Cory Doctorow - Little Brother

Suppose you have a generation of kids who don't know much about civil liberties or programming, and you want them to be excited about security technology, journalism, and the American constitution.  Take a 17 year old hacker for a protagonist, pit him against an overbearing Department of Homeland Security, talk about the history of San Francisco and some social movements, throw in a little romance, and you get "Little Brother."

Some parts of it are a bit hokey.  For instance, Radio Frequency Identification is commonly abbreviated RFID (47,000,000 hits on Google), but Doctorow chooses to call them "arphids" (8,000 hits on Google).  A few of the other bits about technology are inaccurate (eg, Doctorow says that Tor is unblockable because there are too many exit nodes to keep track of.  In fact, Tor maintains a list of all of the exit nodes, so people can block it without too much difficulty), and a few descriptions of society are a bit off (eg, using the neighbor's wifi is big in the book, but most people encrypt their wifi networks even now).  

However, those issues are fairly small.  The descriptions of technology were right in spirit even if the details were a bit off (which is to say: if you're a journalist or actually need security, do a little extra research), and the writing was interesting.  Overall, the novel is great, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about their own privacy in an enjoyable way.