If you haven't checked them out, Diamond in the Rough parts One and Two are necessary reading for this installment. Be sure to check them out!
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"Michael Powers and Bahir Al-Alakari," Casey repeated as she frantically filled out the report of what Horatio Younger had told us.
I would have volunteered to help her write the report, but I still had no idea how to use most of the new electronic gadgetry that ruled life in 2076. I was barely able to operate my cell phone. Which, lucky me, had been enough. Minutes after we'd left the interrogation room with Younger I'd placed a call to Homeland Security and told them the situation with Scour.
If what Younger told us was true, Scour had the potential to do far greater things than removing nude selfies from the internet. With the ability to permanently delete nearly anything from the internet, Scour was nearly priceless. But something told me that at least one of the developers had already placed a price on it, and for all we knew it could be headed for the hands of the highest bidder at that moment.
Any government could become an oppressive regime, when those in power had the ability to silence the common people. An already oppressive regime could become a totalitarian state virtually overnight.
So part of this case was now officially above our pay grade. But the nearest Homeland Security office was halfway across town, and the afternoon traffic rush would slow them down getting to the precinct. Until they coordinated their efforts and sent an agent over to work with us, NYPD had jurisdiction.
Homeland Security was already in the process of putting some of their top people from the cyber crimes division on locating the remaining Scour app, as well as locating the hardware that had been used to create it. As far as we knew, Scour only had the power to delete any form of media. There was no guarantee that the app itself wasn't leaving some kind of data trail, and that was apparently the angle they were going to work.
As for me and Casey, we had two suspects to find.
Once we had their names, it didn't take long for me and Casey to find workplaces, finger prints, DMV records, and even birth certificates of our two suspects. Or, at least, it didn't take long for us to find the information on Bahir Al-Akari.
As far as out databases were concerned, Michael Powers didn't exist.
I would have volunteered to help her write the report, but I still had no idea how to use most of the new electronic gadgetry that ruled life in 2076. I was barely able to operate my cell phone. Which, lucky me, had been enough. Minutes after we'd left the interrogation room with Younger I'd placed a call to Homeland Security and told them the situation with Scour.
If what Younger told us was true, Scour had the potential to do far greater things than removing nude selfies from the internet. With the ability to permanently delete nearly anything from the internet, Scour was nearly priceless. But something told me that at least one of the developers had already placed a price on it, and for all we knew it could be headed for the hands of the highest bidder at that moment.
Any government could become an oppressive regime, when those in power had the ability to silence the common people. An already oppressive regime could become a totalitarian state virtually overnight.
So part of this case was now officially above our pay grade. But the nearest Homeland Security office was halfway across town, and the afternoon traffic rush would slow them down getting to the precinct. Until they coordinated their efforts and sent an agent over to work with us, NYPD had jurisdiction.
Homeland Security was already in the process of putting some of their top people from the cyber crimes division on locating the remaining Scour app, as well as locating the hardware that had been used to create it. As far as we knew, Scour only had the power to delete any form of media. There was no guarantee that the app itself wasn't leaving some kind of data trail, and that was apparently the angle they were going to work.
As for me and Casey, we had two suspects to find.
Once we had their names, it didn't take long for me and Casey to find workplaces, finger prints, DMV records, and even birth certificates of our two suspects. Or, at least, it didn't take long for us to find the information on Bahir Al-Akari.
As far as out databases were concerned, Michael Powers didn't exist.
