I was passed a copy of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother about two weeks ago, and thought it appropriate to blog about it. This piece of young adult fiction deals with some scary realities of how the rights of citizens could easily be trampled upon in the name of national security. Obviously inspired by current events of reality, Doctorow paints a very vivid picture of how citizens of the United States can become targets of the agency tasked with their protection: The Department of Homeland Security.

In Little Brother, the world of tech-savvy 17 year old Marcus is turned upside down by a terrorist attack on his city, San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his friends are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they are mercilessly interrogated for days. After being released, Marcus discovers his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist.

What makes the scenario of Little Brother uncomfortably close to home is that the issues surrounding national security and the infringement of rights in the name of that security described in the novel are very much the same issues being debated presently. How much freedom and privacy should the public give up in order to be better protected by the government?

Benjamin Franklin is famously quoted as having written, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

In Little Brother, public education is altered by the Department of Homeland security; presenting an altered view of the founding documents of our nation in order to argue for the methods used to secure the nation, even while violating the rights the citizens of the nation.

Here’s an except from a discussion held in that class. 

“We’re getting a little ahead of the lesson, but you seem like an advanced group.” The others laughed at this, nervously.

“The role of government is to secure for citizens the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In that order. It’s like a filter. If the government wants to do something that makes us a little unhappy, or takes away some of our liberty, it’s OK, providing they’re doing it to save our lives. That’s why the cops can lock you up if they think you’re a danger to yourself or others. You lose your liberty and happiness to protect life. If you’ve got life, you might get liberty and happiness later.”

Some of the others had their hands up. “Doesn’t that mean that they can do anything they want, if they say it’s to stop someone from hurting us in the future?”

“Yeah,” another kid said. “This sounds like you’re saying that national security is more important than the Constitution.”

I was so proud of my fellow students then. I said, “How can you protect freedom by suspending the Bill of Rights?”

She shook her head at us like we were being very stupid. “The ‘revolutionary’ founding fathers shot traitors and spies. They didn’t believe in absolute freedom, not when it threatened the Republic.

Overall, the story of Little Brother is how Marcus is able to fight against and inform the nation of the atrocities being committed in San Francisco. For a geek like me, the technologies used in doing so are rather interesting; and while the author may have been focused on discussing those technologies as a central point of the novel, the debate of national security vs. liberty was my focus, as a reader, throughout.

I recommend checking out this book. You can pick up a pretty inexpensive copy over at Amazon, or even a free digital copy here.

Related posts:

1. Reflecting on the National Equality March