Iain Banks
I remember reading The Wasp Factory. I
was having a great time reading-wise. I was on a Martin Amis
catch-up, having enjoyed Money, there were The Rachel Papers, Dead
Babies, Success, and Other People in the back catalogue. I'd just
discovered Updike, Bellow, and Roth. Banks was on that roster of
authors whose books are pre-ordered on the library online reservation
system. Particularly since 1999 and The Business, after which I've
not missed a book: Dead Air (mad shock-jock radio phone-in deejay,
news of 9/11 on the opening pages); The Steep Approach to Garbadale
(one of the funniest books I've read); Transition (with the full
benefit of the Iain M Banks sci-fi imagination); Stonemouth (a tale
about going back to the scene of your crime); The Quarry (published
posthumously, due 20th June).
The thing about Iain Banks was that he
appeared complete. Fiction (as Iain Banks), science fiction (as Iain
M Banks), and Raw Spirit, a travel book about Scotland, a tour of the
whisky distilling enterprises. A sense of humour. Sound politics,
green principles, without any of that anal-retentiveness those often
bring when not tempered by the sense of humour. The announcement of
his terminal illness led to a huge number of good wishes messages,
for a good and extravagantly talented man.
Snoop, snoop, snoopy, snoopy, snoop
snoop
The Yanks are snooping. Our lot are
saying snoop away. Our Home Secretary is up for as much snooping as
might be allowed. Here's where their whole thing falls apart:
There's a free encryption package, that
would take the equivalent code-breaking power of several latter day
Bletchley Parks to crack. Were anyone up to no good, they'd be using
that, or something similar. This is public domain gear, free to
anyone who wants to learn how to use it, that would take hundreds of
years to crack. Despite everything that's unfolding in front of their
eyes, our guys are like rabbits in headlights, seemingly unable to
jump in any given direction, or to even try to understand the
situation.
Apologies to anyone who thought they
were safer:
- There is free, incredibly impenetrable, encryption software available, for free. If you know where to look. Don't waste time going after the software. The code is out there, for all to see. Find the bad men. Deal with them.
- Snooping will only ever hit the innocent. Not even the stupid. Forget it.
- There's (say) a box of cornflakes-worth of information coming in every day. Every day there's significantly less (say – one cornflake or thereabouts) processing power available to cope with what comes in. How can anyone target priorities properly? They can't.
Our current Home Secretary is our
worst, not for a long time, and not by a long way. However, she
continues a long downward trend. She's been, let's face it, poor. In
a recent run of poor, she's hit the depths of poor. Unable to roll
her sleeves up and make things better behind the scenes, she's gone
for the big hits, and had a string of big misses instead. She has a
track record of failing to chug along the tracks.
She wants to read my private electronic
communication. How sad is that? Who else would want to go through
that boring pile?
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