The Broken Window

Over the next hour, the team watched as Cooper narrowed the list of the top data miners in the country-about a half dozen. He downloaded hundreds of pages of information from their sites and other details. Comparing the various data miners’ client lists with the products used as evidence in the 522 case, it appeared that SSD was the most likely single source of all the information and was, in fact, the only one based in or near New York.

“If you want,” Cooper said, “I can download their sales brochure.”

“Oh, we want, Mel. Let’s see it.”

Sachs sat next to Rhyme and they looked over the screen as the SSD Web site appeared, topped by the company’s logo: a watchtower with a window, from which radiated lines of illumination.

“Knowledge is Power”…The most valuable commodity in the 21^st Century is information, and SSD is the number-one leader in using knowledge to handcraft your strategies, to redefine your goals and to help you structure solutions to meet the myriad challenges you’ll be facing in today’s world. With more than 4,000 clients in the U.S. and abroad, SSD sets the industry standard as the pre-eminent Knowledge Service Provider on earth.

THE DATABASE

innerCircle^® is the largest private database in the world, with key information on 280 million Americans and 130 million citizens of other countries. innerCircle^® resides on our proprietary Massively Parallel Computer Array Network (MPCAN^®), the most powerful commercial computer system ever assembled.

innerCircle^® presently holds more than 500 petabytes of information-that equals trillions of pages of data-and we anticipate that soon the system will grow to an exabyte of data, an amount so vast that it would take only five exabytes to store the transcript of every word spoken by every human being in history!

We have troves of personal and public information: telephone numbers, addresses, vehicle registration, licensing information, buying histories and preferences, travel profiles, government records and vital statistics, credit and income histories and much, much more. We get these data into your hands at the speed of light, in a form that’s easily accessible and instantly usable, uniquely tailored to your specific needs.

innerCircle^® grows at the rate of hundreds of thousands of entries a day.

THE TOOLS

· Watchtower DBM^®, the most comprehensive database management system in the world. Your partner in strategic planning, Watchtower^® helps you target your goals, extracts the most meaningful data from innerCircle^® and delivers a winning strategy directly to your desk, 24/7, via our lightning-fast and super-secure servers. Watchtower^® meets and exceeds the standards that SQL set years ago.

· Xpectation^® predictive behavior software, based on the latest artificial intelligence and modeling technology. Manufacturers, service providers, wholesalers and retailers…want to know where your market is going and what your customers will want in the future? Then this is the product for you. And, law enforcers, take note: With Xpectation^® you can predict where and when crimes will occur, and most important, who is likely to commit them.

· FORT^® (Finding Obscure Relationships Tool), a unique and revolutionary product which analyzes millions of seemingly unrelated facts to determine connections human beings couldn’t possibly discover on their own. Whether you’re a commercial company wishing to know more about the marketplace (or about your competitors) or a law enforcement organization faced with a difficult criminal case, FORT^® will give you the edge!

· ConsumerChoice^® monitoring software and equipment allows you to determine consumers’ accurate responses to advertising, marketing programs and new or proposed products. Forget subjective focus group opinions. Now, through biometric monitoring, you can gather and analyze individuals’ true feelings about your potential plans-often without their awareness that they’re being observed!

· Hub Overvue^® information consolidation software. This easy-to-use product allows you to control every database within your organization-and, in appropriate circumstances, within other companies’ operations as well.

· SafeGard^®, security and identity verification software and services. Whether your concerns are terrorist threats, corporate kidnapping, industrial espionage or employee or customer theft, SafeGard^® assures that your facilities will remain secure, letting you concentrate on your core business. This division includes the world’s leading background verification, security and substance-screening companies, used by corporate and government clients throughout the world. The SafeGard^® Division of SSD is also home to the industry leader in biometric hardware and software, Bio-Chek^®.