Attack Surface
Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and Homeland. Most days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side. In her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move. The perks were fantastic, and the pay was obscene. Just for fun, and to piss off her masters, Masha sometimes used her mad skills to help those same troublemakers evade detection, if their cause was just. It was a dangerous game and a hell of a rush. But seriously self-destructive. And unsustainable. When her targets were strangers in faraway police states, it was easy to compartmentalize, to ignore the collateral damage of murder, rape, and torture. But when it hits close to home, and the hacks and exploits she’s devised are directed at her friends and family--including boy wonder Marcus Yallow, her old crush and archrival, and his entourage of naïve idealists--Masha realizes she has to choose. And whatever choice she makes, someone is going to get hurt. Source
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What Hacker News says
- I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to read Cory Doctorow's novel Attack Surface and to think deeply about the message contained within. He has something significant to say, IMO, about the need for people like "us" (that is, people who care deeply about these issues) to use our knowledge, resources, skills, etc. to help effect changes in public policy through the legislative process as opposed to trying to "out tech the bad guys". And that's rooted, as I understood it, in an argument that you can't "out tech the bad guys" over the long run, because they (the US government and other nation states) can always just beat you on resources and volume.
Anyway, I hate trying to summarize that, because I'm afraid I'll mis-state things and fail to do it justice. Seriously, just read the book. It's worth it.
And if you don't want to read the book, a reasonable proxy might be to suggest "just donate some money to the EFF".
- I haven't gotten to that one yet, but it's on my list! Actually, Attack Surface was my first (and so far only) Cory Doctorow novel, but after reading it, I'm definitely game to dig into more of his oeuvre.
- I read 14 books this year and my favourite was Eversion by Alastair Reynolds, followed closely by Pushing Ice by the same author. I "discovered" Cory Doctorow this year, reading 4 books (and I have another in my queue), being "Attack Surface" the one I liked most.
The only technical book I read was Programming in Lua (4th edition), and still didn't work for me. I guess I don't like Lua, and that's OK.
- > The solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal.
I expect more than a few commenters here will disagree with you. Some rather vehemently.
To those that do so, I'd encourage you to read the novel Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow. While it's fiction, in the book, Doctorow makes a pretty compelling argument for the notion that when it comes to privacy, we can't win by "out tech'ing" the governments and corporations. We're simply too heavily out-resourced. If I'm interpreting his message correctly, he is saying basically what Josho is saying here: that we have to use the political/legal system to get the privacy protections that we care about enshrined into law and properly enforced.
Now, is that going to be easy? Hell no. But after reading the book I was largely sold on the idea, FWIW. That said, the two approaches aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. But I do believe that those of us who care about privacy should focus more on using our (knowledge|skills|resources) to try to foster change through politics, than on trying to beat "them" with better tech.
YMMV, of course. But if you haven't read the book, at least consider giving it a shot. Probably Doctorow makes the argument better than I can.
- > You're suggest technical solutions to social problems, and those rarely work out in the long term, especially with adversarial parties. Better to solve the problem at the source.
That, to me, was the big takeaway from Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow. The idea that you can't "out tech" the State[1]. Because even if you, as an individual, are in fact (smarter|more talented|more capable) than any individual employed by the State, they still have you out-resourced to a degree that makes your cleverness moot. And as a defender, you only have to make one mistake and it's game over.
If I get Cory's point right, it's to say something like "as technologists, we should use our skills in service of effecting meaningful change through the democratic process", as opposed to creating better tech for evading State surveillance[2].
[1]: I think here you could probably read "the State" as "the State AND/OR BigCorps".
[2]: That said, there's probably still at least some basis for doing both. But "effecting change through the democratic process" is probably the better long-term strategy.
- Cory Doctorow’s latest book, “Attack Surface”, does a good job of exploring this concept IMO. https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250757517
