Join EFF Special Advisor and New York Times-bestselling author Cory Doctorow for a book launch for his new thriller, The Bezzle. Cory will be joined in conversation with author Robin Sloan. Prior to this conversation, EFF Senior Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin will host a short presentation about the real horrors of the prison-tech industry.
While you're at the San Francisco Public Library, be sure to check out the EFF booth near the conversation! There, you can learn about our latest work, ask your burning questions about digital freedoms, and even become a member of EFF.
When:
March 13, 2024
6:00 PM PT
Where:
San Francisco Public Library
San Francisco, CA
Event Requirements:
No Registration Required
About the Speaker:
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; Chokepoint Capitalism with co-author Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; In Real Life, a graphic novel and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. His novel Attack Surface is a standalone adult sequel to Little Brother, San Francisco Public Library's 2008 One City One Book selection. In 2020, Doctorow was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Robin Sloan is a fiction writer whose novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He splits his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Cooper Quintin is a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the EFF Threat Lab and board member of Open Archive. He has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal.
About The Bezzle:
The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.
Martin has made his most dangerous mistake yet: trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark—California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy.
A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a sizzling follow-up to Red Team Blues.
This event is organized not by EFF, but by the San Francisco Public Library
