I like to read mystery stories. I just pick out ones that look fairly interesting from Amazon and download them to my kindle. This weekend I was reading a novel called “Devine’s Providence.” by Stephen Reney. It’s the story about a former police detective who has opened a private investigation business in Providence, Rhode Island.
He becomes entangled in a case that involves the police, the city, and a developer. Murder and mayhem ensues. I was reading along when suddenly, I find that the key to the mystery is an app that allows folks to find and pay for their parking. (The developer had been buying up and closing parking facilities throughout the city, thus making the parking more expensive.) I should have seen that coming.
The story goes deeper than that. It seems that the whole idea is for the app to collect as much information on each person using it as possible (and if you wanted to park in Providence, you would have to use it) and then…
It will collect Phone numbers, credit cards, shopping history, banking info – it’ll all be on the app. It’s being made to track everyone’s location, browsing habits, it can even listen in on phone calls if they decide they want to.
Why would they want to?
Temple’s bundling up all of the stuff he gathers and selling it to the highest bidder…
Is any of this sounding vaguely familiar?
The investigation leads to a huge server farm that they shut down by… You have to read the book to find out. However the app wasn’t limited to Providence. The goal was to get it working in all major cities.
Is this a case of fiction being stranger than truth, or the other way around?
JVH
