Love Potion No. 9... I MEAN Journal Entry No. 9

I have read another novel. It left me feeling paranoid about the possibilities that could come into our reality very soon. It was a tale about how technology was abused by the government to take over people's privacy, using technology that exists that today, and some technology that could easily exist next year. Yes, I have read another cyberpunk tale. This time, it is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.

The story follows an experienced teenage hacker around after the government had done terrible things to him and several other people, only because America's own Department of Homeland Security wanted to find some terrorists. The tale unites the words “cyber” and “punk” in a way I have not seen before. If the government does become more and more privacy-invading, there will be a backlash against it, in a punk sort of way that will rely on technology similar to the way that could happen in Little Brother, but this time the revolution would have to be led by people who are already very tech-savvy. This is cool for me to hear, as I stare at a screen connected to a desktop I built myself, a laptop with a paranoid fingerprint scanner and password combo, and every entertainment console of recent years. While it is fun to see the geeky guy get ahead, the story brings up some interesting issues, many that are already relevant today. Basically, the government can spy on you. The ability of the government to spy on you is still dependent on how many people and much money they throw into surveillance of the nation, which the novel touches upon, but the American government, as seen especially in recent years, is not afraid to throw lots of resources around to protect the nation. That itself is not a bad thing, but I have often envisioned that our country could end up one of two ways: either the Patriot Act is abolished, or it is expanded upon. In Doctorow's tale, the government releases the “Patriot Act II”, and allows the government more accessibility to spy on everyone through the use of cameras pasted all around the city, new, tracking metro cards, the already in place wire tapping, and the ability to look more throughly through people's computers and internet conversations. For some, they also use technologies that are already present today, like keyboard loggers. It is a very real look at something that could happen... tomorrow.

The technology mainly used the novel was fun – as it was directed toward gamers. Perhaps aimed at younger gamers, it was entertaining nonetheless. There were many references to some popular video game titles, such as Halo and Castle Wolfenstein, and in fact one of the main “computers” the protagonist uses is a new “Xbox Universal” that has an illegally installed operating system. It is already a fairly well known fact that Xbox 360's and Playstation 3's are just computers with their firmware and OS on them, that is in fact possible to remove. In fact, if I knew my phones were being tapped, I might use an Xbox 360 to talk to my friends. I already use it to avoid long distance charges when talking to friends in different states. It is a powerful social networking utility, and is made up of somewhat like minded people – well, at least people that all like to play video games. It would not be a bad place to start a revolution, anyway. President-elect Obama even advertised himself in video games this year.

One thing that scared me was the possibility of spies and creeps interacting with you on video games. It already happens on social networking places like Second Life and Facebook, wouldn't video games be the next logical step? Also something I found very intriguing was the explanation of the 99% rule. If the technology used to find terrorists in a city is 99% accurate, in a city of a million people, 10,000 would come up as a "terrorist," even though they are probably only looking for one or two people, if they are even a part of that 10,000 (why would terrorists hang around a city after coming in from another country and comminting the terrorist act?). 10,000 people would have to have their privacy invaded "for the sake of safety." It goes on to say terrorist counter-measures are not 99% accurate, which I believe is true today, it must be more like 60, or even 40 percent accurate. So, it is it worth it to spend all the extra effort, time, and resources towards a likely unsuccessful, privacy invading investigation?

Overall, it was a fun book that glorified programming, making you want to create some new programs, if you could, and learn how to hack a little bit. The book realizes that revolutions often start with the young, and the young in this generation, and the next, are going to be more than connected to the internet and technology. If a young person needed to start a rebellion, fast, a good place to start would have to be Facebook or MySpace. As the rebels proclaimed in the story, “don't trust anyone over 25!”