First off: House of Cards season two spoiler alert. Don't read if you haven't at least begun the second season.
I was asked to keep quiet about my involvement in season two, and I've been sitting on everything for almost a year now. They are very secretive about their story and wanted to make sure no actual spoilers came out before the show. If people found out that I was involved, it could have easily been assumed that they had added a hacker sub-plot in the story. I think if I have to bite my tongue for one more minute, I will literally explode.
Beau Willimon, the driving force behind the American House of Cards series on Netflix, approached me last spring to ask if I would do some consulting for the show. He wanted to include a hacker character and some technical sub-plots to the show's second season. He found me after watching Brian Knappenberger's documentary We Are Legion, about the rise of Anonymous as a political force. Without getting into things too much, season two deals with the intersections of a lot of different kinds of power. You'll see a lot of money v political influence as you watch, but through Gavin Orsay's story you can also see the power struggles between journalism, hactivism, and law enforcement. It's a space I've spent a lot of time in, and I was glad to be able to add some verisimilitude to House of Cards depiction of that ground.
When I was first introduced to Gavin Orsay, a hacker activist forced to work for the FBI, he already had his wine collection and pet guinea pig, but he hadn't found his moral backbone. Now, I'm not going to go out there and say the final result is a good guy, but initially, he'd committed a cardinal sin of the hacking community: he had betrayed his friends who were fighting the good fight. I explained the significance of that act, how much people in the community would absolutely hate this guy if he went to screen as-is, and I have to say, I was very happy that they chose to make the hacker a more conflicted person fighting to protect some of his friends.
One of the things we discussed was how stressful it is for someone in the position that Gavin finds himself in. While I was never in that exact spot, I did have personal experience waiting for the Feds to finally take me to trial for my own technical indiscretions. You can't have a girlfriend when you know you're potentially days away from being locked up for a long time. You can enjoy your money (if your assets haven't been frozen yet), but you can't travel, can't make real connections, can't trust anyone. It's rough.
For someone like Gavin, though, who's already gotten involved with the political end of things, the stress is almost unbearable. In my life right now, I have to live knowing that my friends and allies are dropping like flies and there's almost nothing I can do about it. Aaron Swartz, someone I respect deeply who never did anything worthy of a lifetime as a felon, is dead. Andrew Auernheimer is in jail for sharing information AT&T admitted in court to publishing. And my friend, Barrett Brown, is facing 105 years for sharing a link to a hack someone else did.
Talking about that stress, the fights that we've lost and the ones we're still fighting, I think is where they got the idea to name drop Barrett Brown in the show. The show is dedicated to apolitical realism, but including him was one little piece of truth that helps to make the world more authentic.
Working with Jimmi Simpson, the actor who took on Gavin's role, was an absolute blast. I knew of him already from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and many other shows, and he reached out to me through Beau almost immediately to start getting an idea of Gavin's head space. Jimmi's not really technical himself (funny, considering one of his other recent roles was another hacker in White House Down), but he was happy to learn as much as I could show him. One of the best things working on House of Cards was fielding all kinds of technical questions from the cast and the crew. AJ Golden, one of their regular IT people, was just great and we spent a lot of time in between takes discussing random topics from graphics tools for use on the show to computer security.
Before visiting Baltimore for filming, I was asked for some input on what a hacker's computer setup would look like. It was eerie walking on set for the first time. They hadn't made an exact copy of my setup, of course, but they'd run with the idea in a big way. They even bought a copy of the print I have hanging over my monitors.
I was lucky that the show really wanted to get a sense of realism across. This meant that I didn't have to push hard to get software like TOR or Bitcoin into the show. One of the big problems with TV and movies when they address computers and hacking today is just how fake everything seems. I understand the need to wow the viewers with pretty graphics and amazing animations, but at the same time I think that is a disservice to everyone involved. There will probably never be a Gibson-like interface as in the movie Hackers. When you view Gavin's computer screens you can see TOR, IRC (Internet Relay Chat,) command lines and a lot more of what you would actually find in real life.
So, how do I feel about the final outcome? There are some concessions that had to be made for keeping things visually interesting, and some things where the story had to take precedence over what was most realistic from a tech standpoint, but nowhere near as many as I was fearing. The iPad scene, which I've seen hollered about on social media, is actually possible with a rooted tablet and some basic app building skills. While Agent Green might seem overly vicious, it's not unheard of for people in law enforcement to cross those lines.
As for the fates of the characters? Look at where Barrett is or Private Manning. People who speak out about the abuse of power usually end up paying for it, and the real villains get away with it.