He propped himself on his elbow, instinctively rubbed the slick, cold surface of the thing around his leg, then quickly wiped his palm on the embroidered coverlet. "The holy grail of the surveillance industry is facial recognition. Of course, they say it’s not. It’s already here, to a degree. Not operational. Larval. Can’t read you if you’re black, say, and might mistake you for me, but the hardware and software have potentials, awaiting later upgrade. Though what you need to understand, to understand forgetting, is that nobody’s actually eyeballing much of what a given camera sees. They’re digital, after all. Stored data sits there, stored. Not images, then, just ones and zeros. Something happens that requires official scrutiny, the ones and zeros are converted to images. But"—and he reached up to touch the edge of the bottom of the birdcage library—"say there’s been a gentlemen’s agreement."