Page 130 of Code 6

“Process of elimination.”

“I don’t understand,” Noah said.

“I know Jeremy Peel heads Naïveté Two. After twenty-five years, I know Jeremy’s vision. I know which company assets he would draw upon to actualize that vision. I made a list. I spent all day pushing the limits of my clearance in each of those silos until I hit a brick wall.”

Noah nodded, seeming to get it. “And you want me to tell you if that brick wall is Naïveté Two.”

“No. Don’ttellme anything. I’m simply going to read you my list of silos that I think feed in to Naïveté Two. If I’m wrong, there’s nothing more to do. If I’m right, I would imagine you would want to shoot off an immediate email to your supervisor advising that it is highly possible that the kidnapping of Patrick Battle has compromised the security of Naïveté Two.”

The two men locked eyes. Gamble pulled up his list on his smartphone.

“I’ll spare you the obvious,” said Gamble. “We all know that screen-related sentiment data is part of virtually everything Big Data does. Browsing history, social media connections, online purchases, likes,emojis, emoticons, LOLs and other sentiment-related acronyms, preferred slang, how often you type in all caps, how many fractions of a second you let your cursor linger over the image of a puppy as opposed to the image of a Kardashian.

“My list puts a finer point on the project. It focuses on non-screen data that tells Big Data how you think and feel. Ready?”

No answer from Noah, but he was clearly listening.

“One: smart speakers. By this I mean all the data collected from everything that operates on voice command. Your phone, your car, your house, your microwave oven—everything.

“Two: all those telephone conversations that are recorded with the caller’s consent ‘for training purposes,’ which Big Data buys up so our algorithms can measure what your voice or syntax reveals about your emotions, sentiments, and personality—essentially, ‘hear’ what you say and how you say it when you’re angry or trying to get a stranger to help you, so that you can be coded as ‘logical and responsible,’ ‘creative and playful,’ or ‘tense and aggressive.’

“Three: personal health monitors, which can be linked to the GPS coordinates on your phone, so we know how fast your heart beats while you’re watching the next James Bond film.

“Four: surveillance and security camera images, in case we also want to see the expression on your face when Mr. Bond removes his shirt, or when you run the red light on the drive home from the theater.

“Five, digitally captured internet videoconferencing, which never dies and, unlike General MacArthur and other old soldiers, doesn’t just fade away. Six—”

Gamble paused and looked up from his list. “You get the idea. I believe Naïveté Two combines every non-screen data silo at Buck’s disposal with traditional screen-sourced data to create a digital profile on every man, woman, and child in America. I’m talking about a massive collection of personal, psychological, and emotional dossiers that would make J. Edgar Hoover ejaculate in his grave.”

He waited. Noah showed no reaction, verbal or nonverbal. Thirty seconds passed in silence. Finally, Noah turned in his swivel chair to face his computer monitor.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I need to send an email to my supervisor.”

He placed his hands on the keyboard and began typing.

Gamble rose and exited the office, Noah having “told” him nothing.

Kate’s phone rang. It was her father. Calling to talk her out of danger, no doubt. She decided she should answer. Then changed her mind. Then changed it back.

“Dad, I can’t talk now.”

“It’s a scraping tool,” he said.

“What?”

“Code Six, or whatever you want to call Patrick’s ransom demand. It’s a scraping tool.”

Kate was in the backseat of the car, and Enrique’s friend Diego was driving. It was a safe neighborhood where people walked to bars and restaurants at night, so Kate and Diego circled the neighborhood while Enrique blended in with the crowd on foot, casing the restaurant where Peel was to make the exchange. The kidnapper had said “no followers” and only “one bodyguard,” but it hadn’t taken much in the way of persuasion for Peel to see the benefit of having Enrique nearby in case something went wrong.

“I don’t even know what that means—a ‘scraping tool.’”

“It could be a browser extension. It could be a lot of things. The bottom line is that it’s a tool for outsiders to harvest data from platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and all the other places where users give up way more than they should.”

“And the platforms allow this?”

“No! That’s the point. Facebook sends out cease and desist letters all the time. They even threatened the NYU Observatory for scraping data on political ads for academic research.”

“So if scraping tools aren’t allowed, why is Buck’s so valuable?”

---