My favourite Cory Doctorow novel yet. As always he is sharp and right on top of technology to make a cutting point about current events. In this case, it's a Young Adult novel written not long afer 9/11 and imagining a version of the world only slightly in the future where a 9/11 style terrorist attack happens in San Francisco. Marcus Yallow and three of his friends are skipping school to play an augmented reality video game, and happen to be close to the event when it happens. As the others try to get help for Darryl, who's been injured in the panic, the whole group of them get labeled suspicious by Homeland Security and whisked off to holding cells where they're denied their rights, denied a lawyer, and subjected to extremely questionable levels of interrogation.

When three of them are finally released, not knowing if Darryl is dead or alive or still being held captive, they emerge to find a world where their freedom is being taken away in exchange for promises of safety they don't believe, and where Homeland Security is causing more terror than the terrorists themselves. As Marcus tries to find out what happened to Darryl, the story turns into a conflict between youth and authority very much modeled on the protests of San Francisco in the '70s mixed with just a little bit of 1984. Doctorow does a great job explaining encryption technology and privacy issues in an accessible way, while addressing very real questions about where the line is between freedom and safety.

The book is aimed at teens and would be a great book to give your friendly local teen, but I enjoyed it as an adult also. I completely coincidentally started reading this on 9/11 and when I woke up at 3am on 9/12 unable to go back to sleep, figured I'd read a couple chapters until I felt sleepy again ... and then discovered myself finishing the book at 6am. A thought provoking read with a happier ending than I suspect the US is actually going to get. Apparently there's a sequel, which I'm definitely going to pick up!