Little Brother is the first of a book series written by Cory
Doctorow. He has also written Homeland, the second instalment of the series.
The story is about a modern San Francisco where the government begins invading
people’s privacy to the max in search of terrorists. It explores how far our
government’s power will go and how the people will fight back. The overall
theme is liberty and freedom.
In the beginning of the book San Francisco suffers from a
terrorist bombing and in the rush of it all military take the main character
Marcus Yallow and his friends: Vanessa, Darryl, and Jolu into custody and
pretty much torture any information they know out of them as they are now
suspected terrorists. After they get all the information out of Marcus and his
friends that they think they need (none of which has anything to do with the
terrorist attack), they are set free again but under constant surveillance. All
except Darryl who was injured when they were captured and the captors say they never
saw him and are going to arrest the rest of them again and make them
“disappear”. When they are finally come back into society, after a week or so
of capture, they find out that the government has started violating citizen’s
privacy any way they can. In response Marcus joins and helps distribute a network
called the Xnet where you can use the internet completely anonymously by using
a hacked version of an xbox that bounces from router to router so anyone
tracking or monitoring it would get lost. This and many other ways were how
Marcus and others fought against the DHS and the government.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about
the freedoms we have as Americans and would like to protect them. This book
goes into detail explaining a lot of tech involved in Marcus’ fight against the
DHS (Department of Human Services) so if you would like to learn about
technology and the violation of American’s rights than you should read this
book immediately.
Link to book: http://www.wattpad.com/story/4388430
Book Review by Mason B.
