Record number twenty nine



My last record was confused but happy. My uncle is still alive. I don’t know how he is, and I don’t know where he is, but he knows where I am and what I’m doing, and that’s good enough for me. I’m sure he’ll contact me again when he’s ready, and when he is, so will I.

Until then, I have some bad news.

A few days after I posted Record #28, I had another email from one of my uncle’s old hacker friends. I checked his name against the list and it matched. At this point, I’ve realised it’s a bad idea to keep spreading their names over the Internet where Mariana can track them down. Speaking of which, I should talk about PII.

What is PII, you ask? Personally Identifying Information. Think name, date of birth, screen handles, pictures. Those are called primary attributes. Then you have quasi-identifiers; place of employment, gender, race, age.

The General Accounting Office in America estimates that around 87% of the entire country’s population could be identified using only three pieces of PII: gender, date of birth, and ZIP code (that’s Zone Improvement Plan, the US answer to postal codes). This is frankly terrifying. Almost 9 in 10 people could be uniquely identified, and it wouldn’t require the obvious information like name or a picture.

Now, the intelligence agencies know this. I’m pretty sure most of them have programs into which they can enter a few pieces of PII and have it bring up an entire identity. Seeing as they have access to national databases, they can legally (or quasi-legally) use all of those databases as sources of PII. Add in the rise of social media and the love of automatic geotagging in all new electronic devices, and you have a dangerous mix for those who are privacy oriented. The agencies must love social media. Where else do you get people excited to give the world their exact location? Big corporations such as Microsoft are known for being pushovers; when the NSA asked Microsoft for a backdoor in Skype and their other products, they willingly complied. Using such a program, they could pinpoint the location of 90% of the population at the click of a button. Isn’t that a scary thought?

The point of all this is that Mariana, when she was MARIANA, was probably equipped with such a program. With the ease that she seems to be tracking down my uncle’s old friends, it’s best if I stop giving out their names. It might only be one piece of PII I’m cutting out, but it may make all the difference.

Anyway, onto the bad news. Here’s the email transcript.

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BlueAdept.

You must be careful. Mariana is everywhere.

You posted the email from Marie on May 30th, saying you’d received it the night before. That is impossible. You are being manipulated.

Marie was killed on May 17th by a nail which flew from a wall after it was blown up in a suspected gang violence she got in the middle of. There were no bodies found but hers, all the cameras nearby had been wiped clean, and there were no footprints. Mariana killed her, and now she’s moved on to you.

Be careful. Mariana is everywhere.

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