Page 34 of Broken Princess
“I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He scooted his chair closer to mine and lowered his voice. “Okay. Remember that scandal a few years back, when an NSA employee blew the whistle on a surveillance program that was being used to spy on private citizens?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the bigwigs here acted like it wasn’t as big of a deal as it sounded, and it all blew over eventually. It was heavily implied to the public that they shut the program down, so that helped.”
I lifted a brow. “Let me guess. They didn’t shut it down?”
“Actually, they did. But they made us create a new program called Vigil first. It’s like the old one, except it’s ten times bigger and better. You wouldn’t believe what we can do with it.” Rowan went over to one of his computers and started typing rapidly. “Come and have a look.”
I stood up and moved closer. “What exactly am I looking at?” I asked, peering at the screen.
“This is Vigil. It allows us to spy on literally anyone. Even the president, if that’s what we want to do.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. We can.”
“How?”
Rowan smiled. “If you have a phone, a TV, a computer, or any kind of smart home device, we can use that to listen in on you. Most people have at least one of those things. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually using the device at the time; we can listen anyway. As long as you’re simply around any one of the devices, you’re fair game. They don’t even have to be yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say you don’t have a phone, but we know that you’re at your friend’s house, and we want to listen to you for some reason. We can do it via your friend’s phone, TV, virtual assistant, smart fridge… you name it. None of the devices have to be yours. We just have to know you’re standing within range of one.”
“Jesus.”
“Let me show you an example.” He started typing again. “This is my mom’s profile. According to her phone’s GPS data, she’s at home right now. We should be able to figure out what she’s doing pretty fast.”
He clicked his mouse a few times. Nothing happened.
“Am I supposed to hear something?” I asked.
“Nothing is coming up right now. That means she doesn’t have her phone on her at the moment, or she’s just being quiet,” Rowan explained. “Give me a minute. We’ll use something else.”
He clicked a few more times, and faint voices started emanating from the computer speakers. Rowan raised his brows. “There we go. Hear that?”
“Yeah.”
He turned the speakers up. The voices grew louder and clearer.
“So I was telling Sonia about that time we went to Aspen,” a lilting, feminine voice was saying. “And… oh, damn! There goes my coffee. I’m so sorry. I’ve become so clumsy lately.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you a cloth,” a familiar voice replied. It was Rowan’s mother, Karen Harris.
Rowan clicked again, and the sound went away.
“That’s our front living room,” he said, turning back to me. “Sounds like Mom is sitting in there chatting with our neighbor. I used the TV in there to listen to them. I could’ve used the neighbor’s phone, too, if I knew she was there. Or I could’ve used the Alexa speaker that’s sitting on the coffee table.”
“So you can really spy on anyone?”
“Yes, as long as they’re around a Vigil-compatible device.”
“I’m guessing there’s a long list of compatible devices.”
“Yes. You’d be shocked at some of the stuff that can be used. For example, any coffeemaking machine manufactured after 2014 can be used to listen in on a person.”
