Rod Rees's Blog, page 2

INVENT-10N: THE 7 TRUISMS OF SURVEILLANCE

SURVEILLANCE IN BRITAIN: THE 7 TRUISMS
In researching my book Invent-10n it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the surveillance side of State intervention in our lives – the employing of cameras and digital-communication intercepts to collect data about us – that we should be worried about but the use that is made of that data. And this, in turn, led me to the belief that there are now seven truisms regarding the surveillance-pervasive Britain of 2013.
Truism 1: We’re being watched.
Although statistics on the subject are difficult to pin down, the consensus seems to be that, by some margin, the British are the most watched people on the planet, with there being one CCTV camera for every fourteen of us (a conservative estimate, by the way). Now that’s an awful lot of surveillance and as none of these cameras are regulated, there is no information regarding the data they collect, for how long it’s held or who has access to it. The reality is that no matter where we are, we’re being watched.
What this also signals is how obsess the British authorities (be they police, security services or local councils) are with CCTV surveillance: they have become the most avaricious voyeurs in history. The British authorities like to watch.
Truism 2: Our e-communications are being monitored.
What commentators seem to have missed in the brouhaha following Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding GCHQ’s Tempora system – the hacking into the transatlantic fibre-optic cables by the British security services – was that Tempora is only one of the programs our spooks are developing to better access, store and analyse our e-communications. It seems to me naïve in the extreme to imagine that they – through some newly-discovered sense of fair-play and restraint – have been able to resist the temptation to create programs which are equally effective in tracking the calls you make on your cell-phone, in reading the e-mails you send and receive and in monitoring the social media comments you post. The assumption must be that all our e-communications have been (or soon will be) compromised.
The British authorities don’t just like to watch, they like to listen too.
Truism 3: Soon GCHQ will know us better than we know ourselves.
The aim of information gathering is prediction, to be able to identify the bad guys and to interdict them – Minority Report-style – beforethey create trouble. The only way to be able to do this is to have access to all personal data relating to everybody in the UK and to be able to manipulate it.
This nexus point – the time when the security services have the ability to collect, store, collate and analyse the tsunami of e-data produced on a daily basis – is fast approaching. The ever tumbling cost of data warehousing makes it financially and technically feasible to store the mass of information hoovered up daily by the plethora of cameras and e-survillance gizmos which GCHQ operates or to which it has access. This has been shadowed by the development of ever more sophisticated algorithms, the enormously complex decision trees used to solve breath-takingly difficult problems by breaking these problems down into a long string of binary choices. They operate much like the neurons powering our brain which is a good analogy given that they have become so damned sophisticated that they can now imitate thought processes.
Infinitely large data storage coupled with the use of unfeasibly powerful algorithms means that soon (a couple of years?) our security services will have a real-time 360⁰ portrait of each and every one of us. They will know what we did, who we interacted with, what we said, what we wrote: in short, they will know everything. All of these data will be poured over looking for patterns that might suggest we’re thinking of doing something of which the government doesn’t approve.
Truism 4: There’s nothing we can do to prevent the spread of surveillance.
Scott McNealy’s famous maxim ‘Privacy is dead; get over it’ becomes more pertinent by the day. The demands from the liberal press that ‘something must be done’ to curb the inclination of the security services to dig and delve into our lives are, ultimately, futile. Knowledge is power and politicians (the putative masters of the security services) are in the business of acquiring and wielding power. The upshot is that any ‘controls’ imposed will have only a temporary effect: as soon as the next 9/11 comes along that great get-out-of-jail-free card ‘National Security’ will be played and off we’ll go again. We will NEVER be able to put the surveillance genie back in the lamp.
The recent revelation that the Foreign Office is withholding over one million files which should have been made public under the Public Records Act demonstrates the arrogance of the powers-that-be when it comes to complying with the law.
Truism 5: It isn’t surveillance that is the problem, it’s the use made of the information collected by surveillance.
Okay, so trying to limit or curtail surveillance is a fatuous endeavour and one which is destined to fail. The problem is that the availability of this surveillance-collected information puts democracy at risk. This is what I call the ‘J. Edgar Hoover Syndrome’, where the power derived from having access to so much (often very sensitive) information has a corrupting effect on those accessing it. In an information-driven society it will be oh-so-easy to follow the declension that reads.
Yesterday the Government was serving you ...…
Today the Government is surveilling you ...
Tomorrow the Government will be controlling you.
As Paul Valéry said, ‘politics is the art of preventing people taking part in affairs which properly concern them’.
Truism 6: Forget about controlling surveillance, control the fruits of that surveillance.
So what is to be done?
We are told constantly that GCHQ’s surveillance systems are necessary to protect the British people from terrorists and others who wish to do us harm. The danger is, of course, that this purpose becomes blurred and that surveillance becomes a means of control and of social engineering. The total automation of surveillance will protect us from this sort of function creep.
We must remember that it is not the computers that threaten our freedoms, but the use made of that computer-harvested information by their human masters. Therefore, to protect ourselves, we must take the human element out of the surveillance matrix: we must use the computer to protect us from ourselves. The danger of surveillance is that the information it gathers can be used by an authoritarian-minded regime to subvert/subjugate a population. So it would be better, in my opinion, not only to automate the collection and storage of surveillance derived information – which is, broadly, where we are today – but also its analysis. The computers that drive the algorithms analysing this data must be divorced from the direction of the security services: the hunt for the bad guys must be made totally automatic.
Not as far-fetched as it might sound. Algorithms can be written which screen all the information collected by surveillance looking for connections and trends and then the system would act – automatically and independently of human intervention – to thwart any identified threats. Any attempt to use the information for a purpose other than protection of the British people from a terrorist threat would be rejected.
The J.Edgar Hoover Syndrome would be cured simply by ensuring that any would-be J.Edgars would be refused access to the information collected by surveillance by the computers controlling it.
Truism 7: Only when the human element is taken out of surveillance will we be safe from surveillance.
 
Back in 1977 Lord Denning upheld the deportation of Mark Hosenball who disclosed the existence of GCHQ – then a state secret, saying:
‘There is a conflict here between the interests of national security on the one hand and the freedom of the individual on the other. The balance between these two is not for a court of law. It is for the Home Secretary. He is the person entrusted by Parliament with the task. In some parts of the world national security has on occasions been used as an excuse for all sorts of infringements of individual liberty. But not in England.’
We need to change things such that Denning’s assertion is as valid today as it was forty-six years ago.

'RUSH': A REVIEW

RUSH: A GREAT MOVIE (AND NOT JUST FOR PETROLHEADS!)
All film plots are premised on duality – the struggle of good against evil, hope against despair, and honour against duplicity – and I have trouble thinking of a film where this is more starkly portrayed than in ‘Rush’.
Rush tells the story of the epic confrontation between the brash, hedonistic and passionate James Hunt and the sober, calculating and oh-so-disciplined Nikki Lauda when the two vied to win the Formula One championship in 1976. That this is a film based on real-life events makes the contrast between the two lead characters all the more vivid and all the more fascinating. And ‘vivid’ and ‘fascinating’ are exactly the two adjectives needed to describe ‘Rush’.
Director Ron Howard (with the assistance some great cinematography, tremendous editing and a terrific soundtrack) has managed to capture the visceral quality of F1 in the ‘70s and to convey just how dangerous it really was. The final race scene – at a waterlogged Japanese Grand Prix – is a masterpiece both technically and emotionally: it is one of the few movies where I actually felt I was part of the action. Vivid indeed.
But it’s often the case in today’s movies that strong visuals are often accompanied by a flaccid script and one-dimensional characters. This is not the case with ‘Rush’. The central performances – Chris Hemsworth as Hunt and Daniel Brühl as Lauda – were excellent, both actors managing to nuance their characters to suggest depth and doubt. The development of their relationship as it segued from intense dislike to grudging respect is what makes the movie such a fascinating watch.
Criticisms are minor. I thought Lauda’s repetition of the morbid statistic that every time he raced he had a 20% chance of dying was larding the danger on a little (apart from being mathematically inaccurate) and perhaps the final scene was a tad schmaltzy but other than that … nothing.
A great movie and one that I would highly recommend.
Rod:       8/10
Nelli:     9/10

FAVOURITE 100 FILMS

 
ROD’S FAVOURITE MOVIES
These are the movies which, if they come up on TV, I will make time to watch (even though I’ve seen most of them dozens of times!)
The Top Ten Movies in order are:
1.       Some Like it Hot (perfection!)
2.       High Noon (perfection!)
3.       Dr Strangelove (perfection, strange how often Peter Sellers and Kubrick are on my list)
4.       Top Hat (perfection)
5.       Hostile Hostages (aka The Ref) – the most under-appreciated comedy of all time!
6.       Fracture – the most under-appreciated how-did-he-do-it of all time!
7.       The Commitments
8.       A Clockwork Orange
9.       In Bruges
10.   The Lady Killers
 
The Rest, in no particular order:
11.   The Illusionist
12.   Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
13.   Babe
14.   The Chorus
15.   Croupier
16.   Kick-Ass
17.   12 Angry Men
18.   The Apartment
19.   The Long Riders
20.   The Prestige
21.   Spinal Tap
22.   Full Metal Jacket
23.   Seven Samurai
24.   High Fidelity
25.   Grosse Point Blank
26.   The Incredibles
27.   Cabaret
28.   Good Morning Vietnam
29.   Lavender Hill Mob
30.   The Italian Job (Original)
31.   Truman Show
32.   True Romance
33.   Das Boot
34.   Groundhog Day
35.   The Blues Brothers
36.   All That Jazz
37.   Singing In The Rain
38.   Leon
39.   Jurassic Park
40.   Get Carter (the original)
41.   Life of Brian
42.   Big
43.   Toy Story
44.   Tootsie
45.   Unforgiven
46.   French Connection
47.   Amadeus
48.   The Sting
49.   Withnail and I
50.   American Werewolf
51.   The Grifters
52.   Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
53.   The Graduate
54.   Close Encounters of the Third Kind
55.   Kind Hearts and Coronets
56.   The Matrix
57.   Blade Runner
58.   Shawshank Redemption
59.   An American in Paris
60.   Shall We Dance?
61.   It Came from Beneath the Sea
62.   King Kong (original)
63.   Angel-A
64.   Nikita (Luc Besson version)
65.   Thomas Crown Affair (original)
66.   7th Voyage of Sinbad
67.   Scott Pilgrim (well someone’s got to like it!)
68.   Sucker Punch (well, someone’s got to like it)
69.   In the Loop
70.   Man on Fire
71.   Déjà vu
72.   A Man for All Seasons
73.   Minority Report
74.   Spartacus
75.   The Vikings
76.   Emmanuelle
77.   Straw Dogs (original, not the terrible, terrible re-make)
78.   Room at the Top
79.   Gunfight at the OK Corral
80.   She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
81.   Airplane!
82.   The Shining
83.   Enter the Dragon
84.   Cool Hand Luke
85.   The Dirty Dozen
86.   The Pink Panther
87.   True Grit (1969)
88.   True Grit (2010)
89.   Point Blank (1967)
90.   Payback (someone’s got to like it!)
91.   Borat
92.   Back to the Future
93.   I’m Alright, Jack
94.   The Sixth Sense
95.   A Fish Called Wanda
96.   Heat
97.   Shrek
98.   The Remains of the Day
99.   Casablanca
And finally, 100: The Color of Money

INVENT-10N: THE INVERSE-FLYNN EFFECT

INVENT-10N: DUMB AND DUMBER OR THE REVERSE-FLYNN EFFECT
One of my protagonists in Invent-10n, Anna Nitko, is of the opinion that the citizens of the Western world are less intelligent than their forebears. The reason she cites for this diminution in intelligence is the triviality of much of the Net’s content causing a general erosion in the cognitive abilities of humankind, this signalled by a reduction in attention span and the facility for deductive reasoning. According to Anna, netizens – denizens of the Internet – have evolved a butterfly mentality, flitting from idea to idea, only able to think of the here and now and not of the future. According to her the Net hasn’t sponsored the emergence of what Pierre Levy called ‘a collective intelligence’ – the development of a well-informed world of netizens – but rather a ‘collective stupidity’ where people are driven to believe nonsense by the pressure exerted by social e-networks. They had come to fulfil Galton’s prediction that humanity would regress towards mediocrity.
Further, Anna contends that without the constant – but demanding – striving of humankind to improve itself intellectually the process of discovery had stalled and with it the development of the new technologies and ideas which fuel productivity growth. Her proposition is that this IQ-regression is the real cause of Solow’s productivity paradox (the observation made by US economist Robert Solow that the computer can be seen everywhere but in the productivity statistics, this intimating that the Digital Revolution had failed to provide the positive impact on economic growth and productivity experts had expected). Her proposition was that the so-called Flynn Effect – the long-term improvement in humanity’s IQ – had gone into reverse.
Pure fiction, of course, and I have to admit that I wrote it somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Sure I was aghast by how ill-informed my daughters’ generation was but this I put down to the rotten state of British schools. Then, early in October, the OECD released its report on adult literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills where English 16-24 year-olds performed so abysmally (ranked 22nd out of the 24 countries tested).
Consider first that FOR THE FIRST TIME the 16-24 year-old cohort performed worse than the 55-64 year-old cohort (the younger generation had ALWAYS out-performed the old). Consider second that the 16-24 year-old group is the most e-savvy and the most e-obsessed.
Could these two be linked? There has been some speculation that the Flynn Effect was running out of steam but I never thought it would have this sort of impact or have it so quickly.
Maybe Anna Nitko was right!

INVENT-10N: THOSE PESKY ALGORITHMS

THOSE PESKY ALGORITHMS
In researching my book Invent-10n it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the surveillance side of State intervention in our lives – the use of cameras and digital-communication intercepts to collect data about us – that we should be worried about but the usethat is made of that data. And here we enter the decidedly creepy world of the algorithm.
I guess (and it is just a guess) most people if they think about surveillance at all see the spread of CCTV cameras and the like as really quite benign, that someone is looking out for them. This is reflected in the slogan used by the fictional National Protection Agency in Invent-10n: ‘watching out for the good guys by watching out for the bad guys’, my idea being that they would sneakily emphasise the ‘watching’ aspect of surveillance. But that’s not the most important aspect … that’s the ‘collecting, storage and analysis’ part … especially the ‘analysis’ bit and this is where algorithms come in.
Algorithms are basically enormously complex decision trees which can be used to solve breath-takingly difficult problems by breaking down these problems into a long string of binary choices. They operate much like the neurons powering our brain which is a good analogy given that they have become so damned sophisticated that they can now imitate thought processes.
Algorithms have been with us a while now, their use being especially prevalent in the world of banking and finance where their ability to grunt in real-time through an amazing amount of data makes them par excellent in discerning trends and making correct buy/sell decisions. In the US the ‘high-frequency trading’ firms utilising algorithms account for at least half of equity trading volume, but it isn’t just in finance where they’re making their presence felt. They’re being increasingly used as diagnostic helpmates in medicine, in the interview process (remember that funny on-line test your company made you take?), in traffic management, in the optimising of the deliveries Tesco et al make to their supermarkets and in the area of law-enforcement.
This latter area I find particularly interesting as it gives (I believe) an indication of the shape of things to come. In a terrific article (‘Penal Code’ New Scientist, 7th September, 2013) Katia Moskvitch opines that automated, algorithmic-directed policing ‘could lead to a world akin of Kaka’s novel The Trial, in which a man stands accused but has no opportunity to defend himself’. But in my view it’s even worse than Ms Moskvitch envisages. My belief is we’re entering a world to that envisaged by Philip K. Dick in The Minority Report, a world beset by predictive law-enforcement.
Prediction is the pot of gold at the end of the surveillance rainbow, but to accurately predict human actions surveillance systems have to be pan-surveillance: they have to know everything.
I am always amazed by the disingenuous way politicians talk about surveillance systems being so very selective about the information they collect, looking so very aghast when there’s any suggestion that they might be trawling up stuff which isn’t related to terrorism or evil-doing (the prime example of this is the denial made by Sir Andrew Parker, Head of MI5 see http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20...). This, of course, is a crock. The whole point of data-mining is to make connections – to identify seemingly unimportant behavioural relationships between two or more variables and the only way to do this is for the computer driving the algorithm to have access to ALL the data. Which is why algorithms (and the computers that platform them) have such a voracious appetite for trivial information (and why the surveillance systems just keep on growing).
And grow they have. Surveillance captures simply HUGE amounts of data, and security agencies are spending a fortune to construct computer facilities that can handle it. The Utah Data Center built for the National Security Agency in the US has been dubbed ‘the second Manhattan Project’ which gives some idea as to both its importance and its cost.
Now why, you might ask, are the NSA – along with Britain’s GCHQ, Russia’s FSB, China’s MSS and other security agencies around the world – going to all this trouble and expense to process, store  and analyse the chaff of human existence and the answer comes in their ambition to predict our actions.
Security services aren’t interested in what people did (that’s history and the reactive stuff they leave to the police) but in what people will be doing as that offers a chance of interdicting the bad guys before they get dangerous. A la Gottfried Leibniz, those designing and operating the computers that run the security-orientated data-mining systems and the algorithms that direct them believe that how human beings act can be predicted by the forensic examination of the minutiae of our lives. By knowing (and analysing) a person’s DNA, the details of their upbringing, what they say, what they read and listen to, how they think, who they talk with … all this makes easy to predict what exactly they’ll be up to in the future … and how those they interact with will act.
I have to admit that I found it difficult to get my head around a machine predicting what I would do in any given circumstance having always believed that human actions, being so whimsical and emotion-driven, were impossible to predict. But non-linear or not, given enough data (hence the growth of the surveillance culture) it can be done. And don’t think this is something for the future. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses algorithmic analysis combined with game theory as a template to predict political events (the development/non-development of the Iranian H-bomb is the one most usually cited) and, apparently, he’s been so successful he now advises the US government on international policy.
There’s a great line in Ian Ayres’ book ‘Super Crunchers’ (highly recommended, a fascinating read) where he says ‘We may have free will, but data mining can let business emulate a kind of aggregate omniscience’. I would only add that for ‘business’ we should now read ‘security services’.
As Jenni-Fur says in Invent-10n: ‘Then all of us will be reduced to remote-controlled puppets, and there will be no chance of being able to zig when they say zag, or to beep when they say bop. Post-Patriot we will not be able to think, to act, to speak or to move without the spirit-sapping realisation that the ChumBots know everything’.

INVWENT-10N: THOSE PESKY ALGORITHMS

THOSE PESKY ALGORITHMS
In researching my book Invent-10n it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the surveillance side of State intervention in our lives – the use of cameras and digital-communication intercepts to collect data about us – that we should be worried about but the usethat is made of that data. And here we enter the decidedly creepy world of the algorithm.
I guess (and it is just a guess) most people if they think about surveillance at all see the spread of CCTV cameras and the like as really quite benign, that someone is looking out for them. This is reflected in the slogan used by the fictional National Protection Agency in Invent-10n: ‘watching out for the good guys by watching out for the bad guys’, my idea being that they would sneakily emphasise the ‘watching’ aspect of surveillance. But that’s not the most important aspect … that’s the ‘collecting, storage and analysis’ part … especially the ‘analysis’ bit and this is where algorithms come in.
Algorithms are basically enormously complex decision trees which can be used to solve breath-takingly difficult problems by breaking down these problems into a long string of binary choices. They operate much like the neurons powering our brain which is a good analogy given that they have become so damned sophisticated that they can now imitate thought processes.
Algorithms have been with us a while now, their use being especially prevalent in the world of banking and finance where their ability to grunt in real-time through an amazing amount of data makes them par excellent in discerning trends and making correct buy/sell decisions. In the US the ‘high-frequency trading’ firms utilising algorithms account for at least half of equity trading volume, but it isn’t just in finance where they’re making their presence felt. They’re being increasingly used as diagnostic helpmates in medicine, in the interview process (remember that funny on-line test your company made you take?), in traffic management, in the optimising of the deliveries Tesco et al make to their supermarkets and in the area of law-enforcement.
This latter area I find particularly interesting as it gives (I believe) an indication of the shape of things to come. In a terrific article (‘Penal Code’ New Scientist, 7th September, 2013) Katia Moskvitch opines that automated, algorithmic-directed policing ‘could lead to a world akin of Kaka’s novel The Trial, in which a man stands accused but has no opportunity to defend himself’. But in my view it’s even worse than Ms Moskvitch envisages. My belief is we’re entering a world to that envisaged by Philip K. Dick in The Minority Report, a world beset by predictive law-enforcement.
Prediction is the pot of gold at the end of the surveillance rainbow, but to accurately predict human actions surveillance systems have to be pan-surveillance: they have to know everything.
I am always amazed by the disingenuous way politicians talk about surveillance systems being so very selective about the information they collect, looking so very aghast when there’s any suggestion that they might be trawling up stuff which isn’t related to terrorism or evil-doing (the prime example of this is the denial made by Sir Andrew Parker, Head of MI5 see http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20...). This, of course, is a crock. The whole point of data-mining is to make connections – to identify seemingly unimportant behavioural relationships between two or more variables and the only way to do this is for the computer driving the algorithm to have access to ALL the data. Which is why algorithms (and the computers that platform them) have such a voracious appetite for trivial information (and why the surveillance systems just keep on growing).
And grow they have. Surveillance captures simply HUGE amounts of data, and security agencies are spending a fortune to construct computer facilities that can handle it. The Utah Data Center built for the National Security Agency in the US has been dubbed ‘the second Manhattan Project’ which gives some idea as to both its importance and its cost.
Now why, you might ask, are the NSA – along with Britain’s GCHQ, Russia’s FSB, China’s MSS and other security agencies around the world – going to all this trouble and expense to process, store  and analyse the chaff of human existence and the answer comes in their ambition to predict our actions.
Security services aren’t interested in what people did (that’s history and the reactive stuff they leave to the police) but in what people will be doing as that offers a chance of interdicting the bad guys before they get dangerous. A la Gottfried Leibniz, those designing and operating the computers that run the security-orientated data-mining systems and the algorithms that direct them believe that how human beings act can be predicted by the forensic examination of the minutiae of our lives. By knowing (and analysing) a person’s DNA, the details of their upbringing, what they say, what they read and listen to, how they think, who they talk with … all this makes easy to predict what exactly they’ll be up to in the future … and how those they interact with will act.
I have to admit that I found it difficult to get my head around a machine predicting what I would do in any given circumstance having always believed that human actions, being so whimsical and emotion-driven, were impossible to predict. But non-linear or not, given enough data (hence the growth of the surveillance culture) it can be done. And don’t think this is something for the future. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses algorithmic analysis combined with game theory as a template to predict political events (the development/non-development of the Iranian H-bomb is the one most usually cited) and, apparently, he’s been so successful he now advises the US government on international policy.
There’s a great line in Ian Ayres’ book ‘Super Crunchers’ (highly recommended, a fascinating read) where he says ‘We may have free will, but data mining can let business emulate a kind of aggregate omniscience’. I would only add that for ‘business’ we should now read ‘security services’.
As Jenni-Fur says in Invent-10n: ‘Then all of us will be reduced to remote-controlled puppets, and there will be no chance of being able to zig when they say zag, or to beep when they say bop. Post-Patriot we will not be able to think, to act, to speak or to move without the spirit-sapping realisation that the ChumBots know everything’.

INVENT-10N: A FUNNY OLD WEEK FOR THE SURVEILLANCE DEBATE IN THE UK

Funny old week for the surveillance debate in the UK.
Sir Andrew Parker, the new Head of MI5, gave his first public speech and used it to rail against the nerve The Guardian newspaper had to release details contained in the US intelligence files pinched by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The nub of what The Guardian revealed was that GCHQ (the UK’s surveillance centre) was operating a system known as Tempora, a secret electronic surveillance program accessing data carried on transatlantic fibre-optic cables. Apparently the data collected is immense (21 petabytes a day) this being stored for three days (though related metadata is stored for thirty days). According to Snowden Tempora had made the UK into a ‘surveillance superpower’.
Now when I read this I can’t say I was particularly surprised. To my mind it is obvious that as computers become more powerful, e-storage becomes cheaper and cheaper and the algorithms manipulating said data increasingly sophisticated that security services would become more-and-more addicted to the acquisition, warehousing and analysis of the information flying around the e-universe. And this would be especially the case in the UK: you have only to look at how enthusiastically Britain has embraced the CCTV camera (there’s one for every 14 people!) to see that ours is an e-surveillance paradise. We love being watched!
Which makes it all the more amusing when the week began with Chris Huhne, the disgraced former Liberal-Democrat MP, claiming that during his time in cabinet he was told nothing about GCHQ’s Tempora or the NSA’s PRISM or about their ‘extraordinary capability to vacuum up and store personal emails, voice contact, social network activity and even internet searches’. And worse, the National Security Council (attended by ministers and the heads of the security services and GCHQ) of which Huhne was a member was never briefed regarding Tempora. The answer to the question ‘who watches the watchers’ is ‘not Chris Huhne’.
Anyway, back to Sir Andrew Parker. One of the points he made in his speech was that, ‘We only apply intrusive tools and capabilities against terrorists and others threatening national security. The law requires we only collect and access information that we really need to perform our functions, in this case tackling the threat of terrorism’.
The weasel-words here are ‘only apply intrusive tools’.
Sir Andrew went on: ‘In some quarters there seems to be a vague notion that we monitor everyone and all their communications, browsing at will through people’s private lives for anything that looks interesting’. This is, he added ‘utter nonsense’.
So while GCHQ doesn’t monitor and apply intrusive tools to everyone’s communication there is no denial that they COLLECT such data and run it through their algorithms checking for any correlations with known badniks. And to make such correlations GCHQ has to collect (or have access to) ALL the data and that includes the data held by the banks (including that relating to debit/credit card transactions), Inland Revenue files, CCTV cameras, medical records (if the DoH can ever get the thing to work!) etc. etc.
So I think it’s a fair assumption to make that:
1)      GCHQ e-intelligence gathering goes far beyond Tempora;
2)      GCHQ will continue to develop its e-intelligence gathering capability;
3)      There ain’t nothing we can do to stop this happening, MI5 having that wonderful get-out of jail-free card called ‘national security interests’.
Now the big threat of this isn’t, as The Guardian and others fret about, the erosion of civil liberties and of privacy, those are abandoned every time you sign up to FaceBook or begin Tweeting. No, the real threat is that governments and the digerati (the people with access to the information held by GCHQ) will use it to begin manipulating the people of Britain.
As Jenni-Fur says in Invent-10n:
YESTERDAY THEY WERE SERVING YOU …
TODAY THEY’RE WATCHING YOU …
TOMORROW THEY’LL BE CONTROLLING YOU!

INVENT-10N: LIFE IMITATES FICTION 1

GREAT MINDS AND ALL THAT …
When I was first developing the surveillance-heavy world of 2030 that Jenni-Fur, my lead protagonist in Invent-10n, would be living in I spent a while musing on the various youth tribes that might be populate the Britain of seventeen years hence. And one of them was the Slappers, made up of those who were resolutely anti-surveillance.  
SLAPPERSIn Invent-10n Slappers are a disaffected and generally pretty inarticulate bunch, vehemently against PanOptika (the all-embracing surveillance system of the 2030 British government), Tête-à-Tête (don’t ask) and an ordered society. In order to frustrate PanOptika’s facial-recognition ability they favour wide-brimmed hats (to cover the face), unfurled umbrellas (even when it isn’t raining), ankle-length deconstructed plastic raincoats, hoodies by Dead in the Water and (of course) wobblers, shoes with a-symmetric heels which change the way a person walks and thus thwart Gait-ID systems. The picture  above is how Nigel Robinson, the guy who did the design work on Invent-10n, pictured my Slappers (and remember he drew this back in 2009!). 

Of course, I did this tongue-in cheek, never suspecting that the real world would catch up with my fictional whimsy so quickly. So when I was trawling the web looking for magazines which might review Invent-10n I was amazed when I stumbled over this:

Presented by Primitive at Tank Magazine these are a series of ‘Anti-Drone’ Stealth Wear outfits by Adam Harvey (produced in collaboration with NYC designer Johanna Bloomfield) intended to thwart surveillance cameras. My Slappers would have LOVED them. The interesting thing for me was that these designs build on previous work by Adam Harvey – he calls it CV Dazzle – which is face camouflage aimed at negating face recognition. Now that I never thought of!

I think if Invent-10n ever goes into a reprint I’ll ask Mr Harvey if I can feature his CV Dazzle. My Slappers wearing CV Dazzle warpaint would be terrific.

INVENT-10N NEWSRUSH

I’m putting together the material that will go on the Invent-10n website and one idea was to do a news feed for the events in the six months leading up to the opening scene in the book (Jenni-Fur beginning the typing of her journal). It turned out to be a lot more difficult (and a lot more depressing) than I’d envisaged.
DigmStore e-News
NewsRush
08 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:18: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR AUGUST 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 103 MM
08 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:54: STATISTICS RELEASED BY NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY NAME SCARBOROUGH ‘CRIME CAPITAL OF BRITAIN’
08 SEPTEMBER 2029 16:27: CRUDE OIL TOPS $425 PER BARREL +++ PRICE OF GAS TO RISE 30% ‘WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT’
09 SEPTEMBER 2029 07:57: ANDREI LAZAREV HEAD OF RUSSIA’S MINISTERSTVO ENERGETIKI DENIES PRICE FIXING COLLUSION WITH OTHER OPEC STATES +++ RISE IN CRUDE PRICE ‘WHOLLY A CONSEQUENCE OF DESTRUCTION OF MIDDLE EAST OIL FIELDS IN ONE-DAY WAR’
09 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:47: PRIME MINISTER TELLS COMMONS ‘GEES RESPONSIBLE FOR ALMOST THREE-QUARTERS OF ALL RECORDED CRIME IN THE UK’
10 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:28: WILLIAM MORRISON HEAD OF NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY URGES ‘COMPULSORY USE OF TETE-A-TETE IMPLANTS AND REPATRIATION OF GEES’ AS SOLUTION TO THE SURGE IN UK CRIME
10 SEPTEMBER 2029 11:07: AA REPORTS THAT NUMBER OF CAR JOURNEYS AT A FIVE-YEAR LOW +++ ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ COST OF PETROL BLAMED
11 SEPTEMBER 2029 13:07: FOUR MEN ARRESTED FOR ‘GEE-BASHING RAMPAGE’ IN BLACKPOOL IN WHICH TWO GEE TEENAGERS KILLED
11 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:12: HENRY TOWNSEND LEADER OF REVISEDLABOUR PARTY CRITICISES PRIME MINISTER FOR HIS ‘CALLOUS, INHUMANE AND RACIST’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS GEES
11 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:36: PRIME MINISTER PETER ASHE BLAMES REVISEDLABOUR FOR PERMITTING ENTRY OF 5 MILLION REFUGEES FROM GREATER RUSSIA +++ ‘IT IS THE IRRESPONSIBLE AND IMBECILIC POLICIES OF THE PREVIOUS REVISEDLABOUR GOVERNMENT WHICH HAS CREATED THESE GEE-RIDDLED HAVENS OF CRIME AND VICIOUSNESS KNOWN AS THE GEEBURGS … AND IMPOVERISHED THE COUNTRY IN THE PROCESS’
12 SEPTEMBER 10:21: RED CROSS WARNS THAT 5 MILLION PENSIONERS AT RISK OF DYING THRU HYPOTHERMIA THIS WINTER AS A RESULT OF ‘OUT-OF-CONTROL’ ENERGY PRICES PREVENTING THEM HEATING THEIR HOMES
13 SEPTEMBER 2029 17:34: JENNI-FUR AND THE JOY POPPERS NAMED ‘NUBOP BAND OF THE YEAR’ IN OFF-BEAT E-MAGAZINE POLL +++ JENNI-FUR THANKS ‘CATS AND KITTENS WHO VOTED’
15 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:45: CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER SAMUEL TURNER ANNOUNCES THAT WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT STERLING WILL NO LONGER BE FREELY CONVERTIBLE *** SUCH ACTION ‘VITAL TO AVOID MELT-DOWN OF UK ECONOMY’
17 SEPTEMBER 2029 13:09: FOOD RIOTS IN BIRMINGHAM +++ FIFTY INJURED AND TWO REPORTED DEAD
17 SEPTEMBER 2029 18:03: NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY TO ASSUME CONTROL OF BRITISH GEEBURGS – SCARBOROUGH, BLACKPOOL, CLACTON, CLEETHORPES AND SOUTHEND – IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN ORDER AND ‘TO MINIMISE INTER-RACIAL AND INTER-RELIGIOUS CONFLICT’
18 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:27: BRITREAD OPINION POLL SHOWS 78% OF BRITISH VOTERS SUPPORT COMPULSORY REPATRIATION OF GEES BACK TO RUSSIA
20 SEPTEMBER 2029 18:37: SLAPPERS/UNITE CONDEMNS PLANS TO EXTEND USE OF TETE-A-TETE IMPLANT AS ‘UNDEMOCRATIC’
23 SEPTEMBER 2029 23:39: SLAPPERS/UNITE LEADER CARL RUTHERFORD ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF ‘FERMENTING UNREST’ AND ‘SEDITIOUS ACTIVITIES AGAINST UK GOVERNMENT’
27 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:12: ‘BLACKPOOL FOUR’ RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGE +++ GEE LEADERS EXPRESS OUTRAGE AT ‘MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE’
27 SEPTEMBER 2029 14:45: LEADER OF BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY, EDMUND SMALL, ADVISES THOSE GEES WHO DON’T LIKE BRITISH JUSTICE TO ‘GO BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM’
01 OCTOBER 2029 18:57: TRAFALGAR SQUARE DEMONSTRATION IN PROTEST AGAINST RELEASE OF ‘BLACKPOOL FOUR’ DECLARED ILLEGAL +++ THREE HUNDRED ARRESTS MADE
02 OCTOBER 2029 19:42: CHINESE AND RUSSIAN TROOPS ARE IN A STAND-OFF IN THE ARCTIC AS BOTH COUNTRIES JOSTLE FOR OWNERSHIP OF MINERAL RIGHTS
03 OCTOBER 2029 07:13: INDIAN PRIME MINISTER VIKRAM GUPTA DEFENDS USE OF BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS AGAINST ‘TSUNAMI’ OF BANGLADESHI REFUGEES FLEEING FLOODS AS NECESSARY FOR ‘NATIONAL SURVIVAL’
07 OCTOBER 2029 12:56: HOME OFFICE REPORTS USE OF CLASS A DRUG ‘PING’ HAS REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH
08 OCTOBER 2029 09:15: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR SEPTEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 105 MM
09 OCTOBER 2029 09:08: CHERY HOLDINGS COMPLETES THE TAKEOVER OF GENERAL MOTORS THE LAST REMAINING INDEPENDENT US VOLUME CAR MANUFACTURER
11 OCTOBER 2029 10:37: THE MET OFFICE ANNOUNCES THAT THE RECENT FLASH FLOODS WHICH INUNDATED MUCH OF EAST ANGLIA WERE CAUSED BY A COMBINATION OF RISING SEA LEVELS AND CHANGES TO RAINFALL PATTERNS +++ SHADOW ENVIRONMENT SPOKESPERSON DEBORAH ARNOLD COMMENTED ‘NO KIDDING’
13 OCTOBER 2029 15:24: PROPOSAL BROUGHT BEFORE PARLIAMENT TO BAN THE USE OF OPAQUE UMBRELLAS ON THE GROUNDS THAT THEY ‘DISRUPT THE EFFECTIVE USE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT’
15 OCTOBER 2029 09:18: ‘TAKE THAT’ ANNOUNCE PLANS TO REFORM FOR ANOTHER FAREWELL TOUR
17 OCTOBER 2029 14:10: HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SEVERLY CRITICISES THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT FOR ITS TREATMENT OF REFUGEES FROM GREATER RUSSIA
19 OCTOBER 2029 20:34: PRIME MINISTER ASHE REJECTS CRITICISMS BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ACCUSING THEM OF BEING ‘NAMBY-PAMBY DO-GOODERS ADRIFT IN SOME FANTASY LIBERAL UTOPIA AND HENCE UNABLE TO APPRECIATE THE CHALLENGES OF THE REAL WORLD BEING FACED BY GOVERNMENTS’
25 OCTOBER 2029 15:07: PRIME MINISTER ASHE ANNOUNCES PLANS TO HOLD A REFERENDUM ON 24THJUNE 2030 ON THE ADOPTION OF THE PATRIOT PROJECT WHICH WILL OBLIGE ALL UK RESIDENTS TO WEAR A TETE-A-TETE IMPLANT AND FOR ALL REFUGEES WHO ENTERED BRITAIN UNDER THE UNITED NATIONS EVACUATION PROGRAM TO RETURN TO THEIR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
26 OCTOBER 2029 09:23: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH AS ‘FASCIST IN INTENT’
26 OCTOBER 2029 10:54: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY UNITED NATIONS AS ‘UNFORTUNATE’
26 OCTOBER 2029 11:16: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY HENRY TOWNSEND LEADER OF REVISEDLABOUR PARTY AS ‘UNDEMOCRATIC AND UNBRITISH’
26 OCTOBER 2029 12:16: BRITREAD OPINION POLL CONDUCTED ON BEHALF OF THE E-MAIL SHOWS 86% OF BRITISH VOTERS SUPPORT THE PATRIOT PROJECT
27 OCTOBER 2029 18:57: RUSSIA SUSPENDS OIL EXPORTS TO CHINA IN RETALIATION FOR ITS ‘FLAGRANT, ILLEGAL AND BELLIGERANT’ OCCUPATION OF RUSSIAN-CLAIMED ARCTIC
28 OCTOBER 2029 23:19: HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS A TERRORIST ORGANISATION BY UK GOVERNMENT AND ITS LONDON OFFICE CLOSED
29 OCTOBER 2029 08:27: ANNUAL REPORT OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CONSORTIUM STATES THAT THE 10 CM RISE IN SEA LEVELS AND THE 1.5⁰C RISE IN GLOBAL TEMPERATES OVER THE THIRTY YEAR PERIOD TO 2028 IS ‘A BLIP’
29 OCTOBER 2029 05:34: 101ST ACADEMY AWARDS HELD IN BEIJING SAW SIR BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH WINS BEST ACTOR OSCAR FOR HIS ROLE IN CHARLIE FARADAY’S ROMANTIC COMEDY ‘SUICIDE IS A BLAST’
01 NOVEMBER 2029 20:43: TWITTER ANNOUNCES THAT SIR STEPHEN FRY IS THE FIRST CELEBRITY TO BOAST ONE BILLION FOLLOWERS
03 NOVEMBER 2029 11:25: HOME SECRETARY FRANCES PACKHARD REJECTS OPPOSITION AMENDMENT TO ‘SUS LAW’ CLAIMING THAT ‘STOP AND SHOT’ IS VITAL FOR THE EFFECTIVE POLICING OF BRITAIN
08 NOVEMBER 2029 09:11: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR OCTOBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 125 MM
13 NOVEMBER 2029 19:18: INSURANCE CLAIMS RELATING TO THE APOPHIS ASTEROID NEAR-MISS IN APRIL 2029 TOPS TEN BILLION DOLLARS
14 NOVEMBER 2029 05:41: GLOBAL CLIMATE CONSORTIUM IS FORCED TO VACATE ITS NEW YORK OFFICES DUE TO FLOODING
17  NOVEMBER 2029 14:53: AT A PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY THE ALL-ENGLAND CLUB ANNOUNCED IT WILL ROOF IN ALL ITS COURTS BEFORE THE 2030 WIMBLEDON CHAMPIONSHIP AND SWITCH TO CLAY +++ THE LEVEL OF RAINFALL IN THE UK IS CITED AS THE REASON BEHIND THIS MOVE
23 NOVEMBER 2029 19:42: RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PETR SHOVIN CONFIRMS THAT ALL RETURNING GEES MUST CONVERT TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY +++ ‘WHILST RUSSIA REMAINS A LIBERAL, DEMOCRATIC AND TOLERANT COUNTRY IT CANNOT PERMIT THOSE HOLDING SUCH PERNICIOUS AND DELIQUENT BELIEFS TO RESIDE IN OUR COUNTRY. THIS WOULD VIOLATE THE CODE OF ONE NATION, ONE BLOOD AND ONE GOD WHICH GUIDES THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT’
08 DECEMBER 2029 09:19: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR NOVEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 111 MM
11 DECEMBER 2029 20:45: RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PETR SHOVIN CONFIRMS THAT ALL JEWISH AND MUSLIM GEES RETURNING TO GREATER RUSSIA AS A RESULT OF THE UK ADOPTING THE PATRIOT PROJECT WILL INITIALLY BE HELD IN ‘RE-EDUCATION CENTRES’
14 DECEMBER 2029 08:14: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL DESCRIBES THE LEVEL OF SUICIDES IN THE GEEBURGS – RUNNING AT FIVE-TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE – AS A SCANDAL
17 DECEMBER 2029 11:00: BRITAIN HOLDS A THREE-MINUTE SILENCE TO COMMEMORATE THE TWO-HUNDRED THOUSAND WHO DIED IN THE DIRTY-BOMB ATTACK ON LIVERPOOL IN 2021
20 DECEMBER 2029 19:02: UK’S JESUS FACTION IN ITS XMAS MESSAGE DEMANDS THAT ALL RUSSIAN REFUGEES BE DEPORTED AND THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT PURSUE A POLICY OF ‘SALVATION THROUGH RACIAL PURITY’
24 DECEMBER 2029 10:14: ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ANNOUNCES THAT THOSE WHO PROTEST THE USE OF THE PANOPTIKA SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM ARE ‘MISGUIDED’ +++ ‘THE DESIRE FOR PRIVACY IS A SIN’
01 JANUARY 2030 13:18: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS A TERRORIST ORGANISATION BY UK GOVERNMENT AND ITS LONDON OFFICE CLOSED
05 JANUARY 2030 08:09: ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ONE-DAY WAR WHICH DESTROYED MOST OF THE MIDDLE EAST IN A NUCLEAR CONFLAGRATION UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO URGES WORLD LEADERS ‘TO LEARN THE LESSONS SO DEARLY BOUGHT AND TO TURN AWAY FROM WAR AS A MEANS OF SETTLING INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES’
06 JANUARY 2030 18:52: CHINA AMASSES TEN DIVISIONS ON THE SINO-RUSSIAN BORDER IN RETALIATION FOR SUSPENSION OF OIL DELIVERIES FROM RUSSIA
08 JANUARY 2030 09:15: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR DECEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 101 MM
09 JANUARY 2030 08:21: MET OFFICE ANNOUNCES THAT 2029 WAS THE UK’S WETTEST YEAR ON RECORD
09 JANUARY 2030 07:12: US PRESIDENT KIM SAUNDERS OFFERS TO MEDIATE IN SINO-RUSSIAN ARCTIC DISPUTE
10 JANUARY 2030 03:53: US ARBITRATION OFFER REJECTED AS RUSSIA AND CHINA AGREE THAT ‘MINOR NATIONS’ SHOULD NOT BE INVOLVED IN THE DISCUSSION PROCESS
12 JANUARY 2030 05:47: UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO AGREES TO CHAIR CONERENCE TO SETTLE SINO-RUSSIAN ARCTIC DISPUTE
18 JANUARY 2030 04:17: UK’S BID TO HOST THE 2038 WORLD CUP HAS BEEN REJECTED BECAUSE OF CONCERNS REGARDING ‘POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTABILITY’
24 JANUARY 2030 07:21: IN GENEVA RUSSIAN AND CHINESE NEGOTIATORS AGREE THE AREAS OF THE ARCTIC WHICH WILL FALL UNDER THEIR ‘ZONE OF INFLUENCE’ +++ PROTESTS BY THE US, NORWAY AND CANADA ARE DISMISSED AS ‘INCONSEQUENTIAL’
28 JANUARY 2030 10:47: WILLIAM MORRISON HEAD OF NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY ANNOUNCES UPGRADING OF GCHQ’S QUANPUTERS PLATFORMING PANOPTIKA SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
01 FEBRUARY 2030 19:56: WWF ANNOUNCES THAT ‘POLAR BEAR EXTINCT IN THE WILD’
02 FEBRUARY 2030 05:13: UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO ANNOUNCES THAT THE MALDIVES HAVE OFFICIALLY ‘CEASED TO EXIST’
04 FEBRUARY 2030 10:53: GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL CRITCISES GOVERNMENT FOR IGNORING UPSURGE IN CHILDREN PRESENTING WITH RICKETS +++ GMC DEMANDS RETURN OF FREE SCHOOL MILK AND VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS
08 FEBRUARY 2030 09:12: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR JANUARY 2030 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 105 MM
08 FEBRUARY 2030 13:53: BAQTRAQ CYBERSYSTEMS UNVEILS THE ‘NEW IMPROVED’ VERSION OF ITS BEST-SELLING ‘EYEFLY’ NANODRONE.
09 FEBRUARY 2030 10:20: JENNI-FUR SITS DOWN TO WRITE HER JOURNAL TIPPY-TIP-TYPED MOST LABOURIOUSLY ON AN UNDERWOOD CHAMPION CIRCA PRE-GAS THIS TO ENSURE HER THOUGHTS ARE NOT ANALYSED IN THE MOST INTIMATE OF FASHION BY THOSE NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY SCUMBOIDS …

INVENT-10N: THE START

INVENT-10N: IN THE BEGINNING
Invent-10n is my latest book (I call it a semi-graphic novella, that’s a novel of 60,000 words augmented with illustrations) which is due to be published by Alchemy Press in November. It’s a dystopian story, following the travails of my heroine – twenty-year old nuBop singer and angry young lady, Jenni-Fur – as she struggles against the suffocating strictures of the surveillance society that is Britain 2030.


Invent-10n began life a long time ago – in 2009 to be exact – when I was playing around with the idea of writing a story about a world where the full implications of living in a pan-surveillance society were being played out. To do this I wanted to create a feeling in the mind of the reader that they were actually in that world so I came up with the idea of combining faux-factual material supposedly published in the e-media of 2030 (the year the story is set) this interlaced with the extracts from the diaries of the two chief protagonists, jive-talking, nuBop rebel, Jenni-Fur, and National Protection Agency apparatchik, Sebastian Davenport. Jenni-Fur is the angry young thing determined to screw-over the PanOptika Surveillance system run by the National Protection Agency … the MI5 of the UK of 2030. To do this she teams up with mysterious übergeek, Ivan Nitko, inventor of the eponymous Invent-10n.
Given that there would be significant design element in the book I collaborated with a friend of mine, Nigel Robinson, who did the artwork for my Demi-Monde series. And realising that the format would be unusual we went to the trouble of mocking-up what it would look like and having twenty-five copies printed. Even so the response from mainstream publishers was unenthusiastic.
That was when I got distracted writing the four instalments of the Demi-Monde series and Invent-10n lay on a dongle gathering dust. Then in March this year a friend of mine – Peter Coleborn – who I knew from the Renegade Writers’ group in Stoke sent me an e-mail asking if I had anything, novella-sized, I might consider publishing through his imprint, Alchemy Press. I remembered Invent-10nand sent one of the mock-ups to Peter. Peter liked it (what a sensible lad!).
Now I was faced with finishing the bloody thing … and up-dating it. In this day and age four years is a technological eternity and reality had already caught up with some of the ideas I’d dreamed up back in 2009. The most alarming was that in the original Invent-10n my characters used a thing called a Polly (a Poly-Functional Digital Device) to e-interact with each other and Nigel had designed a Polly (in 2009) to look like this:
 


Seem familiar? One year later Apple came up with their iPad! Bollocks!
For this and other reasons I had to rework/remodel Invent-10n which took longer than I supposed – two months in fact – and then I had to hand it over to Nigel to work his design magic. The interesting thing was while Nigel beavered away the world became increasingly aware/interested in surveillance and its implications for society. The Edward Snowden brouha and the realisation (pause for gasps of surprise) the NSA was actually e-monitoring everybody and his brother via its PRISM system made me more determined to finish Invent-10n while the subject was hot. When I had written it in 2009 I had been writing a fantasy, now it was more a piece of social commentary.
So, what with the design requirements of the book and Peter’s various editing suggestions Invent-10n wasn’t finally finished until early September. Then I had to write the blurb which would go on the back of the book and wanting something suitably Jenni-Fur-esque I came up with this (presented à la Jenni-fur on a typewriter, which she uses to avoid the e-wigging of the National Protection Agency):
Greetings Gate, let’s Agitate.
Look over your shoulder. Do you see the camera? Then dig that even as you read these words of sedition and denial you are being watched by the ever e-quisitive National Protection Agency. The National Protection Agency –omnipresent, omniscient and most ominous –which runs PanOptika, the spider at the centre of the Web.
PanOptika. What’s the slogan: watching out for the good guys by watching out for the bad guys. But what did that Roman word-slinger, Juvenal say? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: who watches the watchers?
So dig this to the extremity, cats and kittens: if we do nothing soon we must kneel, digitally-dutiful, before National Protection, and then there will be no chance to zig when the ChumBots say zag, or to beep when they say bop. Realise thou that PanOptika triumphant means we will not be able to think, to act, to speak or to move without the spirit-sapping realisation that the badniks know everything …everything.
We are circling the drain.
This is my warning.
And now it’s all wrapped up it’s just a question of selecting a launch date (sometime in November is the banker).