The Cloud Collector Read Online Free Page A

monitoring him in my own time back at Meade; tried to follow his communication routes, which started to go through cutouts, although too often still unencrypted. His using the anonymous darknet chat rooms didn’t surprise me. Facebook did. It took me a year to hack into all Hamid’s cutouts—as well as Hamid’s shared darknet account—to be able to follow the traffic both ways, although not quite as long to realize that Hydarnes, his shared Tehran account, is that of a covert-operations division of Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat Keshvar.’ Irvine paused, preparing his denouement. ‘We have our own Trojan horse deep inside, totally without Tehran’s knowledge or suspicion.’
    Singleton interrupted disbelievingly, ‘You got us inside Iran’s espionage service!’
    â€˜An active subversive operational unit of Vevak,’ qualified Irvine, using the acronym. ‘From that one discovery and the botnets we installed from the address-book links, we’ve established that they’re heavily using Facebook when they leave their darknet concealment to get into the West.’ The hesitation was again intentional, for effect. ‘And it hasn’t stopped with social networks. Through darknets I’ve got into chat rooms. I think we’ve got a handle on at least two, maybe three, darknets regularly visited by Al Qaeda groups in Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, the Maghreb, Europe, and here.’
    â€˜All that has emerged from social networks!’ questioned Marian Lowell, an angular-bodied woman whose blue-dyed hair was lacquered into a protective helmet and who always wore business suits. Today’s was brown check, with a belted jacket.
    â€˜A lot of it,’ confirmed Irvine. ‘Don’t forget we didn’t then fully appreciate how social networks would be used to avoid censorship and security controls in the Maghreb revolutions of 2011. Then it was to publicize regime change. Think of the opposite. What better concealment can any sort of terrorist group have than to be among millions upon millions of social-network users, until now hidden from us, too, despite our worldwide signals intelligence-sharing with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK and our bilateral exchange agreement with the UK. It’s the equivalent of double, even triple encryption with double, even triple anonymity.’
    There was a contemplative silence. Singleton stirred as if to speak, but before he could, Barker said, ‘Okay, so we’re ahead of the game. We can alert counter-intelligence to prevent the attacks before they’re mounted. That’s our job; what’s different with what you’re doing?’
    From anyone else Irvine would have considered the question sarcastic, but not from Barker, a soft-voiced, gentle-mannered man confronting a regretted teenage addiction to hot dogs, hamburgers, and molasses-soaked waffles with a self-devised white-fish, nut, and herbal-drink diet that contributed nothing to any weight loss but substantially to discomforting flatulence.
    Irvine breathed deeply, preparing himself. ‘We’re not stopping when we identify a planned attack. We hack into the planners’ computers, add or remove or alter their messages—sometimes leaking to rival groups, intruding Shia or Sunni hatred—to turn one against the other.’ He paused. ‘So far two groups have destroyed each other instead of innocent Americans … innocent civilians anywhere.’
    There was utter silence for several moments. Then Singleton said, ‘I want to know a lot more than that.’
    â€˜You picked up a private Facebook message to Boston six months ago that originated from Syria,’ reminded Irvine. ‘I got a botnet into the Boston recipient’s laptop. He was a Syrian immigrant. The CIA found an Al Qaeda suicide video in his apartment when they made a quick in-and-out intrusion. He’d formed up with two