6/6/08
Closure
Sorry for the radio silence. Finally got the two scripts finished, and can now turn my attention to finishing what's most important to me -- wallpapering my basement with Indiana Jones promotional material.
Also, like many of you, I've been caught up with current events. And that's why I'm so very thankful that this decisive issue is finally behind us. I can not tell you how at peace I am now that this issue has been decided once and for all.
Once I'm done with the basement, we'll get back to Jordi. Hopefully next week. Dying to put a face with the name. Labels: giraffes, good eats, Indiana Jones, kosher
Stumble It!
5/18/08
Walk on The Wild Side-Opening Credits
5/16/08
Wow...
I am busy. The Indy Jones marketing blitz (Finally finished - You can see my art on virtually every Kelloggs and Keebler product, as well as at your local Burger King. I also did all of the Indy portrait work for Dr.Pepper - The current issues of Entertainment Weekly and People both have full page Russell Walks/Indy ads.) July brings both the Star Wars Celebration: Japan ( for which I'm doing a limited edition poster and a bunch of original art), and the San Diego Comic-Con (Another poster, some prints, and some original art).
Dave is busy. He's writing. It's all "Taking Out" and getting "Picked Up" and becoming "Attached". I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think Hollywood is the only place you do all of those things with the hope of not getting screwed...
So, it is all of this business (Which, fortunately, is putting food on our respective tables, and very expensive gas in out respective tanks) which is keeping us from spending more time with Jordi. Rest assured, though, that we haven't forgotten little hacker, and know that sometime in the next few days we'll start showing some ideas of what all this might look like.
In the meantime, look at the above post for two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of genius...
(Apologies for not embedding the video in this post - Technical Difficulties...)
Stumble It!
4/29/08
Laying The Foundation
At this point, I think we have a lot of solid moving pieces. We've pretty much nailed down Characters, we have some great Story Points, a Set Piece or three, and some solid Tech Tricks. I think we're close to being able to start piecing them together into a rudimentary, very skeletal plot outline.
But first...
Let's put together a sentence or two thumbnail description for each of the players. Just a little something to keep them/us focused and, maybe, inspire a few more collateral ideas. I'll toss in a sentence here and there, and you can feel free to add.
Jordi -- The spirit of an anarchist but, at the outset, too meek to be noticed. She's wicked smart, gifted in all things techie, but has spent her life trying to assimilate, with very poor results. When she goes on the run, she becomes the person she always wanted to be.
Jordi's mom. Not long for this world.
Jordi's dad. Long ago went missing. I'm thinking institutionalized for his paranoia, which it turns out was completely founded, since he thought that people were being watched from the sky.
NSA Guy. Betrayer and then the source of help and the person Jordi has to learn to trust.
Conglomerate CEO -- A decent man used. Misguided, but also too trusting.
Rovian kingmaker -- Pasty, soft, pulls the strings of power because he never had any. Yeah, I know, that's on-the-nose Rove. I trust you'll make him look less sweaty.
BAKK(s)
Field Generals -- How about three different heads of the individual companies that have major contracts with the DOD and whose products are used to come after Jordi. These are the guys who serve as the pyramid of evil that she climbs, and each of their demises/comeuppances could reflect their business/commodity in a Se7en-like way.
And I'm thinking maybe the CEO's wife. I think we need an audience surrogate (besides the conglomerate's board of directors) where we can get some exposition to inform the bad guys' POV. Or maybe not.
Labels: 4GW, Blackwater, NSA
Stumble It!
4/16/08
Roll Call
The table is straining under the weight of everything Russ just brought to it. Well struck, lad. Russ dished out a lot of great ideas that are sure to become major story points, so I want to chime in with a quick roll call.
* The kingmaker/Rove dude being the ultimate bad dude. Check
* The misdirect, finding out that the person we thought was the ultimate evil is just a puppet for the real bad dude. Check.
* Power for power's sake being the motivating factor. Check.
* Rice dick. Check.
* Knocking the second tier bad guys down one at a time on her climb up the evil pyramid. Check. Although, I'm not sure how much time we'll have to devote to establishing full-on personalities for these field generals. We can play around with how in depth we go with these guys.
* Boots-on-the-ground bad guys. I agree with you, they're bad ass kitten killers (BAKK). Check.
* The BAKK -- which could be a team or an individual -- is the one who kills the ultimate bad dude. Check. We could do it so that they receive their directives online. Or, we could paint them as total mercenaries. So one of the final viral counter-assaults Jordi or the Unexpected Military Ally Dude (UMAD) unleash is some proxy/mirror site that can't be traced that is taking pay-pal donations... to outbid the BAKK. Perhaps the growing army of the Media Enlightened all contribute $10, to the point where they hire the BAKK away from the corporate kingmaker. Except, the problem with that is the kingmaker would just hire someone else. So maybe the BAKK do receive an unexpected online directive to take out the kingmaker, and the author of that directive is the bad dude for the sequel.
* Heavy hitter who learns the ends don't justify the means. Check.
* What if we combine this Heavy Hitter Who Learns The Lesson idea with the person we initially think is the big bad dude. And it's when he learns this lesson that he's no longer useful to the kingmaker, so the kingmaker takes him out. This is how we learn that the person we thought was the ultimate bad dude was really a puppet. I can see this happening right about at the middle of our story, pulling the rug out from under the audience's feet, and ratcheting up the stakes. And maybe it's at this moment that the kingmaker adds the bounty to what had up to this point only been accusations of Jordi being a domestic terrorist.
* Ambitious Military Guy (AMG) starts down the road to his penance by starting the New Media counter-assault. Check. What is this viral assault? Here's a thought -- what if he uses his official capacity to get some dirt or tap a call or get an incriminating surveillance photo of one influencial yet hypocritical Old Media pundit. Maybe the video is edited together with the pundit telling on-camera lies. And I like the fade-out tag line for this video being, "Consider The Source". And that tag line could become a recurring rallying cry.
* The division between old and new media, the old and young, and the status-quo vs. the search for change. This is a very interesting idea that I think we need to clarify a bit. Or at least firm up how we articulate it. I'm not sure old vs. young is entirely accurate. And I'm not sure it's old media vs. new media, because there are plenty of internet sites controlled by the established information brokers. Maybe it's more media enlightened vs. media unenlightened. Or perhaps it's more centralized media vs. decentralized media. Let's marinate a little on this.
Labels: 4GW, Bill O'Reilly, Blackwater, Carl Rove, youtube
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4/14/08
Regaining Trust
Idea:
What if Jordi begins to regain her trust this way:
1. We establish that The Powers That Be are using the public to help them find Jordi; They're using traditional media - tv and radio and print - in a massive effort to track her down. We see that they've established a massive reward for her apprehension, and that that reward, coupled with a trumped up list of charges, make Jordi seem like the biggest threat to freedom since the Nazis. At first, it works, and it seems to Jordi that everyone in America is out to get her. I can see Jordi attempting to somehow help someone (maybe a kindly old lady or a lost little girl), and finding out, almost too late, that it was a setup designed to catch her.
2. Eventually, though, and perhaps through an effort started by Ambitious Military Guy, (maybe as the first step in his penance) the tide starts to turn. Word of Jordi's innocence begins to spread through the New Media - The Viral Media - and we see youtube videos, and text messages, and even old-fashioned person to person conversations all geared to the idea that maybe things aren't exactly as they appear.
3. And as opinion begins to change, the campaign of misinformation continues - Hell, it steps up - and we begin to see that division isn't just between the old and new medias, but that it's also between the old and the young, the status-qo and the search for change.
4. Maybe Jordi's first inclination that this battle is occurring around her happens when she's caught as she breaks into a store for batteries or something. Maybe the store owner (and I don't know why - maybe I've been overly influence by tv cop shows - but I'm picturing an Asian person here) is an older person who's been following the story on tv, and even has a "Wanted" poster of Jordi in the window. I see a perfect opportunity for a little speech here by the owner's child about blind obedience, and about giving up freedoms in exchange for the illusion of security. And I see the store owner changing his mind and letting Jordi go, tearing the poster out of the window as she leaves.
5. It's at that moment that the cynic in Jordi dies a little bit, and she starts to realize that she's not entirely alone.
6. I can also see an opportunity for what could be a cool set piece here:
Jordi's in the street, alone, cornered, either by a couple of bounty hunters or by or two boots-on-the-ground bad guys. She's surrounded a crowd of people ready to cash in on her, and she knows there's no help there. She's exhausted. She's out of money, she's out of batteries, and worst of all, she's out of ideas. It's pretty much clear that the end is at hand, when a kid, probably a little younger than Jordi, steps out of the crowd and in front of her. The kid's cellphone illuminates his/her face as she sends a text, and we can hear/see the musical tone of a text being received. Then another kid steps from the crowd. And another. And another. And pretty soon Jordi's in the middle of a flash mob, from where she uses the ensuing confusion to escape.
Oh - Still thinking about global conglomerate's name. Why didn't we write it down? Or, more accurately, why didn't you write it down?Labels: NYPD Blue, The Powers That Be, Traditional Media, Viral Media
Stumble It!
Heroes and Villains Redeux
Bounty hunters... I'm seeing lots of bounty hunters. In fact, maybe it should seem to Jordi that the entire population is looking for her, ready to turn her in and become rich. Her face is ALWAYS on tv, usually in the running data stream that fills up the bottom 3rd of every channel in Jordi's world. And almost as big as her face is the word REWARD, followed by a huge figure (a million? 10 million?).
Other than that, I agree with the structure of evil you laid out below, my friend, with maybe a couple of minor changes/revisions:
The Big Bad Guy: He's rotten, all right, and I agree that at least a portion of his motivation is the acquisition of power, but I'm not sure that ascending to the position of CEO is the best way to achieve his aim. Maybe it would be a little more interesting if his ultimate ambition was to be behind the scenes, directing the show. Maybe he's a kingmaker, a Rasputin, a Cardinal Richelieu, a Karl Rove. This gives us a chance to use a little misdirection when we show that the person we've thought was the ultimate evil was actually just putty in the Big Bad's hands. As far as another motivation, I don't know - I think power for it's own sake is pretty good. Why would anyone want to be the most powerful person in the world? Because then they'd be the most powerful person in the world.
But if we wanted, I suppose we could also give him a tiny penis...
The next tier of bad guys, those who use their individual specializations to go after Jordi, can have a variety of motivations, each of which we can use as the foundation for their individual characters. Maybe we can have a money guy, and an ambitious guy, and a guy who just likes playing with all of his cool toys. (Maybe Jordi can use these character keys to her advantage as she knocks these guys down, one by one, during her climb to the top of our little "Pyramid of Evil")
Boot-on-the-ground guys:
I see this going one of two ways:
These guys could be our comic relief, constantly outwitted by Jordi - I'm seeing the Dorfler character in Midnight Run, or Taggert and Rosewood in Beverly Hills Cop. (Interestingly, both Taggert and Dorfler were played by the underrated John Ashton. If we went this route, maybe we could base the look of one of our characters on him...
The other way we could go (and this is, I think, the way I prefer) is to make these guys super scary ultra evil. I'm talking kitten killing, fart in airlock evil. These guys are bad news, and they're not the clowns that terminated Jordi's mother. As pros, they're as far beyond the typical government agent as Peyton Manning is beyond Brett Elliot.
Of course, we'd need to figure out a way to indicate the extent of these guys' badness, and maybe showing them knocking off Jordi's mom would be the way to do it. On the other hand, if we can figure out another way to show how rotten they are we can hammer that point home in the final act when we have them off Jordi's other parent, moments after he gives her the information she needs to continue her journey. Ultimately, I can see these guys killing our Big Bad Guy under orders from someone else, either the Bigger Big Bad Guy (our villain in the sequel), or Jordi, or (if we want to keep Jordi's hands clean) the ambitious military guy. (This would be pretty easy to accomplish if we establish that they receive their directives online. Maybe they don't have any idea, nor do they care, who their boss is - They're simply killing machines, following orders.)
As far as characters I'd add to the dark side, I'd like to see a powerful figure who's entirely misguided - someone who truly believes that the end can justify the means, and I'd like to see this person realize, to his or her ultimate sadness, that they are wrong. And then maybe that person can commit suicide. (Another option - Maybe this suicide can happen in a way that implicates our Big Bad and thus precipitates his inevitable downfall...) Labels: Bounty Hunters, Midnight Run, Pyramid of Evil, The Big Bad
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4/13/08
Heroes and Villains
Very much liking Russ's idea that the unexpected ally is also the betrayer. Put this guy through the ringer and force him to change his worldview.
This might be premature, but it's looking to me like we're rounding out the major players on Jordi's side of the equation. A quick headcount --
Jordi
Jordi's mom who is going to get whacked
Jordi's dad, who is the missing parent, and whose paranoia is justified. She'll finally track him down for some necessary guidance.
The ambitious military guy who both betrays and becomes Jordi's ally, and then serves as the person she needs to trust.
So, who are the guys on the other side of the ball?
I see the ultimate, top-of-the-heap bad dude being someone in line to ascend to the CEO position of the conglomerate -- almost like he's vying to become king. I think he has staked his bid on the unprecedented revenue the company's subsidiaries are bringing in during this threat of global hostilities. But, also, I think there needs to be more than just greed and power motivating him -- some sort of personal shortcoming he's trying to compensate for.
I can also see a lower level of bad guys who run the individual military contracting companies that utilize their specializations to go after Jordi.
And I can envision a couple boots-on-the-ground bad guys who are charged with actually taking her out.
Russ, what else would you like to add to the equation on either side? Does it feel like we could use one other personality on Jordi's side?
Labels: Carlyle Group, Haliburton, Heroes and Villains, NSA
Stumble It!
4/7/08
As American as Baseball, Apple Pie and the Pentagon
It's baseball season!
I love baseball season, especially in the Spring and Autumn (and much more so in theory than in practice - Steroids and salary caps and senate committees have kind of taken away some of the fun. I've always thought it would be cool if ESPN Classic would start in April and follow a vintage season on a day by day basis, as though it were occurring in real time.) I always get ready for the season by reading one of Halberstam's books, and every couple of years I spend too much on a vintage card. Years ago, one of my favorite artists, a guy named Mark Chiarello, worked on a series of cards entitled "The Heroes of the Negro Leagues". It's gorgeous stuff, and I was excited to see that most of the pieces have been put together in a book with the same name. Seeing that reminded me of this, which I first saw a couple of years ago. Hilarious - or, if you will, "a laugh riot". (Watch it, and you'll understand the last phrase.)
Ok - So we kill off Jordi's mom or dad for all the reasons you mention. I'm fine with that. In fact, I like it. I like it so much that I think we should open with it, then bounce backward and forward in time from the beginning to the present until the death occurs, at which point we stay in the present and move forward. I think that as part of the whole conspiracy thing, the death should appear random, and completely unconnected to the data Jordi's downloaded. Does a home invasion sound right? Does it make sense that Jodi's parent's last words start her on the path? Maybe the dying mom or dad tells Jordi that the other parent isn't nuts, that the paranoia is justified and that the "sane" parent always felt that if the family minded their own business, no one would bother them.
I don't know though - That's a lot of coincidence. If we go anywhere down this road we need a way to tie together Jordi's search with the missing parent's past. Maybe Jordi finds a security code among the parent's stuff that she enters in the computer as she searches. (One thing occurred to me in thinking about this - I like the idea of massive government/corporate incompetence - Maybe the security code works because no one ever disabled it. Maybe Jordi isn't killed when her parent is because nobody gave that particular order - You know, realistic stuff....)
About the unexpected ally - I dig it. He could be the one person Jordi, in the end, needs to trust. He could also be the person who betrays her, but I like the idea of a conscious betrayal on his part, rather than the idea that he confides in the wrong person. Maybe he's a gung-ho agent looking to make a name for himself, and he initially communicates with Jordi undercover, attempting to gain her trust so he can bring in her in. After he betrays her, and the resultant attempt on Jordi's life goes bad, he realizes that he's working for some bad people, and that the end doesn't always justify the means. Jordi knows that his betrayal almost cost her her life, and so that makes it even harder for her to let go at the point where she needs to trust him.
This way both of our characters exhibit growth.
Anyway, just spitballing...
Oh - I think we did have a name for our Carlyle-like group, but I can't remember it; It was "Globaltech", or "Terratech" (which I like) or something... Labels: Baseball, Betrayal, David Halberstam, Jordi, Paranoia
Stumble It!
3/28/08
The Unexpected Ally
There's another character/type I've been thinking about for a little while and, since he's gotten some traction in my brain, I thought I'd toss it out there. What about The Unexpected Ally.
I'm picturing someone on the inside who goes from trusting the conglomerate to realizing Jordi's not the terrorist threat she's being played to be. Someone who provides some unexpected aid and helps her out of a jam. Someone who puts his career in jeopardy for her.
One angle that might be cool is if he's a younger guy -- not much older than her -- and he works for the NSA in the Echelon-like monitoring system.
He could intercept a call of hers and get clued in independently of the conglomerate that's tracking her. So he becomes a parallel source of problems for Jordi. Except, through monitoring her, he comes around to believing her.
Which could also dovetail with an idea of Russ's that I really like -- and that's Jordi trusting someone and being betrayed. So, what if...
... The younger guy -- who will become the unexpected ally -- has a superior officer. And the young guy confides in the superior officer, who then takes his information to... and you see where I'm going. The superior officer has some allegiances to some of the members of the boards of directors of the conglomerate's companies, who are former military.
And the younger guy could make contact with Jordi while she's on the run, and they could establish a relationship. And he could be the guy who she ultimately has to let herself trust in the end to win out.Labels: character development, Echelon
Stumble It!
3/24/08
Run Jordi Run
LOVE the idea of Jordi being accused of being some sort of domestic terrorist. Perhaps the bad dudes can photoshop her into some still photos from a surveillance camera that seem to implicate her in something -- and these photos get splashed across every news wire and cable station.
And while I'm clearly deferring to you on her look, I will toss this out for consideration -- what if she starts out as a wallflower science nerd loner who uses her hacking skills to intercept text messages regarding parties she's not invited to. Then, when the conglomerate plays hardball and ups the stakes by accusing her of being a terrorist, that's when she's forced to go on the run and change her look. Maybe this is the moment that she starts to look like the alter ego she always wanted to be. Her changing her look -- however that might be -- could be this transformative moment that signals "look out -- she means business".
But it could still be humanizing and funny to have her get all fierce and punked out and then realize that she still needs her dorky glasses.
Also, somewhat along those lines, how about ratcheting up to her being implicated as a terrorist. Maybe, initially, when the conglomerate becomes aware that she's responsible for the satellite disruption (or, more precisely, aware that she has information that threatens billions of dollars from their revenue stream) they send a team to clean her up. But what if -- they accidentally kill her mom instead. This would: 1) Obviously, make everything more personal, 2) Make her search for -- and ultimate location of -- her father more integral, and 3) allow us to have her go on the run without explaining why there isn't a parent at home freaking the heck out.
By the way, didn't we at one time have a name for the conglomerate? I'm not asking for those brain cells back, as long as you still have yours.
Labels: Blackwater, Carlyle Group, hacking, Run Lola Run
Stumble It!
3/16/08
So, Kudos to Dave for three good posts. Sorry I haven't been around. I've been in my meadow for the last couple of weeks, gathering beautiful flowers. Well, that, and painting multiple depictions of Indiana Jones for a variety of huge corporations.
My thoughts: While I like Dave's Enemy of the State meets Erin Brockovich musings, I really prefer our original spanning the globe, entire world at stake scenario.
But I also dig the sort of "nesting dolls" aspect of Dave's new thoughts, and I'm wondering if there's a way we could do the same thing with our first idea, except, I'm thinking, backwards. We start with China and Venezuela, and we work down, from country to corporation, board of directors, to one really bad dude...
This appeals to me for couple of reasons; It gives a trail for Jordi to follow that can lead in any direction we want her to go. It prevents us from worrying about what the data she's downloaded really is, because it doesn't matter - The fact that Jordi has it is all that's important. It's the perfect MacGuffin, like the Letters of Transit in Casablanca, or the Maltese Falcon. And finally, it matches up with my world view - While it's easy to see a company or country as evil, I'm not sure it's accurate, particularly with regard to corporations. I think if you want to put a face on evil you have to look a little deeper, to the people who run those countries and corporations, and who put in place the policies that cause harm.
That might be a nice lesson for Jordi to learn.
A few other quick points:
I think Jordi's an only child.
I think she could be an "A" student, but that she doesn't "apply" herself.
She has a crush on the star football player, and hates herself for it.
There is one person she trusts, but at some point in our story, this person will betray her.
She's got no best friend - And since we have her diary, we don't need to add a character for exposition, which is cool.
I think that when Jordi's on the run, she should be chased, not just by government/black helicopter types and the police, but by everyone; Maybe somehow the word gets out that she's plotting a suicide bombing. It would be cool to see her picture everywhere.
Read about Blackwater here. I wouldn't want these guys after me... Labels: Blackwater, Casablanca, Indiana Jones, The Maltese Falcon
Stumble It!
3/15/08
More What Ifs
I have to say, I like the way I see this dynamic shaking out. I randomly and without much thought or structure toss around ideas, and Russ makes sense of it all and provides us with order and elegance.
So, I've got some more "What Ifs".
I know I said I liked the War Games model, but I can also see an Enemy of the State approach going something like this:
What if -- as Russ concocted like a champ -- Jordi is searching for information about a long-lost parent, when she accidentally intercepts a satellite transmission. The transmission is captured, decoded, and saved to her hard drive.
When she looks at it later, what if she sees that it is both audio communication and satellite surveillance of a domestic, radioactive waste disposal facility. What if it's similar to this one in Barnwell, South Carolina, which happens to be one of only a couple radioactive waste disposal facilities owned by a public sector company. And what if the satellite feed she intercepted contains the set-up and detonation of explosive devices in the facility, causing massive collections of radioactive material to ignite, creating a mini nuclear ground zero.
Satellite images of the facility could look something like this. And a closer view might look something like this.
So, who would be attempting to sabotage this sort of facility? Well, what if we model it a little further on the company that owns the Barnwell facility and say that company is owned by a larger company. And let's take it one step further and say that the larger company was owned by a great big military-industrial behemoth. For reelz.
So maybe what we unravel over the course of the story is that our fictional facility had been leaching into the neighboring groundwater and was about to be exposed to a massive Erin Brokovich style lawsuit. So the corporate daddy rigged the destruction of one of its subsidiaries to avoid a lawsuit. But there's also a small residual benefit, because they also own the company that can provide emergency response up and down the Atlantic coast to the tune of who knows how many billions.
One benefit that I can see in tackling the story this way is that it gives her more to discover and reveal as the story progresses. You know, a la Chinatown -- follow the money.
Oh, and one other thing. I know that simply by typing many of these words -- like det*nate, radi*active, and n*clear -- that this site is now prime reading material for somebody in Forte Meade. So consider this a virtual wave from all of us to the good people in crypto city. Not to worry, we're just creating a story. Fiction. But if you have any cool ideas, feel free to add them in the comments section. Now get outside and enjoy a beautiful spring Maryland day.
-- Dave
Labels: Carlyle Group, It's just fiction, NSA
Stumble It!
3/11/08
20 Questions. Or Maybe 14.
Russ mentioned that he's working on backstory for Jordi. Obviously, plenty of different ways to go about this, but one thing I like to do is fill out a profile. Here are a few of the questions I ask.
What does her bedroom look like?
Siblings?
Favorite Memory?
Worst Memory?
Greatest Fear?
What does she do when no one is watching?
Relationship with parents?
Best friend?
Favorite movie?
Music?
Where does she see herself in 10 years?
30 years?
Biggest secret?
Religion?
Without fail, the answers to some of these questions result in scenes. And even if none of this information is ever addressed directly, you'll feel it.
Labels: character development
Stumble It!
3/6/08
Uncontrollable Gag Reflex
I warned you of imminent spewing (I'll try not to splatter your beautiful flowers). But your Why and How for the inciting incident are cool, and it got me percolating. So, in no particular order or priority, here are some of the things rolling around in my head.
Evasive Maneuvers
At some point Jordi is going to be on the run and being tracked by the arsenal of tools the defense contractors have at their disposal. Essentially, one teenage girl going up against a private army. She she's going to need some smart moves to get out of situations.
- I can see her pinned down in a truck stop parking lot. There's a car hauler loaded with new cars. If she could hack into (or maybe she knows someone who works there, although she is a loner) an OnStar type network, key in a VIN for one of the cars, and have it unlocked from above. She could crawl in the back seat and stow away when the truck pulls out past the bad guys.
- If she has a reclusive genius father, I'm picturing him in the West Virginia mountains, or somewhere where she could utilize mine shafts to dodge satellite surveillance.
- I can also see her trapped in a Home Depot or Lowes after hours. She's hiding, climbing on the tops of the massive shelving units, as a couple guys look for her. And I can see her assembling a makeshift fertilizer bomb that allows her to thwart her pursuers and ignite the lumber section, causing plumes of smoke that obscure her from satellite surveillance.
- Sewer systems are nice for evading surveillance.
Cool tech tricks
She's also going to need to take charge and fight back. Some random things she could do are:
- Phone phreaking. Using administrator passwords found online, she could go into phone systems and change internal settings on individual phones. For example, she could remotely toggle a speaker function from off to on, effectively turning a speaker enabled phone in an office into a bug. She could do the same to someone's cell phone, turning it into an open wire.
- She could also combine turning someone's cell phone into a wire with broadcasting it via ham radio.
- Copying SIM cards and cloning phones.
- Off-the-shelf antennas and scanners patched into laptop to snag text messages.
- Sending a service SMS to a phone and reprogram its SIM card.
- Using a transmitter at different frequencies to open garage doors or change stop lights.
- Using a scanner tuned to the frequency of baby monitors to listen inside someone's house.
Labels: amateur satellite, cell phone hacking, hacking, ham radio, intercepting text massages, phone phreaking
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