Ok, so with no job and no cable, I’ve been watching a lot (a lot!) of broadcast network prime-time TV, which means choosing between reality shows or crime dramas – I didn’t think it was that hard to choose.
So here is my crime drama idea:
A series of brutal murders, with the press having far too much information about the crimes scene forensics. It turns out the crime scenes are being submitted to crime scene analysis by the criminal, and then that information posted to the internet, and encouraging pattern replication. The open source crime. The killer is sharing all of their techniques, all of their trade craft, all of their methodology with a undernet composed of capable individuals enticed by the prospect of getting away with murder by sharing methodology and techniques to commit many different murders that all look alike. A sort of ‘community of murder’ that leverages the most salient social and technological movements to undermine the rule of law, forensic science, and the power of the sovereign.
…A nude body, soaked in bleach, wrapped in plastic found in the gutter. Just like the rest. Nothing in common with the others, except the forensics and the methodology. Same brand of plastic – the most common brand sold by Home Depot – same brand of bleach – the most common brand sold by Walmart – the same cause of death – asphyxiation caused by an overdose of anti-oxidants delivered orally – created from the same processed vitamins, once again, the most popular brand from a high volume outlet – and the same brutal beating of the body pre- and postmortem. Bodies are being found nation wide, and they just keep coming.
Eventually the investigation uncovers that there is a web site that tells how to murder a complete stranger and get away with it – and uses exactly the same methodology as these murders. The site is clearly written with an intimate understanding of forensic investigation, as well as a significant understanding of social philosophy and ability to craft compelling psychological justification that murder isn’t really all that bad. The website is mirrored all over the world, uses a significant amount of real but very difficult to break encryption, anonymizers, and p2p technology. There are servers in China and Iran – notorious Internet censors, as well as in AOL managed data centers and running inside BitTorrent, Kazaa, Freenet, and Tor networks. The ownership of the real property anchors of this virtual entity cannot be used as a vector to investigation. Some of the accounts are legitimate accounts, although registered to false persons, while some are compromised systems running rogue web servers. There are localized versions, and similar murders in Japan, Europe, China, and Russia. There are people being caught for poorly executed murders, but the number of people who are believing that they can get away with murder is on the rise, and the media is hyping it up, and it seems to be making it harder and harder to contain the spread of the information.
Then a vulnerability in Internet Explorer and Outlook unleashes a mobile worm that delivers the packet of information to every compromised system – a localized version in the language of the user, distributed from a finely implemented encrypted p2p network Trojan that also contains trade secrets from every member of the Fortune 500 as well as every movie and every record ever released.
One way for it to end would be for the government to triumph over the insurrection, discovering and destroying the person who dreamt it all up but some how losing some part of its virtue in the process, a la ‘Seven’.
The other way is to have the social contract break down and for the decent into Hobbs’ ‘nasty and brutish’ society to be glimpsed in a tragic, hero dies ending, a la Shakespeare’s tragedies. It can also be told as an antihero story, where the narrative focuses on the initiator of the methodology, or on an implementer, a la The Talented Mr. Ripley or The Shawshank Redemption.
This could be a series – a sort of Twin Peaks meets The X-Files – or it could be a motion picture – think Se7en, Fight Club, The Usual Suspects. Those are the conventional approaches. The unconventional approaches are better. It could be a horizontal story cutting through the programming of a network. If you are CBS, you have the CSI’s, NCIS, Numb3rs, Without a Trace, Cold Case, and JAG. If you are NBC you have the Law and Orders, Crossing Jordan, Medium, Las Vegas, and Medical Investigations. Even more adventurous, would be to have a motion picture series – common setting and the thread of the crime, with its relationship between methodology and society – that can be used for a number of pictures perhaps sharing some characters.
This is a fight against a bad guy that no one can see, no one can name, no one can touch. The bad guy is that part of humanity that everyone has. It is what Augustine calls the sin for the sake of sin itself. It is the ultimate expression of individualism and anti-socialism.
“Would you commit murder if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?”