xp_logs | Digging deeper - part 2 (Reply)

xp_trance posting in

Hope, Doug and Sue start to drill more deeply in groups that are behind the bills.

Doug grunted as he pushed his chair back and rolled his neck, letting it pop in several places. "If it weren't for the subject matter, I'd almost admire how thoroughly these sites have covered their tracks," he admitted. "Pseudonyms, tracing back to equally innocuous-sounding shell companies...they've clearly got someone pretty competent running their digital security strategy." His eyes narrowed and he glanced to Sue. "Not that that will stop us," he declared.

A smirk touched Sue's lips, "Not a chance they'll be able to stop us, but anyone less...capable, they'd have them running in circles. This though, I've eaten tougher setups for...well dinner I guess, might take a day to work through it," she allowed. It was true, whoever had worked on the other end had been capable of obscuring everything till now. "They don't know who they're up against."

"Our only crime is curiosity," Doug quoted, pulling his laptop closer to his body. "Does that make you Angelina Jolie?" he quipped. "I mean, I think I clean up a little better than most of that cast. Lord Nikon, though, that dude had swag for days. And Matthew Lillard's career resurgence in D&D " Banter and side topics were one of the primary ways Doug got himself into a mindset and almost distracting his conscious mind from the work at hand to free up his unconscious to make connections and get things done.

"Does that mean you are getting close to a real name or two? Because whoever this person is, needs to go to that cybersecurity school. With his Gravatar, I am tracking him to some contributions to the Sapiens Foundation website, at least one of the others, a forum or two on 4chan where he brags about helping 'to deal with muties' and more 'interesting contributions." Hope glanced up from her own laptop. "Either this person really stands out as not bright or this is some form of dummy account."

"Please," the blonde's hand rose to flick back her hair as she laughed, "my hair's so much cuter than hers was in that movie, though that was one of my favorite movies growing up. Still is to be honest...man I know what I'm doing tonight. Just gotta scare up some popcorn from somewhere." Blue eyes drifted back to the screen as she shrugged, "people like to show off, it's the biggest weakness of most criminals, they can't help but brag and then someone talks."

"Somebody always does," agreed Doug. "This is why we keep our showing off in-house, as it were." The respect of peers who operated toward a common goal was enough for him. For some people it wasn't, a constant need to be validated as the smartest and most correct, or the morally purest, by everyone they met. And that need was never truly filled, no matter the amount of adulation they received. Belatedly coming back to Hope's comment, he shrugged. "It can definitely be both," he told her. "Like the line goes, 'the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand'. Always bet on ego," he observed. "It always comes back to that. The other 'pillars' of creating a spy - money, ideology, coercion...they all come back to ego, that feeling of being better than everyone else."

"Or being an ordinary bigot." Hope added drily. "I will start pulling more information about this supposed person. It should tell us soon enough if this is a dummy account or if this 'guy' is just plain dumb."

***

“What do you think? Over a dozen people between the three of us…a full background check. Should we pull in some people from XFI or can we handle this?”

"I mean, it depends how deeply you wanna do these background checks, surface level we can do that but if you want to really find out about them you need to talk to people, we can't handle that alone."

Doug shrugged. "I have a few markers I can call in, resources I can draw on, but Sue's right. It's a question of how deep you want to dig." He raised an eyebrow at Hope - she was the one who'd brought all this together, after all, he wasn't above making her take the more difficult calls on.

A small smirk flashed over Hope's face. "I already do have Bobbi on the way to Pittsburgh to look into a few things surrounding the manifestations and everything that happened afterwards. I am sure she would not mind doing a few things for background checks if needed. Let us just get started on a basic profile for each of the names. Between the three of us... that should not be overly complicated. It should become obvious soon enough which names will require us to go deeper and do more thorough checks." She quickly decided.

The first genuine smile crossed Doug's face at Hope's anticipation of what would be needed. It was a pleasant break from the cynicism that swimming in bigoted waters had brought on. "A+, no notes," he told Sue, tapping his nose and pointing at her. Know what pieces are on the board and have them in position ahead of time - a very shrewd move indeed.

The blonde tilted her head in reply, a small smile playing across her lips, it was nice to see Hope in her element here wielding her allies like precision tools to get the job done. "Yes ma'am, sounds like we've got the start of a plan here."

"Then let us get to work."