Quote:
Originally Posted by Kindleing
For some people it is the issue of what information is being collected, by who and for what purpose. Certainly the vendor knows what we buy from them, but what about other parties we don't know about? A few years ago Adobe was caught uploading inventories of material sideloaded to ereaders - titles which had nothing to do with ADE in particular and digital rights management in general. Adobe also had one of the biggest data breaches of all time, where they lost control of account information and unencrypted passwords. Where did all that information end up? Nobody knows.
There are times and locations where being caught with "unapproved" reading material can have disastrous consequences. Just a few months ago in Portland Oregon a young man was beaten bloody because he was carrying an American flag during a public demonstration. It isn't hard to imagine what would happen to someone seen in a nearby coffee shop reading the "wrong" book, or was included on a list circulated by those who oppose some particular viewpoint.
I interpreted the OP's post to be about covert surveillance collecting and collating information on people's reading habits and interests. Of course Amazon knows about the books they sold their customers, but they (and Adobe) don't need to know about the books their customers obtained from other sources. It is now illegal in the US for rental companies to disclose the titles of videos rented/borrowed by a customer but I don't believe the same protection applies to ebooks.
It isn't about hiding from Amazon, Kobo or Bank of America - it is about being free to read anything which interests an individual without having to look over one's shoulder while doing so.
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If you are that paranoid, then you best stay home. Never go out. never do anything in public. Order all your food online. Just give up and crawl back to bed. If we let that kind of paranoia get to us, then we've lost. We've lost our freedom and our life. It's not worth living if we are going to be that afraid of reading a book or going out someplace. I refuse to not be able to live my life.