05-11-2021, 09:29 PM
Inder Kumar, the IT guy, was an inveterate snoop.
One of his habits was to idly monitor the goings and comings of the company he was employed in. He had found many interesting things in his ten plus years running the security settings of the computers, the surveillance cameras, monitoring passwords, and such.
It was his firm belief that people had become so used to surveillance cameras everywhere, that they had become inured to them. And of course, privacy was a myth that people held to make themselves feel better.
At Synchronics, he had been promoted to the head of IT security a few years ago, but his habit of snooping was long-standing. Even in college, he had found ways of getting into the Principal’s office and obtaining crucial question papers before the exams. It wasn’t that he was a bad student; it was the challenge of doing something that others couldn’t or wouldn’t do, the curiosity of someone who found human activities intriguing that drove him.
For example, he had once seen and recorded footage of one of the senior managers fornicating in the copy room, after hours, with an intern who doubtless thought that this would advance her career.
Inder sat on the footage after carefully erasing his footprints from the log and then investigated the guy, Baweja. It turned out, from Baweja’s hacked personnel records, that he was also married to a high-profile business lady from another company. She made more money than him, and Inder guessed it was that sense of inadequacy that led him down the path of infidelity. When Inder blackmailed him, the man was quite happy to pay him a chuck of the money his wife made. The business had soon lost its flavor, though. What was the fun with a willing victim, anyway?
Inder had, on one occasion, supplied important documents from one guy’s computer to his rival to enable his to get ahead in the company. For cash, of course. He could have, but never did sell inside information to a rival company. No industrial espionage for him. The penalties could be steep. He kept to the down low; individuals only and cash only. As anonymous as possible. Not that he needed the money.
In the meantime, his voyeurism continued, and the hours of pleasure he derived from watching his fellow humans do all kinds of illicit things was a reward all in itself. From the CEO of the company drinking from the bottle that he kept in his drawer to the CFO who was fucking his assistant in the bathroom attached to his suite under the guise of giving dictation, Inder had all kinds of information.
In an Information Age, Inder was king of the heap, at least in the small pond he found himself in.
He knew how to hack into laptops and view the user without their being aware, thanks to the news that Zuck was using duct tape to cover his camera. Inder had hopped on the dark web that very day and learned how to do that. Surprisingly easy once you knew how. But his experience with that wasn’t that great. It was surveillance, sure, but the view was limited to what the camera could see, and that usually wasn’t much. It was much more interesting to monitor keystrokes and watch what his target was doing.
He was therefore surprised when he heard Ramesh and Prakash talking in the staff break room where he had gone to fix a router, about some gori memsaab that was putting on “nanga shows” for the lowly, laborer-type guy. His interest piqued, he interjected himself into the conversation and found out very little more, and not enough to pinpoint the person in question.
So he went back to the surveillance tapes in his own time, and discovered certain interesting anomalies.
It turned out from the time stamps that the man, Ramesh was spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning a certain cabin on the sixth floor of the building. Not enough evidence of course, but enough to dig deeper.
After all, what could be keeping the man in that specific office for so long. He cleaned every other office in just a few minutes. There were no cameras in the individual offices, only in the halls, the conference rooms, and common areas like the staircase, the garage and so on, so Inder had to be patient and bide his time.
But Inder was a spider. If he had one quality above all others, it was patience. He would have to have a word with the cleaner, what was his name again? He settled his bulk in his gaming chair, and looked at his notepad, yeah, Ramesh.
He pulled Ramesh’s personnel records and scanned them. Twenty-year-old guy from some small village near Balli. Class eight pass, very minimal skills, hence the cleaner job. Bottom of the pile. No prior criminal record. A stupid looking picture on the front page confirmed it was the right guy.
He dug deeper. Using the Aadhar card information, he hacked into the security officer files. Aha! There it was. Ramesh babu wasn’t quite as naive as he let on. He had been involved with some politician in his village and had been caught carrying a country mage gun, a katta. There were bribes paid, the case was dropped for lack of evidence, some sort of story about the gun itself going missing. Some kind of bargain had been struck, and he was to leave the village, and only return for visits, not exceeding two weeks.
And no more contact with the politician. It was a mystery how the details of these records were still available. Inder had an idea that the deal was quite okay with Ramesh.
Inder had found a lever. And like Galileo, he was ready to move the earth.
Inder pulled the man’s personnel file and noted down the mobile number. A phone call? A text message? Probably neither. Her didn’t want to call, and the guy might not be able to read a text message in any language. So…a voice message would work best.
A thought struck him. Was the other guy, the guy in the chaprasi uniform with whom he had been discussing the woman, was he into the game too? He had, so far, not featured in any of the archival video that Inder had gone through, but there was a limit to what he could humanly surveil.
He shrugged. Went back to his video game and took a bite of his Cadbury bar that Amitabh Bachchan highly recommended. No nuts or raisins or any of that shit. Plain milk chocolate was the best.
One of his habits was to idly monitor the goings and comings of the company he was employed in. He had found many interesting things in his ten plus years running the security settings of the computers, the surveillance cameras, monitoring passwords, and such.
It was his firm belief that people had become so used to surveillance cameras everywhere, that they had become inured to them. And of course, privacy was a myth that people held to make themselves feel better.
At Synchronics, he had been promoted to the head of IT security a few years ago, but his habit of snooping was long-standing. Even in college, he had found ways of getting into the Principal’s office and obtaining crucial question papers before the exams. It wasn’t that he was a bad student; it was the challenge of doing something that others couldn’t or wouldn’t do, the curiosity of someone who found human activities intriguing that drove him.
For example, he had once seen and recorded footage of one of the senior managers fornicating in the copy room, after hours, with an intern who doubtless thought that this would advance her career.
Inder sat on the footage after carefully erasing his footprints from the log and then investigated the guy, Baweja. It turned out, from Baweja’s hacked personnel records, that he was also married to a high-profile business lady from another company. She made more money than him, and Inder guessed it was that sense of inadequacy that led him down the path of infidelity. When Inder blackmailed him, the man was quite happy to pay him a chuck of the money his wife made. The business had soon lost its flavor, though. What was the fun with a willing victim, anyway?
Inder had, on one occasion, supplied important documents from one guy’s computer to his rival to enable his to get ahead in the company. For cash, of course. He could have, but never did sell inside information to a rival company. No industrial espionage for him. The penalties could be steep. He kept to the down low; individuals only and cash only. As anonymous as possible. Not that he needed the money.
In the meantime, his voyeurism continued, and the hours of pleasure he derived from watching his fellow humans do all kinds of illicit things was a reward all in itself. From the CEO of the company drinking from the bottle that he kept in his drawer to the CFO who was fucking his assistant in the bathroom attached to his suite under the guise of giving dictation, Inder had all kinds of information.
In an Information Age, Inder was king of the heap, at least in the small pond he found himself in.
He knew how to hack into laptops and view the user without their being aware, thanks to the news that Zuck was using duct tape to cover his camera. Inder had hopped on the dark web that very day and learned how to do that. Surprisingly easy once you knew how. But his experience with that wasn’t that great. It was surveillance, sure, but the view was limited to what the camera could see, and that usually wasn’t much. It was much more interesting to monitor keystrokes and watch what his target was doing.
He was therefore surprised when he heard Ramesh and Prakash talking in the staff break room where he had gone to fix a router, about some gori memsaab that was putting on “nanga shows” for the lowly, laborer-type guy. His interest piqued, he interjected himself into the conversation and found out very little more, and not enough to pinpoint the person in question.
So he went back to the surveillance tapes in his own time, and discovered certain interesting anomalies.
It turned out from the time stamps that the man, Ramesh was spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning a certain cabin on the sixth floor of the building. Not enough evidence of course, but enough to dig deeper.
After all, what could be keeping the man in that specific office for so long. He cleaned every other office in just a few minutes. There were no cameras in the individual offices, only in the halls, the conference rooms, and common areas like the staircase, the garage and so on, so Inder had to be patient and bide his time.
But Inder was a spider. If he had one quality above all others, it was patience. He would have to have a word with the cleaner, what was his name again? He settled his bulk in his gaming chair, and looked at his notepad, yeah, Ramesh.
He pulled Ramesh’s personnel records and scanned them. Twenty-year-old guy from some small village near Balli. Class eight pass, very minimal skills, hence the cleaner job. Bottom of the pile. No prior criminal record. A stupid looking picture on the front page confirmed it was the right guy.
He dug deeper. Using the Aadhar card information, he hacked into the security officer files. Aha! There it was. Ramesh babu wasn’t quite as naive as he let on. He had been involved with some politician in his village and had been caught carrying a country mage gun, a katta. There were bribes paid, the case was dropped for lack of evidence, some sort of story about the gun itself going missing. Some kind of bargain had been struck, and he was to leave the village, and only return for visits, not exceeding two weeks.
And no more contact with the politician. It was a mystery how the details of these records were still available. Inder had an idea that the deal was quite okay with Ramesh.
Inder had found a lever. And like Galileo, he was ready to move the earth.
Inder pulled the man’s personnel file and noted down the mobile number. A phone call? A text message? Probably neither. Her didn’t want to call, and the guy might not be able to read a text message in any language. So…a voice message would work best.
A thought struck him. Was the other guy, the guy in the chaprasi uniform with whom he had been discussing the woman, was he into the game too? He had, so far, not featured in any of the archival video that Inder had gone through, but there was a limit to what he could humanly surveil.
He shrugged. Went back to his video game and took a bite of his Cadbury bar that Amitabh Bachchan highly recommended. No nuts or raisins or any of that shit. Plain milk chocolate was the best.