Michael from Muckrock writes, "When MuckRock stumbled on I Write Like – a service that lets you see which famous author a given piece of writing resembles – they immediately knew what it was destined for: Helping shed light on on the literary influences of the mysterious FOIA offices they deal with on a daily basis. Fittingly, some offices echo HP Lovecraft's dark horror, while others are more Dan Brown. But you'll never guess which agency seems to take a cue from Cory Doctorow …"
NSA's FOIA responses imitate art
Back in 2013, we filed a request to see the "Snowden effect" on the NSA's FOIA office. The results were astounding: NSA FOIA requests were up 1,054% over the year before, showing what appears to be a much wider interest in how American surveillance peaks at its own citizens.
One ceaseless chronicler of surveillance creep, on both the website BoingBoing and in novels, has been Cory Doctorow. His novels Big Brother and Homeland chronicle life in a near-future America with almost unchecked surveillance powers given to the government. How well does Doctorow capture the surveillance zeitgeist? Well enough that he was the match when we ran through the successful response to our request for the Snowden FOIA files.
Which famous authors do government agencies write like? [Michael Morisy/Muckrock]
