SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
heat than usual, making the air-conditioner work just a tiny little bit harder. A puff of extra
carbon wafted into the atmosphere.
I stared into the beady glass eye of the webcam, thinking of the unknown party or parties
who may or may not be watching on the other end. I wondered how the bug worked. Did
it phone home every time I signed on to a network, telling the snoops that I was online and
available for watching and spying? Did it store up pictures of me and logs of my keystrokes
when I was offline, waiting for an opportune moment to dump all this stuff?
Did someone's phone just get a discreet SMS? “MARCUS ONLINE NOW” and a cheerful
ringtone? Maybe “La Cucaracha?”
“Hello? Anyone home?”
Nothing.
“Come on, you chickenshits, I know you're out there.” Now I had the paranoid sensation
that I was being recorded, that anything I said or did might end up on YouTube in ten
minutes. I tried to butch it up, be as tough and cool as a superspy so that I'd be able to
stand tall when the world saw how I reacted to the news that I was on candid webcam.
“There's no point in hiding now. I know you've got root. I'll be shutting down this machine
and reinstalling the OS just as soon as I'm done. Last chance to chat before I patch your
back door.”
I stared at the screen. It stared back.
“Fine,” I said, and reached up to close the lid. For a second, I felt like I might be insane,
like I might have hallucinated the whole thing. Just as my hand reached the lid, a word
appeared on the screen:
> wait
I sat back.
“Nice to see you again. Do you have something you'd like to say?”
> were on ur side dude
“You've been spying on me,” I said. I heard the tremor in my voice.
> privacys dead get over it
I felt the tremor now. These bastards had been spying on me and they had the nerve to
tell me to “get over it”?
“You're not --” My voice caught. I swallowed and took a couple of breaths. “You're not on
my side if you believe that. Do you have any idea how totally evil it is to do what you're
doing?”
> what a homo
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