Chapter 253: Inescapable

Chapter 253: Inescapable

Chapter 253: Inescapable
The president’s office is on the third floor of NGN Company.

An Rusong placed a cup of coffee in front of Jenny and said, "'Guilford Cali Institute'? Is this a non-profit research organization? Why have I never heard of the name of this organization?"

Walking around the desk and to his chair, An Rushong bent down and sat down, smiling and saying, "I don't know why, but every time I hear names of organizations like 'society', 'research institute', 'relationship association', etc., I feel very uncomfortable. Because I always feel that these organizations are very troublesome. Behind them, they either hide this thing or that thing, and most of them do not belong to the Republic of Korea."

He said this without any concealment, he was almost pointing at the other person's nose and saying that she was a spy or an agent or something like that.

Across the desk, Jenny picked up the coffee that An Rusong had just placed in front of her, brought it to her nose and sniffed it, then took a sip, as if to taste it. Probably because she felt it tasted good, she took another sip, then put down the coffee and said with a smile, "Your intuition is very accurate. Our 'Guilford Cali Society' does not belong to South Korea, and we do not serve the South Korean government or private institutions."

After a pause, she continued, "However, you don't have to worry about getting into trouble by having contact with us, because we have a cooperative relationship with the National Intelligence Service."

"Oh?" An Rushong raised his eyebrows, and at the same time reached out to open a drawer beside him, took out a pack of cigarettes from it, and shook it at the woman opposite.

"Thank you," Jenny nodded and thanked him, then continued, "'Guilford Cali Society' is our external name. Our real name is 'Open Source Intelligence Office', or 'OSIO' for short."

An Rusong handed her a cigarette and lit it for her before asking, "Who do you serve?"

Jenny took a puff of cigarette, looked at him in the swirling smoke, and smiled: "No such agency."

An Rusong's lips twitched. His English was pretty good, so he could understand what the other party said. Her words translated into "there is no such organization." If you simply listen to her words, she seems to be saying that they do not serve any organization, but in fact, her words cannot be taken literally, but the first letters of the three words, that is, "NSA."

In other words, they serve the National Security Agency of the United States. To go further, they are an agency stationed in Seoul by the National Security Agency to conduct intelligence work. They do not serve the government departments and private institutions of the Republic of Korea, but the US government in Washington.

Well, they don’t even serve the US government, but simply the US Department of Defense, which means the US military.

Raising his hand and gently scratching his forehead, An Rushong clicked his tongue and said, "You know, Miss Jenny, I'm a little regretful that I saved you."

Jenny could certainly understand what he meant. The woman smiled silently and said, "Mr. An, you have to understand one thing. The reason why 'OSIO' came to you today has nothing to do with whether you saved me in the past. It is only related to the NGN software you developed. If you had not saved me in the past, 'OSIO' would still find you, but the person who came to meet you would not be me."

After saying that, she took out a folded document from a handbag she was carrying and gently placed it on the desk in front of her. While flipping through the contents, she said, "Mr. An, you should know the working principles of the NSA. Any communication data that we believe is related to the national security of the United States should be included in our monitoring and wiretapping list."

"NGN software currently has more than 1.2 million registered users," she turned to a page of the document, looking at the content and smiling, "and this data is still growing rapidly. The most important thing is that the coverage of NGN software is mainly concentrated in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and is gradually penetrating into the entire Asian region. This region has always been a slow-growing area for ICQ and MSN. In our monitoring map, this is an almost blank area."

An Rusong lit up his cigarette, but was thinking about what the other party said. Undoubtedly, Jenny's words hinted at two messages: First, the NSA did not restrain itself because of the scandal of violating citizens' privacy that was exposed before. On the contrary, they are intensifying the expansion of their monitoring scope.

Second, ICQ and MSN, two instant messaging giants, have apparently reached cooperation with the NSA. They should have opened their own databases to the NSA, allowing the NSA to monitor the chat records of users of the two software. Now, with the rapid development of NGN, especially the surge in the number of registered users, the NSA has set its sights on NGN again. For An Rusong, this was actually foreseen a long time ago.

In An Rushong's opinion, a company like NGN cannot be a simple Internet company, because with the development of software and the influx of a large number of users, the database that supports the normal operation of the software has become a key resource integrating multiple attributes.

For a company committed to developing big data, it is a sample library for analyzing big data, while for an intelligence agency, it is a standard intelligence information library.

In An Rusong's previous life, what fate did the creator of the "Paper Plane" software encounter? That's right, in order to protect the so-called "encryption" property of the software, he could not stay with the Russians and ran to France, which thought it was free, but he still couldn't escape the fate of being caught. Although he finally escaped the fate of being sentenced by paying a large sum of "ransom", An Rusong believed that as long as he wanted to maintain the "encryption" property of the "Paper Plane" software and not be supervised and controlled by any country, things like France would find him sooner or later.

Of course, when An Rushong was reborn into this world, Pavel Durov, the founder of "Paper Plane", had just been released on bail. An Rushong didn't know that shortly after his rebirth, less than half a month to be exact, Pavel Durov, who once declared that "Paper Plane" would remain neutral and would never cooperate with any country, officially began cooperation with the French government and handed over some users' information to the French police.

In essence, NGN software and "paper airplanes" are the same thing. The main difference between the two is that NGN software does not use overly complex encryption methods. However, the NGN software database still stores a lot of information related to user privacy. Among them, there is a lot of information that is of great interest to intelligence agencies in certain countries.

To be honest, it's just that the National Intelligence Service of South Korea is rather incompetent, and the current political situation in South Korea is quite tense, so those people in the National Intelligence Service are distracted. Otherwise, someone would have found An Rusong's door long ago.

So the question is, since he had already foreseen this day, how could An Rushong, as the operator of an instant messaging software, avoid a fate similar to that of Pavel Durov?

The answer is simple: find an intelligence agency that is strong enough and has a strong backbone and make it a partner of NGN. NGN can open the user information in the database to this partner, and the partner needs to provide corresponding protection for NGN.

Yes, An Rushong needs to find such a collaborator. If he were in the United States or in the country of his previous life, he would not need to make a choice, because his country’s intelligence agency is the best choice.

But in the so-called "great" Republic of Korea, the National Intelligence Service cannot give him enough protection. Although the building in Naegok-dong, Seocho-gu is not a decoration, it is not much better than a decoration. In the final analysis, what is the difference between the National Intelligence Service and a dog raised by Americans? In this case, instead of cooperating with a dog raised by Americans, why not cooperate directly with Americans?
It is now 2007 and the 08 Olympics have not yet been held. I guess no one would object to the fact that the United States is now the world's largest country. Therefore, for An Rusong and NGN, the safest option is to find Americans to cooperate with them.

From this perspective, Jenny, who came to An Rushong, should be considered to have done An Rushong a favor.

"OK, I understand what you mean," An Rusong nodded and continued, "Now I want to know, what do you need me to do? Or, what do you need NGN to do?"

After saying this, An Rusong immediately added, "Don't tell me you are going to add any background programs to the NGN software. I will never accept such a request, and NGN's investors will not accept it either. Of course, Korean law, and even American law, will not allow it either."

Providing data in the database to the NSA is one thing, but adding the background program provided by the other party to the NGN software is another matter. The latter is not only illegal, but once exposed, it may directly kill the NGN software. An Rusong will not take such a risk.

In fact, if the fact that NGN chooses to cooperate with NSA and provide database data to the other party is exposed by the media, it will also have a certain impact on the development of NGN software. However, such impact will not be too great. After all, NGN is not the only software that does this.

(End of this chapter)