SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
first fallback cloud provider with such grace and speed that none of the uptime monitors
had even noticed. That reminded me that I still needed to get my phone number back -- if
the uptime monitor had squawked, the messages would have gone to my phone, wherever
it had disappeared to -- and I dialed into the carrier's customer service line and started a
timer going just to see how long it took the rocket-scientists at the phone company to take
my request. It had ticked past the thirty-five minute mark when a shadow loomed over my
shoulder, and I turned around to see Joe, looking like he'd been through the wringer.
I hung up the phone. “Hi, Joe,” I said.
“Hello, Marcus.”
“How're things?”
“Things are complicated,” he said. “Perhaps you and I could sit down for a few minutes?”
I knew then that I was about to be fired. “Sure,” I said. I locked my computer's screen and
followed him into the boardroom and closed the door behind me.
“Let me tell you a few things, Marcus, before we get to chatting. If you don't mind?”
“No,” I said, feeling that tight, bloodless feeling in my face and extremities. “Not at all.”
“First: I believe that my opponents are behind this FBI business. They don't like the attention
this has brought to the campaign, so they've put me in the soup with the law. Monroe,
in particular, has had a longstanding relationship with Zyz and its subsidiaries through his
career in Sacramento. I'm not in the least bit surprised to hear that he's hurting over this
and wants to hit us back.
“Second: I value the work you've done here, and I credit you with coming up with this whole
plan. I think you're a bright young man, and I hope you'll stay in touch with me no matter
what happens.
“Third: That said, the FBI say that they're reasonably certain that you aren't just someone
who happened to suggest posting these documents to our site. They seem to believe you
had something to do with their initial publication.
“Fourth: I don't know if that's true or not, but in the course of our discussion, we covered
several possibilities for what could happen with you and this campaign. In the end, they
reluctantly but firmly agreed that if you were no longer formally associated with this office,
they would not pursue any further investigations about your role in those documents to
date. This was not an easy offer to come by, and in my view, it represents an internal
conflict in their upper echelons, who are simultaneously outraged over these leaks and
over the intelligence they contain. They don't want another Wikileaks trial on their hands,
especially since this one doesn't have the same national security dimensions of that entire
affair. Very little of this material is technically classified or even secret, and Harry pointed
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