Was thinking the exact same thing.

Though I got the impression that it was a deliberate backdoor to allow security services to operate incognito, rather than an AI-fooling hack. Maybe just because the book was written before modern neural nets became so widespread.

A friend used to design systems for a major CCTV company. I asked him to add a similar backdoor for me, but sadly he never did...

Brilliant plot device. And like much of Gibson’s other plot devices, bourne out in due time.

Remember, the penultimate device in the novel was an antihero’s cornering the global marketplace order flow.