of dots and
connections. Where would all this in-
formation about me, or anyone else,
come from?”
I started to answer, but Lydia
jumped in. “That’s the greatest irony
of all. Nobody would let us have it, of
course, but everyone, I mean everyone,
just gives it to Ubatoo.” It was a well-
rehearsed line, every word dripping
with satisfaction. “Each action, email
message, trip, search, thought—all
there, stored on the company’s servers
somewhere.”
I wondered if I needed to say what
should have been obvious, especially
with the daily privacy fears and fiascos
in the news. Ubatoo would never grant
them access to the data, its most cher-
ished possession. Only the thought of
him spouting some cliché like, “Don’t
worry, kid. It’s above your pay grade,”
kept me silent.

“That makes life easier,” Doug said with inexplicable relief.

Instantly, Doug realized his inadver-
tent comment may have revealed more
than he intended. Quickly changing
the topic, he turned to me, saying, “So
you’re the one from Ubatoo who came
up with all this? Does it really work?”
“Yes,” I said, grateful for the chance
to speak, “but not the way you…”
Lydia cut me off again. “Just take a
look at this small example, Doug.” A
few red dots were now floating among
thousands of black ones. An impene-
trable jumble of thick and thin lines—
connections—blanketed the screen
like cartons of spilled toothpicks in a
puzzle designed for Rain Man.

The “red influence,” as Lydia
called it, perhaps a reference to the
Cold War, was now unleashed. We
all watched as the red permeated the
page. “Like a biological infection
through water pipes,” she said. “You
see, if you’re connected to enough
bad things, at some point, your dot
is going to glow bright red, too. And
when it does, we’ll know you’re worth
the resources to investigate. Just like
ranking Web pages at Ubatoo, it all
comes down to your connections.”
Lydia was on a roll. “Let’s zoom
into this person’s red dot. You can see
the books he’s read. His connections
to them made them red, too. See how
some are brighter than others? Those
were read by others on our lists as well.

[CoNTINUED FRoM P. 120]

 

Even the soft drinks we’ve seen him
drink are all redder because of him. It’s
all in our graph.”
“Zoom in on the drinks,” Doug said,
amused. “Let’s see which are, um, sus-
picious.”
Lydia did as she was told, despite re-
gretting her choice of example. On the
screen were a dozen circles, each its
own shade of red. She worked her way
down the list until she got to the red-
dest of all—the most suspicious in the
set. She breathed the name reverently
and stepped back from the table to let
the discovery sink in.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “No. No.
You can’t just…”
This time it was Doug who cut me
off, “Relax, Stephen, I get it. Of course
the system doesn’t work for drinks.” As
I began to ease back in my chair, Doug
began issuing commands to Lydia.
“Use this to put together a list of the
most suspicious people, books, Web
sites, music, whatever you can think of,
and send it to me ASAP!”
I think I mumbled something
about how the system was never
meant to be used like this. But what
was the point? Doug was no longer
paying attention; he stared at a sea of
red circles, desperately trying to recall
his daughter’s favorite soda, fearing
he had just connected her to Lydia’s
mess. Lydia was standing proudly at
the head of the table with an enor-
mous grin. Her gaze rested trium-
phantly on my hand, which was now,
I realized, clutching a “most suspi-
cious” choice of soft drink.

“Just like ranking
Web pages at ubatoo,
it all comes down to
your connections.”

ubatoo.com is a ubiquitous, and entirely fictional, internet company providing email, search, social networking, online credit cards, and shopping services through a single Web site. it exists only in Shumeet Baluja’s 2011 novel The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power and Internet Intrigue published by princeton university press, a thriller that explores the friction at the intersection of privacy, civil rights, security, and ethics.