with can.”
“What’s that?” He smiled. This was a guy who liked to be needed.
“We know that the Congressman has worked closely with Ken Clover
over at Clover and Associates, and right now he’s not taking on any
new clients.”
“Clover, sure. He plays it very close. I’ve met him a few times. I didn’t
know he wasn’t taking new clients though.”
“Apparently he’s very picky for a lobbyist. But my research shows that
he can pull a lot of strings that would be helpful. Plus his pull with the
Commerce Committee chairman might be crucial. Do you think the
Congressman might be willing to extend a hand on our behalf in this
matter? We’ll certainly step up to the plate with regards to billables and
backing of course.”
“That might work. Clover and the Congressman are tight. I’ll take it
to the Congressman certainly.”
“I appreciate it, Danny. Obviously he’s not the only person we’re
talking with, and I have meetings with Senate staff later today, so there
should be some added cover for you there as well. This is a top priority
for us, and we’re willing to throw all our support and resources behind
the effort. But it’s important for now that we keep it as quiet as possible.
This Mobbitt thing is still mostly in the hands of nerds and techies right
now—it hasn’t gone mainstream. We don’t want any publicity at all
that might drive more users to it before we find a way to shut it down.
I’m thinking maybe we can attach it to another bill or get it added in
during conference. Something like that. So keep it on the QT, just your
staff and your trusted allies. I know there are people on the other side of
the aisle who would leak this whole thing just to fuck with my clients.
We’re counting on our old friends like the Congressman.”
Rick Dakan
31
“Of course,” said Danny. “I agree completely. We’ll keep it off the
floor, no problem.” He looked at his phone. “So how does this thing
work now?”
“There should be a start icon in your expanded menu now. See that?
Activate it and it’ll bring up the interface and start matching with other
phones in the area. Hopefully mine is the only one.” Of course hers was
the only one—the program was designed to do three things—connect
with her phone and download three songs to his phone, return the
favor by downloading anything in his music folder to her phone, and of
course own the phone completely so that Sacco sitting behind her could
take over his Blackberry, access his passwords and files, and clone the
phone so they could use it without his knowledge. Five minutes later
it had done all three, impressing the target with the two functions he
was aware of, and driving home her point that Mobbitt was the greatest
threat to western civilization since Al Quaeda.
As they stood up and shook hands to part ways, Chloe looked down
at the target’s shoes. “Did you step in some paint, Danny?”
“Damn protesters,” he said, leaning over and picking at the dried
paint with his fingernail. “I don’t even know what the hell they were
upset about this time, but they were outside my apartment building and
were yelling at all the staffers who live there as we came out.”
“Cretins,” Chloe said. “You’d think they would’ve learned by now
that none of that nonsense makes a difference.”
“Ohhh, they never learn. How smart can they be, standing outside
all morning in this cold?”
They both laughed and went their separate ways. Chloe promised to
check in with him that evening. Sacco had already slipped out ahead of
them, his work here complete. She put her gloves back on and headed
back towards the Metro a few blocks away. Everything seemed to have
gone as planned and thus she was nervous. No battle plan survives
contact with the enemy. At least his Blackberry had been secure—
that would have been so easy she might have really been freaked out.
As it was, the months of e-mail correspondence, campaign donations,
and background work establishing her false identity as Lisa Kross, Los
Angeles based lobbyist for shadowy recording industry interests had
paid off. She didn’t claim to work for the RIAA or the MPAA, but
she had actually done some real lobbying in their interests. That fact
alone had made some in the Crew, including Paul, feel dirty, but Chloe
didn’t mind. To be honest it wasn’t a big issue to her—people would
pirate music and there was no stopping them. If the RIAA wanted to
waste money fighting it, that was their problem. She figured the whole
32
Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
industry would be dead in a decade anyway. In the meantime their bull
in a china shop tactics provided cover for their real agenda. The target
hadn’t seemed to doubt she was who she said she was for even a moment
and once he got in touch with Clover directly, they’d be in business.
Assuming c1sman delivered of course, but Paul was on top of that.
She ducked into a drug store and found Sacco in the cold remedies
aisle, where they could quickly debrief. He was almost too good looking
for this kind of covert stuff. Sandee had literally dressed him down in
ill-fitting cheap chinos and a baggy sweater and baseball cap to hide his
better features. Standing there he looked like a handsome, dashing guy
who was hung over and grungy, but could bounce back to ladykiller
looks with just 15 minutes in the bathroom and a change of clothes. She
sidled up next to him and started reading cough medicine labels.
“Got it,” he said. “We own his phone.”
“You just like saying that cuz it rhymes,” she said.
“It rhymes and it’s true. Double bonus.”
“And your kids are in place and ready? I saw they got some paint on
him this morning.”
“They’re good like that. Yeah, they’re ready to go.”
“And you’re wishing you could be out there with them. But you can’t.
They’re a distraction, we need to keep you behind the scenes.”
“I always prefer to be where the action is.”
“I know, that’s why it was so easy for me to find you.” She picked a
bottle and turned towards the front of the store. “Besides, you should
know by now, I’m where the action is.”
“Well then, I’ll stick close to you.”
She smiled. “Of course you will.”
Sacco loved HOPE. He wished it came every year instead of every
other. As much as he hated midtown Manhattan and all its bour-
geois nonsense, he loved the creative, anarchic energy of the con, the
weird juxtaposition of the chipped and faded majesty of the Hotel
Pennsylvania mixed with the bodged together wiring and haphazard
organization of the volunteer staff running things, all combining to
provide a social petri-dish for hacker memes with a purpose, cutting
edge technology that could actually cut, and a wildness of mind that he
adored. Not that there weren’t lots of things to hate. The smell would be
ripe by Saturday night, with the shower-phobic hackers’ odors boosted
by the sticky, clinging July heat outside. There would be idiots doing
stupid shit, as always, and ill-prepared talks that went nowhere and
had no point. And the lack of organization would drive him crazy
sometimes—like now, where somehow he’d ended up as the only person
responsible for unloading a half-ton of t-shirts and old issues of
2600
Magazine
and transporting them up 18 floors through two different sets
of loading elevators. Or the fact that, even at this late hour, the NOC
still didn’t have the network up and running. But that was all surface
bullshit and didn’t speak ill of the soul of the event—rebellion, freedom,
and technology wrapped into one adorable anarchic ball. Hackers On
Planet Earth might not be the most poetic name out there, but HOPE
couldn’t be beat as an idea.
He didn’t even bother going to any other hacker cons in the US any-
more. Germany was another story—those guys in the Chaos Computer
34
Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
Club had their shit together and their priorities in line. But over here in
the States, a big chunk of the so-called hacker scene totally eschewed
anything to do with politics, which was, quite obviously, total bullshit.
Hacking was, as much as anything, a political action, and anyone who
ignored that fact was either living with their head buried in the sand
or was part of the freaking problem. Def Con used to be cool, but now
it’d become it’s own for-profit company and not only welcomed the
Feds, but actually had them as invited fucking speakers. That’d been
it as far as Sacco and a lot of his friends were concerned. And most of
the smaller cons were the same—corporate security professional types
mostly, holding out the lure of big blood money to young kids who
didn’t know any better. Where was the rebellion in any of that? How
the hell was that making the world any better?
Some of his friends tried to straddle the fence and keep a foot in both
worlds, and it was something they argued about a lot. It might work for
old timers like Simple Nomad, but he was his own thing for the most
part, and none of the guys in Sacco’s group, Hacks of Rebellion, had his
cred or rep or, aside from maybe Sacco himself and one or two others,
the skills. That left Sacco in the odd but exciting position of being the
most radical member of a self-described radical group. Well, someone
had to be the conscience of the team, and no one else was willing to
step up to the plate, so he was it. It had taken him he didn’t know how
many hours on encrypted IRC channels arguing that they should in
fact release their newest creation to the public in this most public of
hacker venues. They were scared, they’d argued against him, but he’d
taken the moral high ground and defended it tooth and claw. Saturday
night they’d all see that he’d been right all along.
As he heaved another dolly-load of boxes out of the service elevator
and onto the eighteenth floor, Sacco grunted in exasperation. He wasn’t
even halfway done. He’d just seen another dolly in one of the service
halls on his way up here, so he decided that he needed to press some
other volunteer into service right away, if he was going to get this shit
done in time to grab a shower before opening ceremonies. He wondered
what the hell the organizers had planned on doing about this truckload
of crap if he hadn’t shown up. No doubt some other eager volunteer
would’ve done it. That right there was what he loved about hacker con-
ventions, especially this one. People just pitched in and got shit done,
maybe not in the most efficient way possible, but it got done.
He took the public elevators down to the ground floor and wheeled
his dolly through the marble hotel lobby full of black t-shirt clad
throngs waiting in the painfully slow check-in line. At some point the
Rick Dakan
35
hotel had bought out the department store next door and turned it
into a rather dingy but serviceable convention center. Here attendees
picked up their badges, registered to be volunteers, and bought junk
food and energy drinks. Sacco didn’t see any idle hands he could press
into service, so he wrestled the dolly onto the escalator and took it up
to the main “convention” level. The bare concrete floors, broken up at
regular intervals by heavy, concrete pillars were in full chaos mode. To
his left people were setting up tables and chairs for the open network
area. To his right they were adjusting a large screen and laying out
rented individual hammocks for the movie and vendors area. Beyond
he saw someone zipping around the floor on a Segway at what looked
like almost maximum speed. He’d definitely have to try that, maybe
even before he found someone to help with the unloading.
He passed through the empty stretch of what would eventually be
Lockpick Village, towards the vendor area. A few booksellers and one
hardware vendor had already set up. And there she was, browsing the
books. Not just browsing the books, but picking one up and actually
asking questions about it. He moved closer to see if he could get an
angle on what she was looking at. Ooooh, Kropotkin’s
The Conquest
of Bread
. Nice. She gave off the vibe of a certain rare type of hacker
chick that he always sought but seldom found. She was hot as hell for
one thing, with a great body. The pink hair was certainly punk, but the
jeans and black t-shirt were understated enough to make him think
the hair wasn’t purely a poseur punk attitude thing, but maybe a real
aesthetic choice. Plus she looked like she showered and, as he came up
behind her she smelled good, too. He reached over and tapped the back
of the Kropotkin book as she read it. “That’s a classic.”
She shifted away from him as she turned to see who was talking, but
not in a panicked way. Plus as soon as she saw him, she smiled, which
was usually a good sign. “Oh yeah? I don’t know how much time I have
for classics these days.”
“I should have said timeless classic,” Sacco said, smiling back and