Book details of 'Gideon'

Title	Gideon
Author(s)	Russell Andrews
ISBN	0345434781
Language	English
Published	June 2000
Publisher	Ballantine Books

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
This is a serviceable thriller. Reasonably convoluted plot, although not, perhaps, as surprising as the authors might think. And, as is prone to happen with collaborations, there are minor, but annoying, inconsistencies in the story and the characters. (It's also just a little bit difficult to suspend disbelief about a single hunter who can track people all over the South, especially when the prey can swap driving and sleeping shifts, and the predator is driving a large vehicle with a silly and identifiable logo on the side. And then there is the dependence on the police being stupid enough to miss things like huge differences in times of death, and even wrong bodies.) Take the technology, for instance. Communications technology, and particularly the Internet, plays a large role in the book, but it seems oddly unimportant. For one thing, most of it doesn't start until half way through the narrative. For another, while few overt mistakes are apparent (and some actual Web pages are used), no fundamental understanding of the technology is evident. Oddly, although the book is clearly based on recent concerns over concentration of telecommunications ownership and Internet communication is used a lot, the bad guys don't seem to care about owning a piece of the networked world, concentrating on the traditional media. Not that this is unrealistic. The top black hat, rather obviously a combination of Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, is only doing what most of his real life media baron colleagues are doing: staying as far away from the anarchic Internet as possible, and pretending it is a kind of television service with a great many channels. But an Augmon On Line could have added a lot of creativity and spice to the book. In addition, the authors have a very US-centric view of international corporations. True multinationals like the one in the book would definitely have an easier way to get around the problem of a ban on direct dealings with certain foreign countries. Turning to satellite services, there are a few problems. Geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) is certainly preferred for broadcast satellites, but it is far from the only game in town. And it wouldn't be necessary to have a gang of illiterate peasants build a high tech launch facility in French Guiana: the European Space Agency has a very nice one there, used quite regularly. In any case, even if you did manage to build a site and launch a rocket in secrecy it wouldn't remain a secret very long. Rockets are noisy, flashy things that can be detected exceedingly easily. Various interested parties check up on these things, not least because there are less than a dozen unassigned GEO slots left, and nobody is going to stand idly by while somebody pirates one. Coming down to earth (if you'll pardon the expression), an 800 number still has to be assigned to a given phone line, even if the fax machine you want to use is installed in a computer. In any case, an 800 number is definitely not "non-area-specific," as Canadians and other non-US residents know all too well. A cell phone is not untraceable: as soon as it is turned on in a service area the position is known to within a few miles, and, in urban areas, usually much closer than that. In these highly wired days it is odd that anyone who can track down an email address for a non-acquaintance would be so lax as to endanger a close friend by using an identifiable email account to send a highly dangerous message. Even without getting into anonymous remailers, surely such a person would know about the various Web based free email services, which allow anyone to create an essentially untraceable account within seconds. But when they really want to hold secure communications, they turn to instant messaging (IM). This is really laughable. First of all, while journalists are now starting to work fairly heavily with the Internet and while some will undoubtedly have greater skills in this area than others, it simply isn't true that every large news organization has a "hacker" on staff, particularly the mythical system breakers who are supposed to be able to break into bank and credit card databases at will. In addition, being able to crack a system is no indication that you can secure one. As Gene Spafford points out, being able to pour sugar into a gas tank teaches you nothing about auto mechanics. Mostly, though, instant messaging just isn't very reliable. Email is asynchronous, and generally gets to the recipient eventually. IM requires both parties to be online, with clients active, at the same time--and on the same system. This is one of the reasons that most "by the hour" computer rental places wouldn't have IM installed. The other reason is that instant messaging systems are notoriously insecure. One popular IM system has had password, trojan, and other security problems in a never ending stream ever since it started. Another major player has deliberately opened buffer overflow holes in its own client program--apparently in an attempt to avoid compatibility with other systems. Using IM for secure communications makes about as much sense as posting your confidential messages on random billboards. The final "get the baddies to incriminate themselves" denouement lacks some detail. However, it makes up for many of the prior mistakes by being creative, effective, using technology well, and being technically correct. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2001
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