Red Team Blues

This was my second in the Martin Hench series. This one is set in modern times and follows the classic trope of the aging detective (forensic accountant in this case) pulled in to do one last job before retirement. He’s a world-weary techie who is tasked with recovering crypto keys. Doctorow touches on tech ethics, cybercrime, and the inseparability of ruthless violence from the world of finance.

Words & phrases earmarked

Shift pod: “a legendarily, easy to assemble shelter I associate with burning man types. I’d run into a campgrounds.” “…the shelter, the futuristic, silver foil thing with quilted walls and circular, zip out port holes, as well as a fabric vestibule.” p.39

Atmospheric river: “a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated water vapor transported in the atmosphere. It’s like a river in the sky that can be 1,000 miles long.“ Atmospheric river floods: It’s the “consecutive atmospheric rivers, known as AR families, can cause significant flooding.” - PBS

Faraday bag: a way to make your phone untraceable. No signals can enter or leave it.

WeTip: a fully anonymous way to report a crime online

Red/blue team: in cybersecurity, they both work together to simulate attacks and defenses. The red team is on offense and exploits vulnerabilities. The blue team defends by analyzing attacks, responding to incidents, and planning to prevent.

Dilettante: someone who seems interested in many subjects, but doesn’t know much about any of them; without real commitment or knowledge. “I’ve always been a dilettante, 10 miles wide and 1 inch deep” p.103 I felt seen after knowing this word.

The Cult of the Dead Cow: a hacking collective working to protect user privacy and security that started in the 1980s. Some of their achievements: invented the term “hacktivism,” contributed to the development of Tor, and significantly influenced modern cybersecurity.

Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) services: private companies who collect image photos or videos of cars from public spaces and extract license numbers.

• Sources could be their own cameras or city-owned traffic cameras and private surveillance
• In the us, no federal law regulates ALPR technology
• All this constant surveillance poses serious privacy concerns

Quotes

Sleep eludes me because I am fraught. The compartments, I once housed my work in while I slumbered have long rotted away. Everything mixes now, the greatest hits real of my worries, my fears, my regrets. Those those most of all.”

The San Francisco Public library was the first public library branch in the country to hire a full-time social worker.” p. 162 This was in 2009 and the role had a focus on the local homeless population.

Critique

Doctorow is smart and has a great conversational tone to teach us about tech without being bro-ey. His characters are flat though. There’s little feeling or emotionality as they see horrid scenes or participate in love scenes. The lead, the accountant, never misses a perfect comeback and is icy like 007. He actually has no flaws come to think of it.

I also learned plot armor through reading other critiques of the book. Wherein a fictional character is preserved from harm due to their necessity for the plot to proceed.