- The team takes on a brilliant software developer who is selling a groundbreaking facial recognition system that threatens everyone’s privacy except his own.
- The team go after a reclusive computer code writer who has created an algorithm to invade everyone's privacy, and plans to sell it to RIZ. To stop him, the Leverage team has to invade his privacy, hack his smart-house and destroy his root code to prevent the sale and discredit the man.—Gislef
- Libby Barnes is out shopping with her daughter Frankie and they're getting into the car, when Libby's ex-husband Reese Johnson comes up, pounds on the car window, and yells at Libby that he'll find her because she can't hide forever. Libby drives off and calls her friend Parker to tell her what happened.
Later, Parker gathers the team and tells them about Libby. Libby and Frankie are in a safehouse, and Parker explains that Reese is a cop in small-town Arlo, LA. Libby got full custody of their daughter, but Reese won't leave them alone. Four years ago, she, Eliot, and Hardison helped hide Libby in a new town, and gave her and Frankie new identities. Hardison wrote an algorithm to scrub Libby's face off the Internet, and Reese could only have found Libby by cracking Hardison's algorithm. Eliot suggests an analog solution, but Breana doesn't believe it and figures something else is going on.
Parker, Harry, and Eliot go to Arlo to check it out, and they notice the police cars are the latest models and have state-of-the-art computers. There's been a tech boom in the area, and Breana confirms via computer that the crime rate in Arlo has gone down over the last six months. Eliot points out all the CCTVs, the latest tech, and Sophie figures the police are being paid to use it. Breana sets Eliot up with a fake ID with a Federal bench warrant out on him. Eliot bumps into a man while going to a coffee shop to get spotted by the CCTVs, while Parker watches Eliot. The police arrive within a minute, even though Eliot is covering half his face.
Federal marshal Maria Shipp approaches Eliot, who immediately runs. Maria goes through the shop and ambushes Eliot in the back alley. He disarms her, and the two fight hand-to-hand. The marshal manages to hold her own, but the police arrive and capture Eliot at gunpoint. Breana tells Sophie that Arlo has advanced facial recognition that is more powerful than the FBI's by a factor of ten. Sophie has Breana make the bench warrant disappear, and then go into the system physically. They call Parker in so she won't get recognized by the system.
Breana goes to the Arlo police station after wiping the warrant. Harry is Eliot's lawyer, and demands that the police release Eliot. Maria isn't convinced, and she and Eliot flirt. She figures that Eliot is former special op, even though his record doesn't show it. Breana goes to the server room and realizes that a program named Searchlight is running... and is predictive and told the police that Eliot was going to a bank to rob it. Whoever wrote Searchlight scraped millions of photos. The author, the man Eliot bumped into outside the coffee shop, is watching Breana via the monitor cam, and seals the server room and turns on the fire suppression system.
Harry goes to the server room to try to get Breana out, and a security guard approaches Harry. The ex-lawyer tries to choke him out on Eliot's advice, Parker has Harry use the guard's taser to overload the magnetic plate on the locked door, freeing Breana.
The trio go back to the bar, Breana says that no other facial recognition software compares to Searchlight. Reese found Libby using the police access to Searchlight, and Libby was in the background on a photo. The image was so blurry Hardison's algorithm didn't flag it, but Searchlight did. It can be used by dictators and mobsters, and Arlo is small enough to be a controlled experiment. There has to be a dedicated line running from the police station to the master computer. Eliot and Parker go back to Arlo to track the high-end security like the guard at the police station, figuring they and their portable fitness devices can lead them to the master computer.
Later in Arlo, Eliot and Parker spot three guards at the coffee shop. Eliot distracts the nearby Maria, while Parker poses as a waitress and takes one of the guard's cell phones and fitness devices. Inside, Maria notes she's there to investigate the lowered crime rate and Eliot gives her his real name. They go back to the bar, and Breana determines the private house outside of Arlo where the master computer is. Maria texts Eliot, and the others notices and tease him about it. Eliot identifies the man he bumped into as Joseph Cheng, from the driver's license photos of the homeowners in the area. He's a reclusive Silicon Valley game designer.
Parker, Eliot, and Breana go to Arlo and watch Cheng from a food truck. and Breana confirms that Cheng sues anyone who write about him, so there's not much information out about him. He wrote an app game and then was sued for marketing information on his customers to marketing companies. Parker is in the shop and sees Cheng complaining to barista about her using the wrong oil in his coffee, and she cracked a cell tower and found calls between Cheng and a Buddy Harwick. Harwick is Cheng's investor, and Breana hacks Harwick's phone. Harwick is meeting with RIZ in two days, and they'll sell Cheng's software to all their clients.
Breana and Eliot go to Cheng's mansion, posing as utility workers. Cheng has massive security and they figure his servers are in the house. Breana sends in a drone to get the layout, but an electrical fence shorts it out. Eliot starts up a drill, and Cheng's house ALAY-NA warns him that his blood sugar level is low. Cheng is upset that the drill is running his concentration, and he pounds on the window in anger.
Harry gets into Harwick's emails and learns that Harwick has been trying to get Cheng to see a social interaction consultant.
Breana taps the fiber optic lines going into the house, and confirms that there are no camera in the house. She finds a line for biometric scanners and figures the smart-house AI is Cheng's security. In the house, ALAY-NA tells Cheng to get some extra sleep, and he tells the AI that it's the best. Meanwhile, Breana tells Eliot that Cheng is trying to control people's lives, and they won't be able to escape their mistakes or pasts. She wonders how she can beat Cheng if Cheng beat Hardison's algorithm, and Eliot assures her that they figure Breana can beat Cheng and he know she can.
Sophie figures they'll ruin Cheng's big sale, and then hack into his servers. Harry send a text from Harwick's phone to Cheng, pushing up the meeting a day. He's working as a barista at the shop, having bought out the previous owners, and annoys Cheng until he tells Harry his name and to let him go. Breana has sawed through Cheng's chair leg, causing him to fall over and further unravel. Harry tempers with Cheng's coffee order, as he tries to sell his program to the RIZ representatives. The representatives leave, and Harwick looks up social interaction representatives and comes up with Sophie and Parker's names, thanks to some Internet tampering by Breana. Sophie will distract Cheng with advice, while Parker finds the server so Breana can hack in and wipe the root code. ALAY-NA talks with them, and Breana tells her teammates via the comms not to say anything to them, because ALAY-NA will hear them.
Eliot tells Sophie to use beta blockers if necessary to keep Cheng calm, while Parker looks for a way into the servers. ALAY-NA feeds Cheng signals via his glasses that Sophie is lying, and Sophie says that she's lying and doesn't find tech that impressive. Sophie riles Cheng, while Parker goes into the bathroom to find Cheng's medication and ALAY-NA talks to her. Breana suggests they hack Cheng rather than his system, and alter his biometric signifiers. using his antihistamines. Then ALAY-NA will mistake him for an intruder, he'll have to shut down the system, and the team can go right in. Eliot has Parker use her graphic to alter Cheng's handprint to further confuse ALAY-NA.
Parker and Sophie go to work, removes his glasses, and give him eye drops to help him "blink less". Cheng figures ALAY-NA is malfunctioning and the house identifies him as an intruder, then puts the house into lockdown. A security guard is called in, and Eliot chokes him out. He and Breana then go in posing as guard and insist on doing a clean sweep of the premises. Cheng confirms that Breana is the person he identified at the station, and figures they're trying to steal his software. He resets ALAY-NA, then tells it to lockdown the house and call the police. He runs out to his car and calls Warwick to tell him they're closing the deal immediately.
Parker duplicates Cheng's biometrics and fools ALAY-NA, with Breana using Cheng's voice from earlier and raising her heartbeat to his. ALAY-NA recognizes her as Cheng and unlocks the house, and Sophie has Harry stall Cheng while Breana erases the root code. Harry approaches Cheng in Arlo and gushes over his game app, 'Dozer Duel'. Meanwhile, the team releases a news alert of Cheng being an international fugitive he meets with Warwick and the RIZ people at the shop. The RIZ representatives say that they're done, and Cheng loses his temper and storms out. ALAY-NA sees Cheng's reflection in a window and notifies the authorities, and Maria knocks Cheng out as he tries to run.
Later, Cheng goes back to his house. The team is waiting for him, and Sophie tells Cheng that everyone's sins have been wiped out except his. He says that he'll change his software back, and Breana tells him that they control Searchlight and ALAY-NA. ALAY-NA speaks up to agree, and Sophie advises him to sign the house over to them rather than face a lawsuit for compromising people's privacy.
Later at the bar, Parker and Eliot vies Libby everything she needs to relocate, with ALAY-NA's help. Breana talks to Harry about his knowledge of 'Dozer Duel', and figures he's a real fan of the game. Harry smugly says that she has no proof, and no one would believe her if she did. Sophie asks Eliot when he's going to see Maria again, and her own life changed when the right person arrested her. Eliot gets a text from Maria, ignores it, and tells Sophie that it isn't like that before walking away.
Breana has made up a list of her mistakes, and Parker tells her that what she did before she joined the team doesn't matter to them. The team tell her that they don't need her to be Hardison, but just the person she is, mistakes and all.
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