The Code is an Australian drama series taking
over the Saturday evening BBC Four slot usually reserved for a drama in another
language than English. We are now midway through the second series of six
programmes which features a computer technocrat genius on the autism spectrum,
Jesse and his journalist brother Ned. Both series cover the same basic issues
of government complicity and duplicity, turning the blind eye and cover up, as
officials engage in crossing the line activities to protect the interests of
International corporations who are not opposed to using, often at arm’s length,
killing, violence, intimidation, blackmail, corruption and cover up to protect
and further their commercial interests.
I
am including the Code at this point because the first three episodes of the
four shown to-date of the second series involves a dark net service in which
children are kidnapped and trafficked for sex. The computer code break skills
of Jesse is demanded by the Australian government when two of three male Australian
citizens are murdered in West Papua, New Guinea, controlled it is alleged by
the Indonesian Government through the tactics of a police state, opposing
demands by the indigenous people for independence and freedom from exploitation
by an international mining consortium with Australian, British and USA
financial interests and where the ability of outsiders, particularly
journalists to visit is strictly controlled.
This
aspect of the fictional drama series is accurate as in the early 1960’s the
Netherlands gave up its control of New Guinea with West Papua absorbed by the
Indonesian Government during a period when Indonesia conflicted with its enforced
involvement in the proposed new Malaysia. The conflict resulted in the defeat
of the left of centre political movement and decades of right wing military dictatorship
during which time the population has more than doubled to over 200 million with
nearly 60% on the largest of its 13000 islands, Java, and to becoming one of
the more prosperous world economies (16th). There is no political
freedom of expression allowed in West Papua with anyone opposing exterminated and
the rest of the world tolerating because of its capitalist interests, including
arms sales.
The
Australian government coerces the involvement of brothers with the threat of
agreeing to extradition to the United States because of the hacking involved in the first series but then gain the willing
participation of Jesse when he learns that the survivor of the three men
attacked by the militia is the fugitive founder (Roth) of a dark net site part
of which includes the children kidnapped on demand and trafficked for sexual purposes
and that a male adolescent has been kidnapped and was available for the right
price. Jesse contacts the service with help of the government cybercrime chief
and team and offers to provide Roth with the encryption key to the Government’s
internal network which enable Roth to find out the names of the undercover
intelligence people after him. There is agreement to meet in the far north of
Queensland and Jesse is accompanied by his
girlfriend Hani Parende, a student computer expert who in the first series is
blackmailed by the national cyber unit to befriending Jesse to protect her father
(whose visa is under threat and where a return to his homeland would mean torture
and death) and where he was and remains opposed to her friendship with Jesse
and a proposed marriage.
The
couple are taken by Roth in his boat to his base hideout in the jungle of West Papua
where they meet up with Roth’s indigenous wife and daughter and whose brother
in law is an activist in the freedom movement. The purpose of Jesse’s visit is
to plant a programme which opens the back door which all computers have and
which enables direct control of content with permission, which I had once
agreed and witnessed, and which can also enable authorised government
operatives to use, even when devices are turned off, to turn on and monitor
content.
The
two brothers, the elder Ned, are first contacted at the funeral of their mother
and where the funeral also brings contact with their estranged father who previously
had abandoned his wife and children. A feature of contemporary TV and film series
is the dysfunctional family as the norm of family life, and which together with
the increasing worldwide mobility, as much for work as leisure, means that the several
generation of care and support family networks used to provide have broken or are
breaking down further at the very time public service provision is being shrunk
and the availability of other forms of community support is very much a lottery
of geography and who you know.
Ned
whose required support role for Jesse throughout the first series has been
replaced by Hani, is nevertheless concerned about the disappearance of his
brother who fails to return from the North Queensland meeting and starts his
own investigation with the help of an estranged former girlfriend who works within
the government structure. Obtaining the names of the two murdered men he notes
the connection with a photographer and activist who is in fact working undercover
to expose the role of external governments, the Indonesian government and the
Mining Company. She lets Ned know that
Jesse is on the island and safe. Although this may have been true at the time,
Roth, the undercover journalist, Jesse and Hani go into town to view the body
in the morgue of a colleague who has been killed and framed for the murder of
the two Australian citizens thus officially closing that aspect of the case. As
they leave they are attacked by gunmen on a motor cycle but escape unharmed.
However,
Jesse is psychologically affected and it is Roth who gets him back to his
encampment safely. Therefore, Jesse discloses the purpose of his mission and
Roth appears to be horrified that his services are being used for the paedophile
network and offers to help by returning to Queensland where an associate looks
after a mirror/branch server on Roth’s family farm. As they are about to arrive
the boat is intercepted by the Australian border patrol and they jump overboard
to go in search of the missing kid. The second episode ends.
The
third episode begins as the two survive the swim ashore, recover and make their
way to meet up with Roth’s associate who has effectively kidnapped the boy through
grooming using a non-existent female friendship and has taken him to a property
where the buyer is arriving to rape and murder and which appears to have been
the fate of other children in the past. When Roth meets up with his partner he
rages about his server being used for paedophilia, demands to know the location
of the boy and then brutally murders the man in front of Jesse who runs off in
horror and panic but can return to Canberra, the seat of government and assist
in locating the premises and rescuing the boy who is reunited with his parents,
and the buyer having been identified is arrested on arrival at the airport. At this point, everyone should be congratulating
themselves over a job well done. Certainly, the Foreign Minister is reassured
that a politically difficult situation has been sorted.
Then
three actions by the government change everything. The visa of Hani’s father is
revoked and he is taken into custody. Jesse and Ned are told that the
extradition to the USA is back on the agenda. The leader of the West Papua freedom
movement and his family are arrested and deported from the island and the only chink
in what appears to be a cover up process by the government is that Ned with
visual information provided by the undercover friend on the island (Meg Flynn)
is able with the help of his former girlfriend to gate crash a meeting and make
direct contact with the female Foreign Minister.
Ned Jesse and Meg
flee Australia and go to West Papua by plane where they head for the Roth
compound. Forces who do not want the Foreign Minister making further inquiries
arrange for her daughter to be given a university scholarship when all the
Minister has done was to plead with the university to be flexible when the girl
misses the registration date. At a subsequent meeting between the Minister and the
cyber unit head, knowledge of the scholarship is mentioned and we interpret this
as one other measure to stop investigation to what is going on. Back at the compound Roth is surprised by
their arrival but accepts the reasons and after getting Jesse stoned gets Jesse
to break the Code for a USA security programme which enables them to affect the
digital system including cameras operating in the prison where his brother in
law is being held. Roth heads off to town to rescue the brother in law whose
wife is already there with Ned and his daughter protesting at the imprisonment. A motor cyclist then arrives shooting indiscriminately
at protestors and Ned witnesses the shooting of Roth’s daughter as the episode
ends. I will complete the review after the conclusion and say more about the
first series and more about politics and big business in land of Rupert Murdoch
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