EFF's guide to e-book buying & privacy

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by questionfear

My question: How is this any different than if I walk into Barnes and Noble and purchase a book on my credit card? My CC company has the information about the transaction, so does B&N. Presumably this also gets saved in a giant computer.

Excuse me, I'm going to go pop on my tinfoil hat and burn my ID now.

In your example the credit card has a record that you made a purchase of a book from Barnes and Noble but not what the title was. Barnes and Noble has a record of the book you bought but they are regulated about how they handle the private data they collected.

This is talking about the devices logging everything that you read, when you read it and the ability to gather that data and claim they own it. Not just the books you bought from B&N but the books from any other source. It's intended to draw attention to the ability, question the right of the companies to gather this data and foster debate about if this is private data or not.

I personally believe it's private data and the companies have no right to gather it. There is proof that Amazon is logging the data locally on the device but I've seen no evidence they're gathering it. I'm interested on how the others compare.

Some additional tin foil hat food for thought.

I heard on the radio that there was a big surge in sales of the book that Tiger Woods had in the back seat of his car when he tried to drive it up a tree. If a company had a record of all the books he read in the last two years could they sell it to the tabloids? Eeewww maybe he was reading the Kama Sutra on the night he met the waitress in Vegas.

In 20 years will the next Prime Minister candidate for Canada have to defend the books they read in the last 20 years. Maybe Sarah Palin would like to buy the data so she could answer the question about what newspapers and magazine she reads.

The Joseph McCarthy trials were before my time but I'm sure he would have loved access to this kind of data. I'm sure that people that lived through it have a strong opinion about it and they probably aren't wearing tin foil hats.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

FYI, Amazon does NOT track (or sync) items that you did not purchase through their store. Anything you purchase via credit card is eminently trackable anyway, so it seems to me that with pretty much any ebook device, you are losing a small portion of your privacy.

That said, I don't think the EFF piece is really that far off. They just ought to update it for the Sony wireless, and acknowledge that any ebook store is subject to the same legal requirements as any other. And let's face it, if you run afoul of the law and used a credit card to buy your electronic copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, I doubt the prosecutor is going to care that your ebook device doesn't sync to a central server somewhere.

But it does seem to me that if you really want to keep your book selections truly private, you need to buy paper books in cash while wearing a disguise, and destroy your books immediately after reading.

I'm a fan of the Richard Nixon mask, myself.....

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by igorsk

We don't know if they track it or not, but they do have such ability.

Wireless carriers pretty much know where you are anyway; cf Sprint's fulfilling a large number of warrants for GPS location requests. If you don't want either a large commercial organization to know where you are, or for that information to get into the hands of law enforcement, I suggest you chuck your cell phone in the nearest river.

As to ebs's post, the file in question ("Kindle DX User's Guide") doesn't indicate that the Kindle reports anything other than what's synced via Whispernet. Amazon pretty much tells you "we'll sync your purchases across multiple devices!" so seeing this info would really only shock you if you assume that syncs occur via magic rather than reporting information to a central server.

Similarly, it would be trivial for Sony's software to "phone home" about books loaded onto a Sony device, or again for Sony to turn over purchase records if law enforcement has a warrant. I have no doubt they (and every other online bookstore out there, and a bunch of brick & mortar stores too) put your purchase data into their databases, for a variety of internal and 3rd party uses. (E.g. paper book distributors will aggregate sales data, and resell that information to the publishers for their own marketing uses.)

You are welcome to worry about it if you want, that's your choice. But I don't see any evidence that a non-networked device protects your privacy all that much more than a networked one.

[ostler99]

I run my ebook collection of my computer.
I do not wish to give outsiders access to it. It is not the business of others to know what I read or what music or films I play.
I have a Sony 700 which connects by calibre. I do not use the Sony software.
I am about to have an iRex which is a simple USB download.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I'm a fan of the Richard Nixon mask, myself.....

Thought so.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Barcey

The Joseph McCarthy trials were before my time but I'm sure he would have loved access to this kind of data. I'm sure that people that lived through it have a strong opinion about it and they probably aren't wearing tin foil hats.

Joseph McCarthy was neither the first nor the last, simply the most stupid and notorious. During World War I, for example, Woodrow Wilson authorized his postmaster general, a very illiterate man, to censor anything sent through the mails and Congress passed a law authorizing the attorney general to prosecute anyone who might even encourage someone not to volunteer to fight. Well worth reading is Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent by Ernest Freeberg. No one was safe; thousands were prosecuted simply because they were feared or because of what they read, not because they took any overt action, and judges, including the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions and the act.

We should be very much on guard about what will be done with the data being collected.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Barcey

The Joseph McCarthy trials were before my time but I'm sure he would have loved access to this kind of data. I'm sure that people that lived through it have a strong opinion about it and they probably aren't wearing tin foil hats.

I'm not so sure about this. I'm certain he wouldn't have liked it if anybody other than him had access to the data-he preferred to make up his 'facts' rather than research them, and absolutely hated it when he was proven wrong. (In fact, IIRC, he never did admit that he was wrong.)

A fairly common mistake is that Tailgunner Joe was trying to root out Communists. No such thing-all he was trying to do was establish a tyranny. You don't need facts for that, all you need to do is claim that you have facts & prevent anybody from proving you wrong. In that case gathering data such as this would work against him-if it got into the hands of his enemies. (IMO the only 'data' that's safe is that which is never gathered.)

[Gunnerp245]

Remembered this thread when installing the updated 'Sony Reader Library 3.1':

SONY EULA

SOFTWARE DATA COLLECTION AND MONITORING

"The SOFTWARE contains features which may allow SONY and/or third parties to collect data from, control and/or monitor computers and devices running or interacting with the SOFTWARE.

You hereby consent to such activities. SONY's current privacy policy is located at <http://products.sel.sony.com/SEL/legal/privacy.pdf>. Please contact applicable third-parties for privacy policies related to their software and services."

Gunner...