Free A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel by Philip Kerr

test. I felt like someone who had been persuaded to give a half-litre of blood in the expectation that it would be used to save a life, only to discover that it was to be fed to a colony of vampire bats in a zoo. Bats, what is more, who might well come and attack me while I was asleep. Because there is no telling what can become of information these days. Any database can become the target of unauthorised entry. Electronic vandalism is rife.
    Suppose, I thought, that someone managed to break into the Lombroso Program’s database and, having got hold of the identities of those people who had tested VMN-negative, sold them to the News of the World? I could just envisage the headlines: WE NAME THE HUMAN TIME-BOMBS IN OUR COMMUNITIESl TOMORROW’S RIPPERS?/ SEEKING OUT THE PSYCHOS/ POSITIVE STEPS NEEDED TO CANCEL OUT THESE NEGATIVES ...
    I had read enough about the activities of the Cologne Chaos Computer Club to know that for the really determined electronic burglar, even the most sophisticated system of data-security is vulnerable.
    Probably it was the effect of the sedatives, only it took me several more minutes to realise that if someone else could break into the Lombroso database and steal personal information about me, then so could I. Not only was I possessed of all the equipment for such a task - PC, modem, the telephone company’s Jupiter computer information system, digital protocol analyser - I suddenly recalled the most important fact of all, which was the basic information for entering and using the system.
    I have always been interested in all kinds of electrical equipment, an interest which originally was encouraged by my grandfather, who owned a chain of electrical retailers. There was nothing electrical which he and, after a while I, couldn’t fix. So when I was back there in the waiting room at the Brain Research Institute, confidently anticipating my PET scan, it had been quite natural for me to start trying to adjust the television set they had in there when I saw that it was on the blink.
    The problem was a simple one - a channel improperly tuned — and I had just started to rectify this when I noticed that the set, which was rather an old one, was picking up electromagnetic radiation from one of the computer installations in the building. Somewhere in the Institute, a VD U was radiating out harmonics on the same frequency as the television set. There was something almost readable on the television screen and by adjusting the direction of the desktop antenna I found that I was able to see that it was an image of information that someone was feeding into the Lombroso computer. It’s roughly the same principle that used to enable the old television detector vans to see if you were using an unlicensed set, when there were still such things as TV licences. It wasn’t a particularly clear image, just black letters on a white background, and the picture had a tendency to swim, but it was easy enough to recognise a basic entry code, an individual operator’s personal ‘key’ word, and the Lombroso system’s password for the day.
    The image of the computer-hacker spending many hours in front of a screen trying to break into a system is a false one. He is more often to be found scavenging in a company’s refuse bins in an attempt to find a piece of information that will provide a clue as to the computer system’s password. In other words, I had already achieved what is ordinarily the most difficult part of any hacker’s task.
    I cannot say that at the time I consciously committed this information to memory. There was no reason for me to have done so, believing as I did then that I would pass the PET scan without a problem. Perhaps fate plays a hand in these things, for later on I found that I was able to visualise the various numbers and codewords on that anonymous operator’s VDU as easily as if I had been sitting in front of it myself.
    Of course, all a password does is to get you into the system. Then