Little Brother

om this book is dedicated, had to put up with meclacking out the final chapter at 5AM in our hotel in Rome, where wewere celebrating our anniversary). I'd always dreamed

a newsletter with hand-written addresses tousing a database with mail-merge). In the Soviet unio, communicationstools were being used to bring information — and revolution — to thefarthest-flung corners of the largest authoritarian state the Earth had everseen.But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love arebeing co-opted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The NationalSecurity Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and gottenaway with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic4authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets,finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit access totheir databases. The Transport Security Administration maintains a "no-fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any crime, but who arenevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The list's contents aresecret. The rule that makes it enforceable is secret. The criteria for beingadded to the list are secret. It has four-year-olds on it. And US senators.And decorated veterans — actual war heroes.The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous acomputer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has comehome for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in theirpockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically deprivingthem of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of inmy young adulthood.What's mo