retrospec | Interception

Entry tags:

Interception

Hitori Togusa
4/2 near Recolle Police Department
If you haven't met me before, this is Officer Hitori Togusa with the RPD. I have a request, for anyone comfortable sharing them. The photos that you're being sent? Could you keep an eye out for any kind of mirror or reflective surface anywhere in the shot? If you find them, could you send them along to me? We have software the might be able to find more in the shots than you'd be able to.
In addition, anyone who would like to make privacy complaints, I can only beg you to do so. We do not have a formal investigation into Retrospec at this time, but that may change if enough citizens come forwards with complaints. If you can, I'd even ask you to try to file them with people NOT on the application. I want to see if they'll notice anything wrong at that point.
Speaking of, there are a number of detectives, officers, and support personnel currently on the application, but rather than naming them outright, I'll leave it up to them to offer their services to the people of Recolle. I'm not sure who has a full case load right now and who doesn't.
Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rachel Hishimura I see. I must confess then that I'm part of the problem, given I thought about submitting one after this all started and then gave up after my mother's reaction disturbed me.
Rachel Hishimura So I'd like to extend my apologies.
Rachel Hishimura I will submit a formal complaint as soon as I'm able to after school, thank you.

Hitori Togusa There is zero need to apologize. Don't feel guilty. Please.
Hitori Togusa It takes a lot of courage to speak up about something that other people are literally telling you doesn't exist.
Hitori Togusa If you'd rather give your complaint to me, or you want somebody to be there when you talk to somebody, just let me know, okay?

Rachel Hishimura Very well. I suppose beating myself up would be kind of counter-intuitive at this point.
Rachel Hishimura I think I'd like to give it to you, then. I feel like I'd have more peace of mind that you'd take it seriously than someone not on Retrospec.
Rachel Hishimura When your own mother thinks something like this is a stress related break... it can make you guarded.

Hitori Togusa Then, of course.
Hitori Togusa We would have to talk down at the Department, to make it official, but feel free to come by after school, any time. I will make the time for this, no matter what else is going on.
Hitori Togusa I'm sorry the situation is such that people aren't listening.

Rachel Hishimura I could probably come by today if you're not too busy, then?

[ooc - We can transfer to action after this if you're up for it. If not, that's fine, whatever's cool.]

Hitori Togusa Certainly, I'll be waiting.

As promised, Togusa is waiting in the front area for when Rachel arrives. The Department doesn't seem busy, which feels odd, given how busy a few of the people on the Force are. He smiles and raises a hand in greeting when he spots her, then turns to have a quick, rushed word with the Desk Sergeant.

"Miss Hishimura," he gives a slight bow, "thank you for coming by. Follow me back this way."

He holds the door open for her, a place that usually needs to be opened by whoever is behind the desk. "I told him you were a part of an ongoing investigation, which, I suppose, is true."

Rachel is glad when he spots her; she's nervous going into the police department, and she wasn't sure how to ask about seeing him. So this takes a bit of a load off her mind.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mister Hitori," she said, stepping through the door. "I see. That makes sense."

She smiles nervously. "Thank you again for seeing me like this."

There's something funny about calling him 'Mister Hitori,' and he smiles briefly in amusement. "Not a problem at all." Togusa leads them to a private room, but it's clearly not an interrogation room, or anything too fancy. It just happens to have nobody else in it.

"Can I grab you anything? Soda, bottle water?" For his sake, he's holding on to a travel mug of coffee like his life depends on it. "Nobody else'll come through here."

Rachel smiles. She follows along quietly, looking a little bit more relaxed now that they're not surrounded by other cops. Not that she has issue with them so much as she feels a bit weird coming into a building like this. She imagined her mother would have questions if she saw her here.

"Uhm, some water would be nice," she said. "That'd be fine, thank you."

Togusa smiles and he briefly gets up to grab her a cold bottle of water. Despite the fact that they're in a police station, manners to your guest are still important.

He puts everything down, doesn't even have anything out to write with yet. He keeps a friendly eye contact with Rachel, but stays leaned back in his chair a little. "Let me lay put for you how this is going to work, first. I had to do a quick review of how and when I'm even allowed to take a statement from a minor, as well as the best ways to keep you protected. If you think this is satisfactory, then I'll go ahead and take your report. If you don't think this is good enough, please don't feel pressured into doing this." Togusa can't let himself forget the primary reason that he's doing this.

"What I can do is that when another report gets made, I can fold your report in with that so that you aren't the chief complaint. That way your voice still gets heard, but I get to keep your name out of it and don't have to contact your parent or guardian. Typically, when multiple people are lodging complaints against an entity like this, we would do that anyway. But protecting the identity of minors is something that the department takes very seriously, and something I personally take very seriously." It has kept on angering Togusa every time he notices that kids and teenagers are getting dragged into retrospec's games.

"What do you think? Do you have any questions?"

Rachel accepts the bottle of water, and sits there quietly, listening to his explanation. She takes sips of water, nodding her head at certain points, but generally focused on paying attention. The fact he was being honest with her and respectful to her status as a minor and her worries about this getting back to her mother were honestly very reassuring.

"I see," she said. "Well, that takes a load off my mind at least. I thought I was being a bit cowardly by wanting to do this discreetly, but if you all take such great lengths for people like me already, I don't have anything to worry about."

She smiled. "I think I can accept this. As for questions... Mm, no. I don't think I do. I'm a bit worried about someone from Retrospec watching and recording all this, but I guess that's a risk we all have to live with after Jim's last post, right?"

"While Jim made it clear that they are watching us, they have seemed pretty content to not actually try to stop us, you'll notice," Togusa holds up a finger. "We've been able to walk into their own headquarters whenever we want. We might have to play a game or something to get in, but we can do it."

"So, they can watch all they like? But they can't actually stop us from doing our jobs. We'll move this forwards, I promise." He smiles a little. Togusa's complete confidence in the justice system is clear. It's not a confidence out of naivete, he has certainly seen the system break down, or officers not do their jobs, but he always sees it as an encouragement for himself to do better, then.

"So, start from the beginning. Whatever you think someone who doesn't know what's going on would need to know."

"Sure, but a friend of mine and I were talking about how they might be biding their time," she said to his first comment. "It could be worth considering at least."

She smiles at his words, nodding. That kind of positivity is infectious, even for someone so anxious as her.

"Well, the application first downloaded to my phone in late January. It didn't actually start working until the first, when it displayed by name and personal photograph in my profile without my permission. When I attempted to delete it, it wouldn't be deleted. It had also installed itself on my home computer, where the same situation applied."

This was stuff Togusa either already knew or witnessed himself, but Rachel wanted to be thorough.

Although it's stuff he's been through, it's always helpful to get someone else's perspective on it. What are the details that Rachel thinks are most important? And what are things that Togusa, himself, might have glossed over because of his focus on directly illegal behavior of Retrospec's?

"Did you notice anything about it that would ever allow you to give permission? Also, did you ever have any control over what other users on the network you could interact with?" Circling back around to one of Togusa's sore spots with the app, the lack of content filtering of any sort.

"No, I didn't have the opportunity for either of those things," she said. "Since pretty much the start they've basically forced me to use the app on their terms, even causing my phone to malfunction in some cases."

Togusa's eyebrows raise, and now he is getting something out to write with. "Can you elaborate on that last part? Because I know what I've experienced, but sometimes it was hard to ask people what was happening over the network while their phones were malfunctioning." He gives a half-smile. It sounds obvious when he says it out loud like that, but Rachel did point out an area where he's got some missing information.

"My phone actually shocked me one time," Togusa frowns when he says that.

"I'm aware of errors like that," Rachel offers sympathetically. "But in my case, it did things like give me glitched notifications, play music when I don't want it to, and once it accessed my private messages on other networks and sent it to people in my contacts list."

Togusa actually looks a little relieved when Rachel doesn't immediately concur with the shocking. Okay, so she didn't get zapped, good. But he nods and writes down what she's explaining. "Right, the text messages. It shouldn't have been able to access that." And the telecommunications violations just keep racking up.

"Were you subject to the videos that went out a few months ago? Or did you only see that from other people?" That is a particular sore spot with Togusa because of what it did to a few of his friends, less so for what Retrospec revealed about himself.

"It wasn't text messages," she said. "I use another site as a journal. I made private posts about my life to it, things only I wanted to see. Retrospec somehow accessed them and sent them to people I knew."

She looked down. "I saw it happen to plenty of people. I saw how upset they ended up."

Oh geez, Togusa hadn't noticed that part. He is writing that down, definitely, because that might be grounds for a civil suit, instead of just a criminal one. Anything they can get is good.

"It's nobody's fault but Retrosepc's," Togusa pauses to reassure her. "No matter what things that people did or said, that ended up hurting people, it's Retrospec's fault for spreading it around. We've all got things that we wouldn't want other people to know."

Rachel nodded. "I know," she said. "Ironically, it kind of helped me sort some things out with my friends, but I'd still much rather I got to bring it up to them myself."

She paused, and thought for a moment. "I don't think I have anything else to put in my complaint, though."

Togusa's eyes flicker briefly to his paper. "I know what you mean. There are certainly things that we would rather have come out in our own time. Me and a few of us here at the station, that is."

But he quickly smiles again. "I can't thank you enough for this. Anyone being brave enough to be the first to come forward about Retrospec? Is incredible. And with luck, we'll be able to build much more of a case off of this."

Rachel's eyes widened.

"I'm... I'm the first person to come forward like this?" she asked. "Really? I'm surprised..."

Nevermind all that stuff about being incredible. She looks down, looking a little embarrassed. "I-I guess it doesn't matter. I'm happy to help."

Togusa nods encouragingly. "I think everybody else thought we were more on top of this than we are. We do still need your help, too, if we're going to get the full Department to move into action."

"But don't worry, I've already gotten messages from other people, so you're not alone in this." It should be easy to keep her name out of this.

"Is there anything else that I can help you with, then? I'm still working on the photos, myself."

Rachel nods. "Alright. That's reassuring... and I can't thank you enough for helping me stay anonymous."

She taps her chin. "Anything else? Well... I guess there's no way of knowing how your superiors will react, so I won't bother asking what comes next. I don't know how open you can be about an investigation, either..."

Hm. "So no, I can't think of anything."

Interception

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