Excerpt: Controlling the Spin

Chapter Three

The Wall Street Journal was one paper that Allison had never considered writing for. But she'd discovered over the past week that the news coverage and writing in it was actually quite good. If her exposé of Barius landed her at the WSJ, it wouldn't be too bad.

At present, her desk was obscured by the last four editions of the WSJ, which were open across the entire surface like an extremely stock-oriented blotter. About a dozen headlines were highlighted in purple, and the tops of most of the pages were dotted with light-brown rings in the shape of the bottom of her Mesa Examiner mug.

She as seeing "unusual activity," according to Tanner. Trades within the electronic sector that looked suspicious or even those that didn't. She was to keep an eye on the industry from top to bottom—learn the key players. She knew the most prominent company—everybody did, what with its constant TV advertising and their signature five-note chime. And she knew the second-largest company if only because their processors were cheaper, and therefore, insider her home computer. She'd discovered which computer manufacturers used Barius processors—three, and all off-brands. And she had read article on top of article of speculation about the supposed Barius/Apple deal.

Barius was a young company, started only five years before. They had been founded by a set of entrepreneuring, jobless new Ph.D.'s from Stanford—two in electrophysics and three in electrical engineering and computer science. The company's goal upon its founding had been to bring the technology behind quantum computing to the home computing sector. According to Tanner, the tip The Examiner had received had been regarding Barius's new prototype processor, the Hexeed. As Allison understood it, the Hexeed was actually six processors rolled into one chip, bypassing the most recent competitor's offering by a good pace. All processors worked simultaneously to proved what amounted to three times the standard processing power. It was being hyped by Wired and several other tech magazines as the biggest leap forward in personal computing since the development of notebook computers.

Although leak a month earlier (and probably a very deliberate and well-planned one, Allison thought) had revealed that Barius was working on a prototype for this latest idea, the company had remained tight-lipped about its progress or any potential release date for the processor, although there was much speculation in the electronics world that it was because the release date was imminent that apple had been involved in serious talks with Barius.

Allison sighed, slumping on to her desk with her head in her hand while she continued to scribble notes in her notebook with her right. Unlike the other journalists she knew, she didn't much care for reporters' notebooks, the thin things bound at the top that it seemed were permanently attached to her colleagues' arms. Some of the younger journalists carried around little black Moleskine notebooks, which they bought by the case. Allison's preference was for the plan, black-and-white composition notebooks. They were ubiquitous, cheap, and kept all her notes in one spot. She'd start a new notebook for each story, dating her notes as she gathered them. This had greatly amused Byron (one of the Moleskine crowd), whom she had presented with her copious notes on the school board building plan article. He'd laughingly begun calling her "Ms. Over-organized," and poking fun at her notebooks every time one appeared. Truth was, though, that it was her fastidious attention to detail that had probably resulted in her being assigned to the Barius story in the first place.

Although if you don't keep up with this crap… She stood up from her desk and
stretched for a moment. The sun was beaming in the window across from her desk and she took a moment to wander over to it and stare down at the street. It was still early in the morning; she could see school busses on their rounds picking up elementary school kids.

What a relief it would be when Hunter was old enough to be in school. She felt terrible about leaving him at daycare all day, but she rationalized that everyone else was doing it, and more to the point, Jacob and Erin had sent Hunter to daycare as well. It wasn't that school would be any different, but it would at least be a socially-sanctioned place to put Hunter all day while she worked.

In thinking about schools, her mind wandered over to the story she'd handed over to Byron. Hunter's school, Pyton Elementary (home of the Pyton Pythons), was one of the many that would be razed and rebuilt over the next few years under the plan. At that time Hunter and his classmates would be relocated to a nearby school and then returned. That was, if she and Hunter were even here at all. If she pulled off this story, she could move somewhere else without sacrificing her career in the meantime. She turned back towards her desk.

As though he'd read her mind, Tanner appeared just as she regained her seat before the spread of Wall Street Journals. As usual, he looked hurried but unruffled: his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a ballpoint pen behind his ear. He was waving a sheet of paper.

"A tip," he said, triumphantly laying the paper down in front of Allison. She met his gaze and raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to offer the rest of the sentence. He remained silent, and eventually frowned at her.

"What?" he said.

She looked at him quizzically. "You have a tip for me? What's the tip?"

Tanner sighed exasperatedly, but he was grinning. "Not a tip for you, Allison, a tip for you. From our informant." He slid the sheet of paper across the desk to her, and Allison took it as Tanner practically leapt the desk to get to her side. He bent over the desk, reading aloud over her shoulder.

Barius/Apple deal details to be leaked this week, they both read. Bruxner hoping to inflate stock price. Barius in talks to acquire Midforce.

Allison sucked in her breath. Bruxner, of course, was David Bruxner, Stanford drop-out and co-founder and co-CEO of Barius, Inc. Midforce was one of the minor players about whom she had learned while studying up on Barius and its amazing new processor. They made run-of-the-mill processors that went in only one computer whose brand Allison had never before heard of. The company with the computer might very well just be serving as a front for Midforce. But Midforce, like most of the other tech companies, did just fine on the NASDAQ and so if Barius bought them out, they would be putting a lot of value into their company.

A company that was potentially about to fall.

She looked up at Taylor, who was almost panting, he was so excited. "Where did this come from?"

"My e-mail," he huffed, pointing to the tanner@mesaexaminer.org at the top of the page. "See."

Allison rolled her eyes. "I understand that the paper came from your e-mail, Tanner. What I wonder is where the e-mail came from? Do we know who this guy is?"

"He's inside Barius, and obviously close to the top. He's using an anonymous re-mailer."

"A what?"

"Anonymous re-mailer. It means that he's sending stuff from his office or actually more likely from a web account like gmail, and for added security, a second service is stripping all traces of the original service out of the email. See?" He pointed to the "From:" line. It was blank, reading simply ":undisclosed sender:" Allison's eyes traveled to the bottom of the short message, where she expected a signature but knew there wouldn't be one, but she caught the words "Anonymail: secure and easy. www.anynonymail.com."

She placed her finger on the URL. "This. Can we look into this? I need to know more about this company."

"You're the lead reporter," Tanner answered. "Aren't you calling the shots?"

Allison looked at him suspiciously. "What you mean is, looking at the anonymous remailer company didn't occur to you, right?"

He pursed his lips, but she could tell from his eyes that he was smiling. "Of course I thought of it. I just wanted you to come to that conclusion on your own so that you could feel like it was an idea you could take credit for."

"Riiight." She punched him playfully in the shoulder. "I will be taking credit for it, seeing as the idea of doing it didn't cross your mind. But yeah, I'll get on it. We'll see what we can find out about our informant, you know, short of getting a warrant to reveal his identity."

Tanner sighed. "Man, I wish we were the police department sometimes. Think they'd give us an information search warrant if we asked?"

She laughed. "Somehow, I think that's illegal. And I feel strongly that while investigating possible illegality, one should try to break as few laws as possible.

"See, you're just no fun." He clapped her on the shoulder. "Anyways, get to it. Let me know what you find out ASAP, okay?" He bounded away from her desk, and was gone, leaving Allison to re-read the e-mail in the silence of her office.

Pushing aside today's Journal which was covering her keyboard, Allison woke up her computer. Bringing up her browser, she headed straight for Google. Although she could go directly to the website of the remailer, she knew that doing a search for it first would also turn up any commentary about its purpose and possible usages, and that was every bit as important as the site itself. She typed in "anonymail" and hit ENTER.

1,272 hits, Google responded. The first, of course, was the website itself. She'd save that for later. Below that was a headline from a small newspaper in Albuquerque, with the headline ANONYMOUS REMAILER REFUSES WARRANT. She clicked on the link.

The Associated Press
Albuquerque, NM
Albuquerque-based anonymous re-mailing company Anonymail.com has refused to comply with a local warrant requesting the name and identifying information of one of its users, local media outlets reported Wednesday.
Police were seeking the information as part of their investigation of a harassment suit against Christopher Mangiano, a local stockbroker. Mangiano had been receiving e-mails threatening to take him to court for violations of the Securities and Exchange Commission code, which regulates stock trading in the United States.
"The allegations are completely unfounded," says Magiano, who is claiming defamation and harassment against the anonymous user. "I have never been involved in short sales or any of the other things that this person has decided to claim."
Anonymous re-mailing allows users to mask their e-mail identity by routing e-mail from the user's account through a central server and stripping it of its identification. The e-mail is then re-sent from the company's server, so that it can be traced back only that far. Although the company retains traces of the original e-mail, they typically do not release that information.
Magiano, who has been receiving these e-mails for four weeks, filed the case seeking the information of his harasser on Monday. On Tuesday, Anonymail filed an injunction to prevent the information from being released to the Albuquerque police.
Anonymail was contacted repeatedly for comment on this article but did not return phone calls.

Allison highlighted the article and copied and pasted it into a Word document that she had open in another window. She then pulled over her newest composition book and opened it to a blank page.

Anonymail, she wrote at the top.
-based in Albuquerque
-refused info-seeking warrant 6 mons ago
-other case involved SEC violations?

She thought that was bizarre. True, it didn't seem impossible that there could be more than one SEC-violation issue coming through the same anonymous re-mailer; after all, how many such companies could there be, and of course if you were dealing with such an accusation, you'd want to be anonymous. Still, it seemed a little unusual that the first article she should come across about this company should involve a topic almost identical to the one for which she was investigating it in the first place.

She hit the "back" button on her browser and skimmed the results of her search. Anonymail seemed to have been created over two years ago, and judging by the number of headlines similar to the one whose article she had just read, it seemed they were fierce about protecting the identity of their clients. Well, there goes the idea of getting them to give this guy up, she thought. If court-issued warrants weren't getting that job done, she couldn't very well expect to make headway any better. But the information was still useful: at least she knew she needed to be basing her search on figuring out what was going on rather than figuring out where the tips were coming from.

She reached for the e-mail, which had been pushed to the edge of her desk as she'd started her web search, and pulled it back into the center of her desk to re-read it. Bruxner hoping to inflate stock price. This, of course, was exactly the loop through which her article, if well composed, would bring Barius down. By using leaking their successes, falsified or no, Barius could increase trading of their stock and ultimately end up with enough money to acquire additional companies. If they were then able to keep their stock prices inflated, they could continue to acquire more companies, eventually creating a house of cards, where one wrong move would send the entire thing crumbling.

Allison clicked her bookmarks, and selected the NASDAQ page. Not a page she would ever have had bookmarked before, she thought with a smile. The extent to which she followed stocks was opening her quarterly account statement from the company that managed her 401(k). She had all her money there invested in a "life cycle" fund which promised to keep her properly allocated based on her retirement year. She'd picked the right year, and now 5% of her paycheck went into that account every two weeks—no further maintenance needed.

But now she found herself immersed in the language and reports of day trading, with the NASDAQ page just one click away. She clicked the "quick quote" box and entered BARM, the stock symbol for Barius and sipped her coffee while the page loaded.

She scrolled through the listings of the previous day's sales and purchases. The share price had been fluctuating with the market, but no huge increases or decreases since she had taken over. Every few days she would also check the two big processor competitors, just to make sure that Barius was on track as far as number of shares that were moving around and its price per share. Everything looked about on par today, nothing looked out of the ordinary, except—she blinked and checked again, thinking she must have misread it. Nope, not at all. Midday yesterday, there had been a single purchase of twenty-five thousand shares of Barius. Her heart pounded. Twenty-five thousand shares was well above the normal trade. At the current price, that number of shares was nearly a half million dollars.

Who purchased a half million dollars' worth of Barius yesterday? she thought, but the answer was already apparent. Someone who knew about the Barius/Apple deal being leaked. They could offload the stock once the deal was known and the stock trading on Barius stock had increased its share price.

Unreal, she thought. It was really happening.

Clicking on her e-mail window, she began to compose a message to Tanner.