The Broken Window

digits?” Pulaski asked.
    “Gives us room for expansion,” Sterling said. “We never have to worry about running out of numbers. We can assign nearly one quintillion codes. The earth will run out of living space before SSD runs out of numbers. The codes make our system much more secure and it’s far faster to process data than using a name or Social. Also, using a code neutralizes the human element and takes the prejudice out of the equation. Psychologically we have opinions about Adolf or Britney or Shaquilla or Diego before we even meet them, simply because of their name. A number eliminates that bias. And improves efficiency. Please, go on, Mark.”
    “Sure, Andrew. Once the name is swapped for the code, the Intake Center evaluates the transaction, decides where it belongs and sends it to one or more of three separate areas—our data pens. Pen A is where we store personal lifestyle data. Pen B is financial. That includes salary history, banking, credit reports, insurance. Pen C is public and government filings and records.”
    “Then the data’s cleansed.” Sterling took over once again. “The impurities are weeded out and it’s made uniform. For instance, on some forms your sex is given as ‘F.’ In others, it’s ‘Female.’ Sometimes it’s a one or a zero. You have to be consistent.
    “We also remove the noise—that’s impure data. It could be erroneous, could have too many details, could have too few details. Noise is contamination,and contamination has to be eliminated.” He said this firmly—another dash of emotion. “Then the cleansed data sits in one of our pens until a client needs a fortune-teller.”
    “How do you mean?” asked Pulaski.
    Sterling explained, “In the nineteen seventies, computer database software gave companies an analysis of past performance. In the nineties the data showed how they were doing at any given moment. More helpful. Now we can predict what consumers are going to do and guide our clients to take advantage of that.”
    Sachs said, “Then you’re not just predicting the future. You’re trying to change it.”
    “Exactly. But what other reason is there to go to a fortune-teller?”
    His eyes were calm, almost amused. Yet Sachs felt uneasy, thinking back to the run-in with the federal agent yesterday in Brooklyn. It was as if 522 had done just what he was describing: predicted a shootout between them.
    Sterling gestured to Whitcomb, who continued, “Okay, so data, which contain no names but only numbers, go into these three separate pens on different floors in different security zones. An employee in the public records pen can’t access the data in the lifestyle pen or the financial pen. And nobody in any of the data pens can access the information in the Intake Center, and link the name and address to the sixteen-digit code.”
    Sterling said, “That’s what Tom meant when he said that a hacker would have to breach all of the data pens independently.”
    O’Day added, “And we monitor twenty-four/seven. We’d know instantly if someone unauthorized tried to physically enter a pen. They’d be fired on the spot and probably arrested. Besides, you can’t download anything from the computers in the pens—there are no ports—and even if you managed to break into a server and hardwire a device, you couldn’t get it out. Everybody’s searched—every employee, senior executive, security guard, fire warden, janitor. Even Andrew. We have metal and dense-material detectors at every entrance and exit to the data pens and Intake—even the fire doors.”
    Whitcomb took up the narrative. “And a magnetic field generator that you have to walk through. It erases all digital data on any medium you’re carrying—iPod, phone or hard drive. No, nobody gets out of those rooms with a kilobyte of information on them.”
    Sachs said, “So stealing the data from these pens—either by hackers outside or intruders or employees inside—would be almost impossible.”
    Sterling was nodding. “Data are our only asset. We guard them religiously.”
    “What about the other scenario—somebody who works for a client?”
    “Like Tom was saying, the way this man operates he’d have to have access to the innerCircle dossiers of each of the victims and the men arrested for the crimes.”
    “Right.”
    Sterling lifted his hands, like a professor. “But customers don’t have access to dossiers. They wouldn’t want them anyway. innerCircle contains raw data