Кори Доктороу - Scroogled

“Googlers are blackwashing senators?”

“Not Googlers. This is coming from off-site. The IP block is registered in D.C. And the IPs are all used by Gmail users. Guess who the accounts belong to?”

“You spied on Gmail accounts?”

“Okay. Yes. I did look through their e-mail. Everyone does it, now and again, and for a lot worse reasons than I did. But check it out — turns out all this activity is being directed by our lobbying firm. Just doing their job, defending the company’s interests.”

Greg felt his pulse beating in his temples. “We should tell someone.”

“It won’t do any good. They know everything about us. They can see every search. Every e-mail. Every time we’ve been caught on the webcams. Who is in our social network…did you know if you have 15 Orkut buddies, it’s statistically certain that you’re no more than three steps to someone who’s contributed money to a ’terrorist’ cause? Remember the airport? You’ll be in for a lot more of that.”

“Maya,” Greg said, getting his bearings. “Isn’t heading to Mexico overreacting? Just quit. We can do a start-up or something. This is crazy.”

“They came to see me today,” she said. “Two of the political officers from DHS. They didn’t leave for hours. And they asked me a lot of very heavy questions.”

“About the Googlecleaner?”

“About my friends and family. My search history. My personal history.”

“Jesus.”

“They were sending a message to me. They’re watching every click and every search. It’s time to go. Time to get out of range.”

“There’s a Google office in Mexico, you know.”

“We’ve got to go,” she said, firmly.

“Laurie, what do you think of this?” Greg asked.

Laurie thumped the dogs between the shoulders. “My parents left East Germany in ’65. They used to tell me about the Stasi. The secret police would put everything about you in your file, if you told an unpatriotic joke, whatever. Whether they meant it or not, what Google has created is no different.”

“Greg, are you coming?”

He looked at the dogs and shook his head. “I’ve got some pesos left over,” he said. “You take them. Be careful, okay?”

Maya looked like she was going to slug him. Softening, she gave him a ferocious hug.

“Be careful, yourself,” she whispered in his ear.

They came for him a week later. At home, in the middle of the night, just as he’d imagined they would.

Two men arrived on his doorstep shortly after 2 a.m. One stood silently by the door. The other was a smiler, short and rumpled, in a sport coat with a stain on one lapel and a American flag on the other. “Greg Lupinski, we have reason to believe you’re in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,” he said, by way of introduction. “Specifically, exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information. Ten years for a first offense. Turns out that what you and your friend did to your Google records qualifies as a felony. And oh, what will come out in the trial…all the stuff you whitewashed out of your profile, for starters.”

Greg had played this scene in his head for a week. He’d planned all kinds of brave things to say. It had given him something to do while he waited to hear from Maya. She never called.

“I’d like to get in touch with a lawyer,” is all he mustered.

“You can do that,” the small man said. “But maybe we can come to a better arrangement.”

Greg found his voice. “I’d like to see your badge,” he stammered.

The man’s basset-hound face lit up as he let out a bemused chuckle. “Buddy, I’m not a cop,” he replied. “I’m a consultant. Google hired me — my firm represents their interests in Washington — to build relationships. Of course, we wouldn’t get the police involved without talking to you first. You’re part of the family. Actually, there’s an offer I’d like to make.”

Greg turned to the coffeemaker, dumped the old filter.

“I’ll go to the press,” he said.

The man nodded as if thinking it over. “Well, sure. You could walk into the Chronicle’s office in the morning and spill everything. They’d look for a confirming source. They won’t find one. And when they try searching for it, we’ll find them. So, buddy, why don’t you hear me out, okay? I’m in the win-win business. I’m very good at it.” He paused. “By the way, those are excellent beans, but you want to give them a little rinse first? Takes some of the bitterness out and brings up the oils. Here, pass me a colander?”

Greg watched as the man silently took off his jacket and hung it over a kitchen chair, then undid his cuffs and carefully rolled them up, slipping a cheap digital watch into his pocket. He poured the beans out of the grinder and into Greg’s colander, and rinsed them in the sink.

He was a little pudgy and very pale, with the social grace of an electrical engineer. He seemed like a real Googler, actually, obsessed with the minutiae. He knew his way around a coffee grinder, too.

“We’re drafting a team for Building 49…”

“There is no Building 49,” Greg said automatically.

“Of course,” the guy said, flashing a tight smile. “There’s no Building 49. But we’re putting together a team to revamp the Googlecleaner. Maya’s code wasn’t very efficient, you know. It’s full of bugs. We need an upgrade. You’d be the right guy, and it wouldn’t matter what you knew if you were back inside.”

“Unbelievable,” Greg said, laughing. “If you think I’m going to help you smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you’re crazier than I thought.”

“Greg,” the man said, “we’re not smearing anyone. We’re just going to clean things up a bit. For some select people. You know what I mean? Everyone’s Google profile is a little scary under close inspection. Close inspection is the order of the day in politics. Standing for office is like a public colonoscopy.” He loaded the cafetiиre and depressed the plunger, his face screwed up in solemn concentration. Greg retrieved two coffee cups — Google mugs, of course — and passed them over.

“We’re going to do for our friends what Maya did for you. Just a little cleanup. All we want to do is preserve their privacy. That’s all.”

Greg sipped his coffee. “What happens to the candidates you don’t clean?”

The Stasi put everything about you in a file. Whether they meant to or not, what Google did is no different.

“Yeah,” the guy said, flashing Greg a weak grin. “Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be kind of tough for them.” He searched the inside pocket of his jacket and produced several folded sheets of paper. He smoothed out the pages and put them on the table. “Here’s one of the good guys who needs our help.” It was a printout of a search history belonging to a candidate whose campaign Greg had contributed to in the past three elections.

“Fella gets back to his hotel room after a brutal day of campaigning door to door, fires up his laptop, and types ’hot asses’ into his search bar. Big deal, right? The way we see it, for that to disqualify a good man from continuing to serve his country is just un-American.”

Greg nodded slowly.

“So you’ll help the guy out?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. There’s one more thing. We need you to help us find Maya. She didn’t understand our goals at all, and now she seems to have flown the coop. Once she hears us out, I have no doubt she’ll come around.”

He glanced at the candidate’s search history.

“I guess she might,” Greg replied.

The new Congress took 11 working days to pass the Securing and Enumerating America’s Communications and Hypertext Act, which authorized the DHS and NSA to outsource up to 80 percent of intelligence and analysis work to private contractors. Theoretically, the contracts were open to competitive bidding, but within the secure confines of Google’s Building 49, there was no question of who would win. If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border, you can bet they would have caught them — governments just aren’t equipped to Do Search Right.