Christmas is coming; the geese are getting weight challenged. Nothing better than to curl up with a good book about privacy issues. Many authors have dabbled in this type of thriller.
Here’s a top ten list for the festive season. Note an e book is not the same as e government (whatever happened to that?)
1. 1984 by George Orwell. The date of the first UK DP Act and blairites will all know the first line – “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. If you haven’t read it yet then shame on you. If you haven’t now is the season to be jolly.
2. Digital Fortress is a techno-thriller novel written by Dan Brown in 1998.The book explores the theme of government surveillance of electronically stored information on the private lives of citizens, and the possible civil liberties and ethical implications using such technology. Bit of a potboiler but uses the date of the current UK DP Act.
3. Jeffrey Deaver hits you with a double whammy with The Blue Nowhere and The Broken Window. Both to do with cyber crime and the latter to do with data warehousing. Lots of the usual violence, sex and car chases thrown in but interesting nonetheless.
4. Two authors who combine their surnames to become Lury Gibson have published 3 books in this field – Need to Know, Dangerous Data and Blood Data all in 2002 (FOISA) and the last 2 feature a data detective called Arthur C Dogg (don’t ask me why) who seems to be able to hack into anything.
5. Not read this one but recommended is Jennifer Government, a novel written by Max Barry. Published in 2003. (Same as PECR). In it people take the surnames of the corporations they work for, and a person with two jobs hyphenates their name (e.g. Julia Nike-McDonalds). USA seems to have taken over the world and privacy is suddenly a big issue.
6. The Dying Light by Henry Porter is set in Britain in the near future, where the tentacles of the surveillance state have been extending their reach throughout society. The heroine is thrown into a dangerous attempt to uncover the rotten-ness of the government after her estranged best friend is killed. Henry has written several other books in the same genre and seems to be more bomb expert than a privacy expert. Good rollicking read as they say in the cheap sundays.
7. The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks is the story of visionaries who fight against an organisation seeking world dominance through control of information. Travellers live off the grid and avoid the glare of the techno state. Harlequins protect Travellers and it’s a jolly good read. There is a follow up but the author seems to have lost his original drive with the sequel.
All of these benefit from being good reads as well as having a privacy angle.
Movies? OK. You might struggle to find some of these.
1. Absence of Malice. Paul Newman and Sally Fields star in this film about privacy rights and the press. The film is not interested in a balanced assessment of conflicting rights; instead it accentuates the sorts of concerns that led to Louis Brandeis’s seminal article on privacy almost a century earlier.
2. The Truman Show. Can you imagine a situation in which every moment of your life from birth to the present is filmed by hidden cameras? That’s what happens to Truman Burbank, the leading character in this movie. For thirty years he has no inkling of what is going on. Then one day he begins to discover the truth. Privacy – you don’t say.
3. Twenty three. The movie’s plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl’s rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking – he travels to Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.
4. Pirates of Silicon Valley An intriguing character study of two of the most extraordinary individuals of our modern technological era. The movie is historically inaccurate. Nevertheless, it manages to capture the essence of how much of modern computing came to be: the cluelessness of Xerox about what its own computer scientists were doing; Steve Jobs’ artistic vision at Apple; and Bill Gates’ ruthless business practices at Microsoft. And you will be fascinated by how these men got where they are today.
5. The Net. When Angela Bennett played by Sandra Bullock wakes up, she finds that all records of her life have been deleted: She was checked out of her hotel room, her car is no longer at the parking lot, and her credit cards are invalid. Now read on.
6. Enemy of the State. Will Smith played by Will Smith finds that all records of his life are on hold and his credit cards are invalid. Now read on. (Actually quite good stuff this one – if you have to watch only one movie this Xmas…)).
7. Minority Report. In the future, criminals are caught before the crimes they commit actually occur. Good ole boy Tom Cruise gets into hot water and somehow gets to the end of the movie and saves the world.
All you have to do now is convince your line manager you have 10 books and 7 movies to study to keep up to date with your job and you need time off in lieu to get on with it. No doubt colleagues will suggest others.
Excellent
Other privacy movies include the incredibly worthy ‘The Lives of Others’ about East German surveillance operatives, and much better, Francis Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’, which is about surveillance and the way in which its results can be fatally misinterpreted. The frequent use of the word ‘bugging’ and various derivatives of it can be unintentionally funny if you have a childish sense of humour.