Sneakers: Did You See It, Whistler? Mystery Cache
AggieMD: Cache is now retired. Thanks to all those who solved it and found it.
Sneakers: Did You See It, Whistler?
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
The coordinates listed above are not the real coordinates! To find
the real coordinates, you will need to decode the message below.
The cache is small enough for a few trade items.
This is #20 in a series honoring and celebrating movies, both good
and bad.
Martin Brice (Robert Redford), a hacker, has kept to his assumed
name of Martin Bishop after accidentally avoiding capture and
imprisonment for his activities in 1969, a fate that had fallen on
his friend Cosmo (Ben Kingsley), who is thought to have later died
in prison. In the present, Martin runs a tiger team of "security
specialists" that use unorthodox methods of testing physical and
electronic security for companies in San Francisco. The team
includes Donald Crease (Sidney Poitier), a former CIA agent and a
high-strung family man; "Mother" (Dan Aykroyd), a conspiracy
theorist with unsurpassed technical skills and dexterity; Carl
Arbogast (River Phoenix), a young genius; and Erwin 'Whistler'
Emory (David Strathairn), a blind man with superb hearing. One day,
Martin is approached by two National Security Agency agents, Dick
Gordon and Buddy Wallace (Timothy Busfield, Eddie Jones), who
reveal they are aware of Martin's former life. In exchange for not
incarcerating Martin, they ask Martin to recover a "black box"
decoder device that mathematician Gunter Janek (Donal Logue) has
been developing for the Russian government under the guise of a
company called "Setec Astronomy". Martin's team, along with the
help of his former girlfriend, Liz (Mary McDonnell), is successful
in retrieving the box, disguised as an answering machine.
As the team celebrates, they become curious to the box's function
and begin to probe it. They learn that the box contains a processor
running an algorithm that can shortcut the massive computational
requirements to break certain types of encryption. This is hinted
by the anagram of "Setec Astronomy", "Too many secrets". Martin
orders a lockdown until they can return the device to the NSA the
next day. When Martin and Donald meet the agents to exchange the
device, Donald discovers that Janek was murdered, and warns Martin
off after he makes the exchange. The team soon learns that Gordon
and Wallace were never NSA agents, and that Janek himself was
working on the box for the NSA. Martin turns to a friend from the
Russian consul, Gregor, who is able to identify Gordon and Wallace
as rogue agents. Before Gregor can reveal more, the two are caught
by fake FBI agents, who murder Gregor and frame Martin for it, and
then kidnap Martin.
Martin awakes in an unknown location to find his aged friend Cosmo.
Cosmo, bitter over being abandoned by Martin, reveals that he
developed ties with an organized crime family while incarcerated,
using his hacking skills for their benefit, and has been able to
escape prison, and is now planning to use the black box to
destabilize the world's economy. Cosmo offers Martin the chance to
work with him towards this end, but Martin refuses. Cosmo, in turn,
uses the black box to connect Martin's past with his present
identity in police records, and then has his men take Martin back
to the city. Martin reunites with his crew and has them relocate to
Liz' apartment. There, they call the NSA using complex call routing
to prevent tracing and offer to recover the box in exchange for
amnesty, however they become suspicious, hang up and decide that
they'll need to recapture the box in order to have any leverage to
avoid jail. With Whistler's help, Martin is able to recreate the
route during his kidnapping to a toy company, a front for Cosmo.
The team identifies Cosmo's office, its security features, and the
route to enter it, through the neighboring office of Werner Brandes
(Stephen Tobolowsky). To obtain the necessary vocal passkeys, the
team convinces Liz to go on a rigged computer date with
Brandes.
Though most of the plan proceeds without a hitch, Brandes becomes
suspect of Liz' actions, and brings her to Cosmo, who seems ready
to ignore Brandes' story. However, when Liz mentions the computer
date, Cosmo believes Martin is at work, and locks down the
facility, trapping the team, and then discovers the box missing.
Cosmo tracks Martin to the building's rooftop where the rest of the
team is escaping, and demands the box at gunpoint. Martin
reluctantly hands over the box, and departs with the rest of the
team, but they are long gone before Cosmo discovers that Martin has
given him simply the outer shell of the box. When Martin and his
team return to their offices the next day, they are surrounded by
NSA agents, who demand the box. Before Martin hands it over, he ask
that his record be cleared, which the agents agree to. Martin
prompts the other team members to realize that the NSA will yield
to any request to get the box, and they each request own personal
desires, the NSA agent unable to refuse. The box is handed over,
but after the agents leave, Martin reveals he took out the key
processor from the device that contains the critical algorithm,
rendering it useless.
The last scene is a television news report: the reporter announces
that the Republican National Committee has misplaced its funds and
entered bankruptcy, while, simultaneously, Amnesty International,
Greenpeace, and The United Negro College Fund are seeing record
earnings, "due mostly to large, anonymous donations."
The film was released in 1992 and directed by Phil Alden
Robinson.
Now is your chance to find Janek's little black box. Unfortunately,
the only person who knows the exact location is Whistler. Donald
and Mother received a strange message a few minutes ago and were
hoping you could decode it. Perhaps it just might lead you to that
little black box. The message is here:
Check your solution
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures