Difference between revisions of "Mr. Robot"

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Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot Season 4 Cover Photo site Type Television Series Launch Date June 24th, 2015 - December 22nd, 2019 Status Finished Product Line Television Series Platform USA Network Website https://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot

Mr. Robot is an American drama thriller television series created by Sam Esmail for USA Network. The main character is Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer at AllSafe Security and a vigilante hacker who deals with both social anxiety disorder and clinical depression^[1]. The show is mainly filmed from his point of view, with his voice overs used to provide inside into his mental state, the opinions of the people he encounters, and general interpretation of the world. One day, Elliot is recruited by "Mr. Robot", a mysterious, middled-aged man to join a hacker organization named "fsociety". Their goal? To take down corporate America, including E Corp, the largest conglomerate in the world who they believe are running and ruining the world. Elliott is quickly presented with a moral dilemma: continue working for AllSafe and protect these large corporations or risk his life to change the world.

Main Overview

In each season, there are other plot lines that are important to the storyline of Mr. Robot but this focuses on the technical aspects of the show.

Season 1

When we first meet Elliot, we see that he has a hard time connecting with other people. In his free time, he hacks people to bring justice but also hacks his co-workers, friends, and therapist too in an attempt to find a way out of loneliness^[2]. For most of his adulthood, Elliot has had unreconciled vengeance against the company E Corp. This is because he believes they are responsible for a leak from a power plant in his hometown, resulting in his father getting cancer and eventually leading to his death. One night on the subway, Elliott meets this man who goes by Mr. Robot who takes him to an arcade called fsociety. There, he meets a few hackers who are planning to take down E Corp. "The single biggest incident of wealth redistribution in history", as they describe it. The main idea of the hack is to encrypt all of E Corp's financial records as well as destroy their backups. Once the encryption is complete, the encryption key will self-delete, making it impossible for anyone to recover the data, essentially removing all the debt owned to them. In collaboration with another hacker organization based in China called Dark Army, Elliot and his team eventually carry out the hack, throwing the world into chaos and gathering cheering crowds throughout the city. The hack is officially given the name "Five/Nine".

Season 2

Although it may seem like a huge positive that millions of dollars in debt have been cleared, another result of Five/Nine is that the world economy goes into disarray^[3]. Many E Corp customers are rushing to the banks in order to withdraw money, but due to the hack, E Corp is low on cash and isn't able to pay everyone in full. The FBI is now involved in order to find those who are responsible for the hack, leaving fsociety members no choice but to hide and cover their tracks. Suspicions are already increasing around Elliot's employer, AllSafe and their CEO, resulting in his murder. The Dark Army also begins to take matters into their own hands, killing three other fsociety members, leaving only two remaining. In an attempt to fight back, Elliot along with his sister try to hack the FBI and remove their connections to Five/Nine. Near the end of the season, we find that their battle with E Corp is far from over: Five/Nine has a stage two, said to be created by Elliot and the Dark Army^[4].

Season 3

Stage Two is revealed as a deadly terrorist attack designed to destroy a New York City facility housing the paper records that would allow E Corp to effectively undo the damage done during season one's Five/Nine hack^[5]. At this time, Elliot feels regret on the damage he has caused to the world with Five/Nine and intends to stop everything now. Early in the season, Elliot manages to get a job at E Corp and is able to convince lower executives and managers to digitize their paper records and secretly move the rest into their warehouse instead of the New York facility. He also manages to install a patch into the facilities' power supply system so that even if all the paper records end up there, the Dark Army won't be able run malware to blow up the building. A couple weeks later, Elliot finds out that he has been fired and that Stage Two is going to happen today. He desperately tries to re-enter his office in order to call it off but its promptly caught and escorted out of the building. In a last resort, Elliot calls in a bomb threat to the target building in order to evacuate everyone. Realizing that no paper records are in the New York facility, Elliot believes that he has stopped Stage Two. Shortly after, news breaks out that New York was not the target of Stage Two, but 71 E Corp facilities across the country to which Elliot redirected the paper records, leaving thousands dead.

Season 4

Elliot, now filled with sadness and rage, seeks revenge against the Dark Army. Through E Corp, Elliot finds out about the Deus Group, an investment group formed by the leader of the Dark Army, Whiterose, after the fall of the Soviet Union, manipulating the world to gain wealth and power. Elliot now formulates a plan with his sister Darlene in order to extract money from them so that they can no longer operate. To start, Elliot first hacks and blackmails Freddy, a lawyer that has worked with the Dark Army and finds out about Cyprus National Bank, where the Deus Group have their offshore accounts. In order to gain access to the bank, Elliot must hack an employee. After finding the employee at a bar and taking her home, he manages to retrieve the passcode needed. The next day, Elliot and Darlene head to Virtual Reality, the company that keeps the servers for Cyprus. Both work together to install a firmware hack disabling security cameras, giving them time to get what they need. Due to a planned emergency by Elliot, the Deus Group was required to meet on Christmas Day. This is where Darlene releases an fsociety video exposing the group and their location and at the same time, stealing their data as they attempt to call their drivers to pick them up. Finally, Elliot hacks a nearby cell tower for Whiterose's data and the Deus Group is robbed^[6].

Ethical Concerns

Hacking

Elliot hacks most of his friends and co-workers sitting at his desk at home

Through out the show, we see plenty of examples of hacking ranging from accessing someone's social media profile to even committing acts of terrorism. There are ethical concerns on whether Elliot should be severely punished for the hacks he has committed. In season one, Elliot hacks all of his co-workers and friends in order to try to get to know them better. He knows all about their relationships, where they have been, and even how much debt they owe. Elliot has also hacked to intervene with the lives of others. He hacked his therapist's boyfriend and found out that he is still married. Soon after, Elliot tracked down the boyfriend and threaten to reveal the truth to his family unless he broke off his current relationship. From our perspective, it's easy to say that the boyfriend deserved it for his actions but later on, it showed that his therapist was completely devastated to learn what happened. In both cases, it a clear invasion of privacy and a crime. In the state of New York, it is illegal to access anyone's computer or information online without their permission or authority. Such actions are categorized as a misdemeanor and can be punishable by up to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine^[7]. Furthermore, if Elliot were to be charged with fraudulent intent, which he has done in both season two and three, the hacking charges can be bumped up to a felony and is punishable for five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Playing God

The first three seasons of the show all revolve around one central thing: the Five/Nine Hack. From the beginning, Elliot's goal was to take down E Corp for their involvement in a power plant leak that killed his father. He also includes that fact that he wants to change the world by redistributing wealth and benefit the average working person. The ethical problem here is that Elliot is essentially trying to play god by deciding what corporations or groups of people should go down based on his own judgement and experiences. He gave no consideration on how this hack would affect everyone around him. In reality, it should be the job for the authorities, rather than a cybersecurity engineer. As a result of Five/Nine, the U.S. economy crashed for E Corp's financial customers, many who were unable to access their money due to loss of banking records. In addition, many private business had to close down which lead to large, violent protests across the nation. In the end, E Corp was denied bail by the U.S. government and at the brink of collapse, had to appeal to China for bailout money ^[8]. In season four, Elliot once again decides to take matters into his own hands by challenging the Deus Group head on, instead of contacting higher ups for assistance. His actions alone just to take down Whiterose led to many lives ruined and even dead.

References

1. ↑ “Mr. Robot.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot.
2. ↑ “List of Mr. Robot Episodes.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Jan. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mr._Robot_episodes#cite_note-episode_titles-5.
3. ↑ “Mr. Robot Trailer: 'This Is What Revolution Looks Like': Blog.” USA Network, 15 Dec. 2017, www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot/blog/mr-robot-trailer-this-is-what-revolution-looks-like.
4. ↑ Brandom, Russell. “The Mr. Robot Hack Report: Stage Two Revealed.” The Verge, The Verge, 16 Nov. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16665384/mr-robot-hack-report-s3e6-kill-process.
5. ↑ Wigler, Josh. “'Mr. Robot': Cracking the Code on the Show's Most Destructive Moment.” The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Feb. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mr-robot-stage-2-attack-explained-1058928.
6. ↑ Grauer, Yael. “Hackers Dissect 'Mr. Robot' Season 4 Episode 9: 'Conflict'.” Vice, 2 Dec. 2019, www.vice.com/en_us/article/gyz489/hackers-dissect-mr-robot-season-4-episode-9-conflict.
7. ↑ Evan. “Computer Crimes.” Crotty Saland PC, www.new-york-lawyers.org/computer-crimes.html.
8. ↑ “Five/Nine Hack.” Mr. Robot Wiki, mrrobot.fandom.com/wiki/Five/Nine_Hack