SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
middle of the operating system where you'd hide the most vicious spyware -- I'd either have
to go through it line-by-line looking for something out of place (which might take a hundred
years or so), or try to build an identical kernel from known good sources and compare
the checksums and see if there was any obvious dissimilarity. The problem was that I'd
patched and tweaked my kernel so many times over the years that if the new one didn't
match, it would almost certainly be because I'd built the new one wrong, not because I'd
been taken over. At the very least, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
My computer sat there, staring at me from its little webcam, a ring the size of a grain of rice.
The mic was a pinhole-sized hole set into the screen's frame. The first thing I'd done after
getting back to the office was grab a roll of duct tape from the supply cupboard, thinking
I'd tape over the camera and mic.
But I hadn't done it. It felt paranoid. I was paranoid. If there was someone inside my
computer, that person knew more about me than anyone. But so far, all that person had
done was carefully, effectively release docs that I'd been planning to leak. Maybe that
person wasn't a bad guy (or girl). Maybe that person was on my side, in some twisted
way. I found myself imagining the snoop: a seventeen year-old like me a couple years
ago, glorying in the thrill of being where he shouldn't be. Or maybe an old, crusty FBI
agent, sitting in a cubicle in Quantico, making careful notes on my facial expressions and
my kissing techniques with Ange. Or some thick-necked mercenary saving screengrabs of
the most embarrassing moments so that Carrie Johnstone could laugh at them later.
It was eerily silent inside Joe's office. The street noises were washed out by the airconditioning's
hum. I looked straight into the webcam and started talking: “You're in there,
aren't you? I think it's pretty creepy, I have to say. If you think you're helping me, let me
tell you, you're freaking me out instead. I'd much rather that you talk to me than sneak
around spying on me. And if you're one of the bad guys, well, screw you. Nothing you
do to me now will stop the darknet docs from going public, and if I get scared enough or
disappear altogether, I'll just dump the whole goddamned pile. Do you hear me? Are you
there?”
Boy, did I feel stupid and awkward. It was like the one time I'd tried praying by my bed,
when I was about ten or eleven and I'd been seized by a weird, sudden terror that if there
was a God, He'd be really pissed off at me and my family for our total disbelief in Him. I
didn't actually believe in God, but I had this wobbly cost-benefit analysis moment that went
like this: It costs nothing to believe in God. If the tiny likelihood of the existence of God
turns out to be the truth, then He'll punish a failure of belief with eternal damnation. The
consequences are terrible, but the risk is low. Wouldn't it make sense to take out some
sort of insurance policy to protect against this tiny possibility? My dad had just changed
our household insurer and an adjuster had come over to look at the house and talk about
whether we'd need flood and fire and lightning and earthquake insurance, and how much,
and Dad and I had geeked out on the math together, which had been codified by Richard
SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 117