking troubled. ‘People seem reluctant to take responsibility for themselves, let alone for others, their community. A rise in crime is being matched by a rise in apathy about it. Presumably this will only grow worse as the years go by, as the Wormwood grows closer.’
Hiram seemed intrigued. ‘But what difference does it make if the Wormwood is going to cream us all anyhow? When I was a kid in England, we grew up believing that when the nuclear war broke out we’d have just four minutes’ warning. We used to talk about it. What would you do with your four minutes? I’d have got blind drunk and … ‘
‘We have centuries,’ said Mavens. ‘Not just minutes. We have a duty to keep society functioning as best we can, as long as possible. What else can we do? And sir, meanwhile – as has been true for decades – this country has more enemies than any nation in the world. National security may have a higher priority over issues of individual rights.’
‘Tell us what you’re proposing,’ Kate said.
Mavens took a deep breath. ‘I want to try to set up a deal. Mr. Patterson, this is your technology. You’re entitled to profit from it. I’d propose that you’d keep the patents and industry monopoly. But you’d license your technology to the government, to be used in the public interest, under suitably drafted legislation.’
Hiram snapped, ‘You have no authority to offer such a deal.’
Mavens shrugged. ‘Of course not. But this is obviously a sensible compromise, a win-win for all concerned-including the people of this country. I think I could sell it to my immediate superior, and then … ‘
Kate smiled. ‘You really have risked everything for this, haven’t you? It’s that important?’
‘Yes, ma’am, I believe it is.’
Hiram shook his head, wondering. ‘You bloody kids and your sentimental idealism.’
Mavens was watching him. ‘So what do you say, Mr. Patterson? You want to help me sell this? Or will you wait for the raid tomorrow?’
Kate said, ‘They’ll be grateful, Hiram. In public, anyhow. Maybe Marine One will come collect you from the helipad on your lawn so the Prez can pin a medal on your chest. This is a step closer to the center of power.’
‘For me and my sons,’ Hiram said.
‘Yes.’
‘And I’d maintain my commercial monopoly?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Abruptly Hiram grinned. His mood immediately switched as he accepted this defeat and started to revise his plans. ‘Let’s do it, Special Agent.’ He reached across the table and shook Mavens’ hand So the secrecy was over; the power the WormCam had granted Hiram would be counterbalanced. Kate felt an immense relief.
But then Hiram turned to Kate, and glared. ‘This was your foul-up, Manzoni. Your betrayal. I won’t forget it.’
And Kate – startled, disquieted – knew he meant it.
Chapter 10 – THE GUARDIANS
Extracted from National Intelligence Daily, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, recipients Top Secret Clearance and Higher, 12 December 2036:
… WormCam technology has proven able to penetrate environments where it is impractical or impossible to send human observers, or even robotic roving cameras. For example, WormCam viewpoints have given scientists a completely safe way to inspect the interior of waste repositories in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where for decades plutonium has been spilling into the soil, air and river. WormCams (operated under strict federal operative supervision) are also being used to inspect deep nuclear waste sites off the coast of Scotland, and to study the cores of the entombed Chernobyl-era reactors which, though long decommissioned, still litter the lands of the old Soviet Union- inspections which have turned up some alarming results (Appendices F-H) …
… Scientists are seeking approval to use a WormCam to delve without intrusion into a new giant freshwater lake found frozen deep in the Antarctic ice. Ancient, fragile biota have been entombed in such lakes for millions of years. In complete darkness, in water kept liquid by the pressure of hundreds of meters of ice, the trapped species follow their own evolutionary paths, completely distinct from those of surface forms. The scientific arguments appear strong; perhaps this investigation will prove to be truly non-intrusive, and so spare the ancient, fragile life-forms from immediate destruction even as their habitat is breached as notoriously happened early in the century, when overzealous scientists persuaded international commissions to open up Lake Vostok, the first such frozen world to be discovered. A commission reporting to the President’s Science Advisor is considering whether the matter can be progressed, with results being made available for proper scientific peer review, without making the WormCam’s existence known outside the present restricted circles …
… The recent rescue of Australian King Harry and his family from the wreck of their yacht during the Gulf of Carpentaria storms has demonstrated the WormCam’s promise to transform the efficacy of emergency services. Search-and-rescue operations at sea, for instance, should no longer require fleets of helicopters sweeping large areas of gray, stormy water at great risk to the crews involved; SAR operatives working in the safety of land-based monitoring centers will be able to pinpoint accident victims in a few minutes, and immediately focus rescue effort-and unavoidable risk-where it is required …
… This fundamentalist Christian sect intended to ‘commemorate’ the two thousandth anniversary (as they had calculated it) of Christ’s assault on the moneylenders in the Temple by setting off an electromagnetic pulse nuclear warhead in the heart of every major financial district on the planet, including New York, London, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Agency analysts concur with the headline writers that, if successful, the attack would have been an electronic Pearl Harbor. The ensuing financial chaos – with bank transfer networks, stock markets, bond markets, trading systems, credit networks, data communication lines all badly disrupted or destroyed – could, according to analysts, have caused a sufficiently powerful shock to the interdependent global financial systems to trigger a worldwide recession. Largely thanks to the use of WormCam intelligence, that disaster has been avoided. With this one success alone, the deployment of the WormCam in the public interest has saved estimated trillions of dollars and spared untold human misery in poverty, even starvation …
Extracted from ‘Wormint: The Patterson WormCam as a Tool for Precision Personal Intelligence and Other Applications.’ by Michael Mavens, FBI; published in Proceedings of Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (Intelligence Community), Tyson’s Comer, Virginia,
12-14 December, 2036: WormCams were first introduced on a trial basis to federal agencies under the umbrella of an interagency steering and evaluation group on which I served. The steering group contained representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI, CIA, the Federal Communications Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Institutes of Health. The power of the technology has quickly become apparent, however, and within six months, before completion of the formal pilot, WormCam capabilities are being rolled out to all the major pillars of our intelligence enterprise, that is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.
What does the WormCam mean for us?
The WormCam – a surveillance technology which can’t be tapped or jammed – cuts through the surveillance and encryption arms race we have been waging since, conservatively, the 1940s. Essentially the WormCam bridges directly across space to its subject, and is capable of providing images of unquestionable authenticity-images, for example, which could be reproduced in the courtroom. By comparison no photographic image, however relevant, has been admissible as evidence in a U.S. court of law since 2010, such has been the ease of doctoring such images.
Domestically WormCams have been used for customs and immigration, food and drug testing and inspection, verification of applications to federal positions, and a variety of other purposes. As regards criminal, justice, though the drafting of a legal framework regarding privacy rights to cover the WormCam’s use in criminal investigations remains pending, FBI and police teams have already been able to score a number of spectacular successes- for example, uncovering the plans of lone anarchist Subiru, F. (incidentally claiming to be a second generation clone of twentieth-century musician Michael Jackson) to blow up the Washington Monument.
Let me just remark that in 2035 only an estimated one-third of all felonies was reported and of that third, only a fifth was cleared by arrest and filing of charges. A fifth of a third; that’s around seven percent. The balance of the deterrence equation was tipped toward ineffectiveness. Now, though full figures from the trial period arc not yet in, we can already say that apprehension rates will be unproved by orders of magnitude. Ladies and gentlemen, it may be that we arc approaching an age when, for the first time in human history, it can truly be said that crime does not pay …