"I will," he responded quickly, unperturbed.
Silverware clattering and casual conversation flowing with ease, they started exploring the exquisite taste of Tuscan cuisine at its best, oblivious to anything else but each other.
Two tables away, munching casually on a selection of cheeses from his plate of festival di formaggi, a man watched every move they made.
…33
The laptop on her desk was powering up. Alex impatiently waited for it, so she could get a few things checked before ending her day. Her first week at NanoLance had been quite intensive, with back-to-back meetings with executives, department leaders, program and project managers, and other people she had identified as potentially valuable to meet. Using the cover provided by a somewhat formal on-boarding plan, she was able to meet with almost everyone of interest at this early stage. The only team she was yet to meet was the manufacturing team at the Alpine plant. She was carefully delaying that, waiting for the meeting with her boss to take place first, rather than surprise him with her visit at the plant.
A chime advised her that the laptop was ready. She started digging through system folders and registries, looking for any indication of spy programs or keystroke loggers. Of course, she thought, there you are. I was expecting nothing less. A software-based keystroke logger was installed on her machine, configured to save in a particular place on the hard disk every single keystroke she typed. This was the perfect surveillance tool for the person who wanted to know everything she did in a day.
With more digging, she was able to locate another spyware program, this one configured to capture screenshots of her work at fixed intervals. The third component to the perfect electronic surveillance was the browser log, a small piece of software that would record all the websites she visited and the time spent on each one.
Alex paused, considering her options. She could install a personal firewall. They'd find that in no time, she thought, dismissing the idea. She could uninstall all these pieces of spyware, but they'd also figure that one out pretty fast. She could change the registry settings on her laptop, so that the spyware programs would never start, but they would be on to her immediately, as soon as they got no input from these programs.
She closed the laptop, pulled the power cord from the wall plug, and stuffed everything in her laptop carrying case. She knew exactly what she needed to do.
Almost two hours later, she was ringing the doorbell at Tom's house, laptop bag in one hand, bottle of Martini in the other. She smiled, remembering how stressed she had been on her first visit. Now it felt more like coming home.
Tom opened the door, his eyes directly on the laptop bag.
"How are you, sweetie? How was your day?"
Sweetie? Tom had never called her that. She gazed at him in surprise. His eyes remained on the bag.
"Let me take that from you, come right in. Dinner's almost ready." He stepped quietly in the house, Alex following.
"Where's your smart phone?" Tom asked. "You know how we hate being interrupted over dinner. Please turn that thing off."
She reached inside her pocket and gave Tom her NanoLance issued phone. She was starting to understand.
Tom took the phone, put it in the laptop bag, and shoved everything inside a gun safe he kept in the garage, and then closed the door.
Coming back into the living room, followed closely, as usual, by Little Tom, he turned to Alex and said, "Now we can talk. We're having stuffed portabella mushrooms for dinner. Sound good?"
"Yes," Alex replied cheerfully.
"Great, one more mushroom going on the grill." Tom headed for the kitchen, followed by his human and feline companions.
"Tom, how did you know it was the laptop I was coming to see you about?"
"I didn't. I was being cautious, in case there's a bug planted in your equipment somewhere. Why, what's wrong with it?"
"You mean a voice recording bug? I didn't think of that," Alex said and frowned, "but I guess it's just as likely. What I found was spyware, and lots of it."
"Spyware?"
"Little programs installed on the computer, with the sole purpose to record everything I do, every website I visit, every email I write. Even if I work in Word or Excel, they'd still be able to capture every bit of what I am doing."
"Oh, I see." Tom looked preoccupied, almost worried. "Is this common practice?"
"For some companies, it can be. Nothing is private anymore, not at work anyway."
"So you don't believe they're on to you?"
"I would tend to say no, but that's a bigger discussion. Please let me finish with email and computer spyware first."
"Sure." Tom headed out of the kitchen with a Martini for her and a glass of wine for himself. He set both glasses on the coffee table. "I'm all ears."
"Back in the early days of email at work, employees had expectations of privacy regarding the use of company email for personal communication. That's long gone. Technically, the emails are being sent and received on company hardware situated on company property, so the entire email content and activity belongs to the employer — no privacy rights whatsoever. As technology progressed, more advanced systems allowed the recording of all email traffic from a particular server, practically copying each email message going out or coming in. This is, for many companies today, the standard. Smaller, or less-circumspect companies employ a more relaxed policy, screening and copying email traffic only if it contains specific keywords, attachments, or by using other criteria to select messages of interest to them. Questions so far?"
"No, keep going, this is very interesting," Tom replied.
"This technology takes care of all email activity an employee conducts on her business computer. How about everything else? Companies that are extremely sensitive about their activities, or extremely suspicious about their employees, engage the use of keystroke loggers. These are software applications that record every keystroke, allowing those who supervise to reconstruct in detail all of the employee's activity on that particular machine, regardless of software or application used. I could be working five minutes on a Word document, then switch to building a spreadsheet, then enter data in the accounting system — they would know it all, step by step."
"I see," Tom frowned. "Is this typical?"
"Not really, not for everyone anyway. With a company like NanoLance, you would expect to have keystroke loggers in place, due to the sensitive nature of their business. I would also assume that they only audit usage randomly or on complaint."
"On complaint?"
"Having someone read through every employee's keystrokes every day would be unfeasible, due to the sheer volume of work. Some employers assign a couple of data security employees to do random audits — pick someone different every day and go through a couple of days' worth of keystrokes. If they don't find anything out of the ordinary, the employee never hears about it and has no reason to suspect he is being audited. That's the random model. Another one is to search for particular keywords in all activity, just like the NSA searches for particular keywords in all communication, keywords such as 'bomb,' 'terrorist,' and others just like these, as part of the counter-terrorism effort. Makes sense. For companies with specific concerns in data security, it works best to install a keyword analyzer on top of the keystroke logger, to reduce the amount of work required to perform audits and surveillance on employees' computers." Alex paused to take a sip of Martini from her sweaty glass.