The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella by Case Lane Read Free Book Online

at
the Cabinet table."
    "Yes I know."
    "Every forward step of the civil rights
movement is being repealed and pummeled back into history."
    "Because the middle class had its heart
ripped out by the housing crisis and they need someone to
blame."
    "The politicians use simplistic, narrow
solutions because they are all too lazy and stupid to work on real
issues for turning around the economy and education. They pick an
emotional target like voting rights and stomp all over the issue
instead of launching a major initiative to find effective answers
for creating jobs."
    "Okay, okay, where does the current social
status put us with the data Dallas uncovered?"
    "The discrimination file essentially warns
the software code governing today's consumer facing websites can be
made to respond to an individual or organization's sexist and
racist policies, or even innocent stereotypes, and no one will ever
know."
    "If a business does not want a particular
demographic to obtain its product or service..."
    "Or they want to charge certain people
more..."
    "The software will let an organization
seamlessly implement those policies. All they'll need is access to
demographic data. Sites requiring people to post a picture will
automatically have identity information, if they have the software
to decipher the picture's content. Other sites will have people
enter the data in the name of benign statistics gathering. And
others will access the data from other websites or databases
feeding information to businesses, for a price."
    "There's also name and location politics.
The applications can be made to interpret where people live or the
name they give, as an indicator of ethnicity or economic
status."
    "And they can proactively alter the code or
innocently make changes based on programming existing stereotypes
into common questions."
    "There's nothing innocent about
stereotypes."
    "Right, but the question is...in terms of
our project, do we care? The result of online discrimination will
hurt people on an individual level, but is the outcome going to be
the kind of problem that halts our other plans?"
    "Technically, there is really no reason to
care, the issue is almost impossible to prove."
    "As a person I care."
    "But as the director of FedSec?"
    Marco hesitated before unenthusiastically
replying, "No."
    "Believe me as a woman I care too. I know
turning the other way is tough, Marco. But somehow we'll have to
transcend this technical functionality. We'll have to find another
road to our power and economic security."
    "There is no other road. Women are already
far behind in tech employment and that's where the money is. If you
get left even further behind by male-run online companies
unrepresentatively programming your access to products, including
education by the way, you're going to completely miss out."
    "But we need our project. If we do not gain
total control of our domestic security, the country could become
impossible to live in. We could have bombings and mass shootings
every day."
    "Yes I know. The general idea behind our
entire plan is surveillance. If we can monitor public places, have
dynamic facial and body recognition and automatic alerts for
suspicious behavior, we can finally get ahead of the
terrorists."
    "I don't think the average American is
really going to cry about the price they're paying, most of them
are already enwrapped with their mobiles. We are talking about a
population barely looking up as they go through their day. People
have no idea how often they are viewed on camera."
    "I know. Indifference is one development I
have never reconciled. When did people become so complacent?"
    "The 2008 recession sucked the dynamism out
of the general populace. The crushing of the American dream of home
ownership really prompted a lot of people to give up. They thought
they had done everything right, but a configuration of
indecipherable financial equations destroyed their hard work over
night. People lost all their equity, every cent they