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Chapter 13 continues from yesterday:
Muriel handed Andy a cup of tea. “How do you think they found you?” she asked him.
He shrugged and finished chewing the bite of Tiffin he’d just taken. “Thanks,” he said eventually. “I don’t know. All I can think is, they must have seen my name on an animal rights group mailing list somewhere, found out I was in IT and thought I was a likely suspect.”
“You’re sure they didn’t track your IP address from the messages you sent?”
“Yes. No, I’m sure there was no way they could have tracked me through that. It’s really safe. Quite a lot of whistle blowers have used it and their identities have remained anonymous.”
Muriel offered Sammy a carrot stick. “Have you noticed that when people say I’m sure, it actually means they’re not sure?”
Andy was chewing again so he just shrugged.
“I mean, if I couldn’t find my keys,” she explained, “I might say, I’m sure I left them in the kitchen, but if I was definite I’d left them in the kitchen I would just say I left them in the kitchen!”
Andy swallowed and nodded. “Oh yeah, I see what you mean. But I actually am sure. I know they couldn’t have found my IP address.”
“They know it now though don’t they?”
“Not necessarily,” Andy told her with a smile. “I looked it up. Apparently it can be done, of course it can, but the police have to apply for a warrant before they can ask the Internet Service Providers what the IP address would be for a particular street address.”
“I’m confused.”
“Yeah, okay, I’m not explaining it very well, but basically the ISPs – Internet Service Providers – keep logs that link physical street addresses to the IP addresses assigned to the routers at that location. If the police have a warrant, they can get the ISPs to reveal which IP addresses were active at that specific address during a specific timeframe.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
“No,” Andy smiled. “They’ve given my laptops back so they obviously didn’t find anything incriminating on them, which means they wouldn’t be able to get a warrant. So they wouldn’t be able to find out whether I was active online at that time. And anyway, even if they could, that doesn’t tell them exactly what I was doing on the internet at that time.”
“Right,” Muriel nodded and took a bite of her chocolate-covered marmalade cake.
“I mean, if they had anything on me, they would have charged me by now wouldn’t they?”
“I guess. But maybe they’re trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Maybe they’re watching you to see what you do next!” She inhaled sharply, “maybe they’ve bugged your computers!”
Andy laughed. “No, they’d need a warrant for that too and they wouldn’t be able to get one because they’ve got no evidence against me. They can’t trace those encrypted messages back to me, so I’m golden. And they said on the news that there won’t be any animal research for ‘Bloodless‘ – they’ve admitted it’s not a disease. So it’s job done! Nothing more to worry about.” Sammy barked. “Of course you can have another carrot stick.”
Muriel licked the marmalade from her fingers and opened the games cupboard. “Scrabble, Mastermind, Monopoly or cards?” she asked.
“Scrabble!” said Andy decisively, “With Vel not here, there’ll be more tiles for me and I’ll finally be able to beat you!”
“Not gonna happen!”
***
Come back tomorrow as we rejoin Velma at the Barn Dance and chapter 13 continues, unless you’d rather read it now 😀
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