What do you think about the privacy B&N policy regarding Nook(s)

[PatNY]

Originally Posted by khahoon

The public learned the actual extend of the programs by now and then. On the other hand I already knew this for years and was "trying" to live with integrity without turning myself into a data mining whore. The reason I posted after the leaks was to see if people paid attention to such issues.

Huh? No, everything of significance regarding Snowden's leaks was known by July 27th. There was nothing NEW of any significance that came out AFTER the 27th. If you think there was something new, post it. Give a link proving what you say is true.

And so now you say the reason you never mentioned Snowden in your OP was because you were testing us? Yeah, sure.

I think that you are not getting the point of what Nsa or others are trying to do. I advise you to watch some of the recent EU Nsa hearings which you can find on online video places, where the actual people who worked on these programs or witnesses whosaw the actual abuses will tell you what is really going on.

Instead of being condescendingly preachy, as well as vague, why don't you tell us exactly what the point is -- apart from using the information for anti-terrorist and anti-crime purposes?

As an average Joe you have no idea about what you are talking about, how can you know what you are talking about if you are just an average person? Most of these programs are very secret and you are not supposed to know about them, therefor comments from someone like you has no weight. I am sorry to say that because by nature, you(I do not mean you directly, but people who think that they can form proper ideas abotu such isssues) are a decent human being trying to get by in life. What they can monitor and cannot is most likely is beyond your imagination and technical skills, I have some technical skills therefor I can somewhat grasp what is going on which helps along the way.

Excuse me, but you are greatly underestimating the average Joe and immensely over-estimating yourself. I think most people with common sense understand that in our highly digitized and electronic world a wealth of information about us is kept in databases around the globe by both governments and commercial companies. It's the price we pay for the world we live in. The only way to escape this is to throw away your computers and smart phones and tablets and go live in a cave. And, yeah, duh, of course most of these programs are designed to be secret. Tell us something we already don't know.

Anyway I doubt that you have more information than Jim Sensenbrenner, or Senator Wyden, or Greenwald etc. I say please open up and listen them more closely.

No, I don't. And neither do you. And I never said I did. But tell us something about what they know that is so alarming instead of just talking in vague terms all the time. I would hope they know more about these things than you and I because if they don't, then they are not doing their jobs and should be fired.

And here is an article that should take care about the concerns about B&N data collection.

"Anonymized data really isn’t—and here’s why not"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...bases-of-ruin/

That article doesn't relate to B&N specifically at all. It relates to a very general issue of "anonymous" data gathering that could apply to thousands of companies and institutions around the world. To address the article, let me quote a few people who replied to it (emphasis mine):

To be honest, I'm astonished by the massive and terrified concern for people being able to 'be found.' It shows a kind of self-obsession and sense of self-importance that really has no place in society. There are 300 million people in this country - do you have any idea how long it would take to analyze the 'anonymized' data of all of them? Constantly repeating this story in this tone perpetuates the idiotic belief that someone, somehwere is interested (or, as noted, has the freaking time) to pour through our lives and find embarassing information about us - and further, that they have the ability and resoruces to make this *uncomfortable* for us.

Another response to that article:

This is why I and many other in my generation that I know of simply just assume that everything we do is public data for those who really want it, be it a list of purchases on a credit card, any forum posts or a facebook profile...

For now, the simplest thing for me to do is to just assume that my "database of ruin" exists and is +R for all (and even +W for many!). My only protection right now is the amount of energy anyone would have to use in order to actually harvest all the relevant data from all the places. It's not much, but it could be worse.

It's not 1984 yet. And I believe we will be able to solve the problems with the amount of data that is being collected in our modern world. I still have faith.

That pretty much sums up my response to that article.

Really, the naive ones are those who were surprised by the Snowden revelations when they came out and think that your electronic behavior is not trackable and preserved.

I do not want to accuse B&N since I have no direct data about their involvement, but most likely they are in the Nsa`s address book to contact. So separating B&N from the nsa topic is really so possible considering that Nsa blackmailed all the big corporations that can provide some kind of user data this way ot that way. Hey even some of them made good chunk of money afterall.

I still think you are way off base with B&N. If they were on the NSA list of companies to contact, I would bet that Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Google, Bing, Yahoo, Verizon, Times Warner, and literally hundreds of other media and telecommunications companies around the world were way way ahead of them on that list.

These issues realistically have so little to do with B&N in particular that your OP belonged more in the general discussion forum than in this one.

On the other hand calling me paranoid at this point after all those leaks/revelations is childish at best. If I am paranoid then most of the world is paranoid at this point. There are only handful of non paranoid people left, like most of the Obama cabinet and probably some people like you

Sounds to me like you are on the extreme end of the paranoia scale. Maybe I am on the other extreme end. But I would bet the the vast majority of people are in between with mixed views on the topic and don't share your extreme views.

Again, the price for living fully in a modern electronic world is to be trackable. There is no getting around it. You either accept it or go live in a cave.

Finally, khahoon, where were you raised and where do you live now? Not the exact address, of course, but as close to it as you are comfortable revealing. Just curious.

--Pat

[khahoon]

Originally Posted by PatNY

Huh? No, everything of significance regarding Snowden's leaks was known by July 27th. There was nothing NEW of any significance that came out AFTER the 27th. If you think there was something new, post it. Give a link proving what you say is true.

And so now you say the reason you never mentioned Snowden in your OP was because you were testing us? Yeah, sure.


--Pat

I do not know why you keep claiming things that I never said or meant. Did I ever say that I wanted to test people ? I merely said that I wanted to see if people paid attention to one of the most important issues of the day. This is not testing, this is just opening discussion and starting the discourse.

It sounds like you have not paid enough attention to see what has built up after 27th. There were more leaks and more details about the programs while goverment officials deliberately denied them along the way, well until the new leaks came out. As of now you know that when they denied these programs they were lying.

[PatNY]

Originally Posted by khahoon

I do not know why you keep claiming things that I never said or meant. Did I ever say that I wanted to test people ? I merely said that I wanted to see if people paid attention to one of the most important issues of the day. This is not testing, this is just opening discussion and starting the discourse.

Semantics. I apologize if you feel I misrepresented your statements. I can assure you, there was no intention to do so. It appears you are European living in the U.S., and English is not your native language. So I don't always understand exactly what you are trying to say.

As far as claiming things in the past that you said but didn't? Huh? Exactly where did I do that?

It sounds like you have not paid enough attention to see what has built up after 27th. There were more leaks and more details about the programs while goverment officials deliberately denied them along the way, well until the new leaks came out. As of now you know that when they denied these programs they were lying.

I'll ask for the third time, exactly what changed between July 27th and now? Nothing of significance. By July 27th, the leaks had already been reported for a couple of months. And, NO, on July 27th the government was NOT denying the leaked information.

Furthermore, I referenced the Snowden expose in post #4 in this thread on July 29th.

By your refusal to specify what has supposedly changed (with source links) since that time, I can only conclude that you have been far far behind the curve on this news story and wasn't fully aware of things in July. Very ironic for someone who fears the intrusion of the government.

--Pat

[JWez]

I see statements here about airplane mode being used, WIFI being turned off... etc. The fact is that if you registered your Nook and if you buy from them, then B&N knows exactly who you are and what you buy. Which is fair enough, but why should they be trusted to not go further? If they can, they invariably will, or even be forced to by the Ministry of Love.

Because the Nook source code is closed, no one knows what information is being transferred while the thing is connected to the Internet, or even when it is connecting to the internet. Know why people trust Firefox, and only sheep and morons trust Apple and Chrome? Open source.