Free rental of e-books comes at price of privacy

[Patricia]

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20120120/NJNEWS/301200039/Check-out-E-book-free?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

Sorry if this has already been posted.

[Ann in Arlington]

Kind of an old story. . .much discussed last fall shortly after the Kindle/Overdrive agreement came into being.

My personal feeling is that it's not a big deal.

[kindlegrl81]

Amazon doesn't get any more information from our library checkouts than they do with our Kindle book purchases.  If I didn't want Amazon to know this information, I would not have purchased the Kindle in the first place.

[dori chatelain]

I guess I don't understand the issue here..... I got a kindle I need someplace to buy books.... If I was to go to a book store and buy books and use my credit card the book store would know what books I am reading and all my personal information.

[Sarah1981]

I'm okay with it.

If I want to get my hands on a book without anybody else knowing about it, there are still ways to do it. Bookstores haven't stopped accepting cash, after all.

[Sandpiper]

IIRC, when Amazon first came into being there was big "stink" about being able to track purchases, then make suggestion for possible purchase, etc., etc.  So what?  Do you (rhetorical "you") have any rewards cards?  Same thing.  I get price deals at the grocery store I shop at because they keep track of what I buy.  OK.  Except they've made the whole program so complicated / convoluted they're software can't handle it.   

[KindleChickie]

Meh.  I am not reading bomb making books so I just don't care.  It's not like my purchases have never been tracked after all.  I have many different discount cards on a key loop in my purse.  Each on tracks my purchases. 

Last time I checked out printed books at the library, the librarian asked if I had read such n such because she thought I might like it based on what I just checked out.  Not a chicken little moment for me.

[NightGoat]

No one cares what I'm reading, I'm not all that important.

[J.R.Mooneyham]

Yeah, this by itself doesn't seem like a big deal to a lot of us. HOWEVER...it is NOT just this by itself: big business and big government are enveloping us all in a vast surveillance system which basically allows someone with access to it to know virtually everything about you: everything you buy offline and online; read all your emails, instant messages, and forum postings; your health history; your credit history; your list of assets like cars and real estate; your family members; listen to your phone conversations; examine your web surfing history and search engine usage, and lots, lots more. And all this can not only be done in realtime, but years later, as all the info is being archived.

The main reason all this is being done for the moment is to data mine the masses for reasons of marketing and political research. But usually anytime a V.I.P. or law enforcement agency wants to rummage through your particular files, that can happen too.

Unfortunately, we're all just sitting back and letting it happen. Heck: at the very LEAST big biz and big gov should have to pay each of us a small sum for such access to all our personal info, annually (for big biz at least is making a lot of money off it). And it's a real liability for us, possibly adversely affecting us in any number of ways.

[LaraAmber]

Sorta

<i>Yeah, this by itself doesn't seem like a big deal to a lot of us. HOWEVER...it is NOT just this by itself: big business and big government are enveloping us all in a vast surveillance system which basically allows someone with access to it to know virtually everything about you: everything you buy offline and online; read all your emails, instant messages, and forum postings; your health history; your credit history; your list of assets like cars and real estate; your family members; listen to your phone conversations; examine your web surfing history and search engine usage, and lots, lots more. And all this can not only be done in realtime, but years later, as all the info is being archived.</i>

1. These are not all in one giant database.  We're talking servers all over the planet with various levels of encryption.  It also requires reporting.  Target is not going to tell American Express what I bought when I went into their store.  American Express doesn't care and Target will be territorial about the data.  My bank does not know how I spent the money I got from the ATM. 
2. Many of these things are already available via papertrails.  My assets like cars and real estate have been available through government agencies forever.
3. Only as long as it is reasonable for them to store the data.  Archiving data is not free.  Every pile of information costs money for them to store.  It means more servers, more harddrives, larger facilities, more energy (it costs a fortune to run and cool those machines), more employees, and more money spent when trying to upgrade systems and needing to transfer data to the new system.  Companies actively purge information to save money AND protect themselves from liability.  For example, once a lawsuit has started, it's illegal to destroy documents, but if you haven't been sued or aren't being investigated by a government agency, and your company is following their standard document purging protocols, suddenly those improperly filled out I-9s from 1995 that could have gotten you in trouble have been destroyed.  Here is a real life example we have right now at work.  We have a server full of digital X-rays in a format no one uses any more.  The server is starting to fail.  We are only required by law to keep the X-rays for one more year.  So our choices are "pay a huge amount of money to have a specialist come in and try and translate those images to the new system and re-establish all the links between images and patient records" or "make a backup copy, wait a year just in case, and destroy the server".  Guess which option we picked?  The one that DOESN'T cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

<i>The main reason all this is being done for the moment is to data mine the masses for reasons of marketing and political research. But usually anytime a V.I.P. or law enforcement agency wants to rummage through your particular files, that can happen too.</i>

Most data mining is stripped of non-essential information to make it easier to crunch the numbers.  (Again, we don't want to overtax machines.)
VIP?  No.  Government agency?  Well if they know where to look and have a warrant. 

<i>Unfortunately, we're all just sitting back and letting it happen. Heck: at the very LEAST big biz and big gov should have to pay each of us a small sum for such access to all our personal info, annually (for big biz at least is making a lot of money off it). And it's a real liability for us, possibly adversely affecting us in any number of ways.</i?>

How about no?  The second they start sending us checks it goes from "private information collected in the course of doing business that we must protect and secure" to "data we purchased". 

[tamaraheiner]

yeah, I don't worry about this at all. For one, I don't feel like I have anything to hide, so who cares if someone knows my purchase history? They can make it public as far as I'm concerned.

As for CC info, etc, well there's no sure-proof way. Even the guy taking my order at Taco Bell can steal my info.

[PhillyGuy]

. . . read all your emails, instant messages, and forum postings

Forum postings?  You don't want people who work for the government to read your posts? Why did you post anti-government views if you want to hide them from people who work for the government?

your list of assets like cars and real estate

You mean, like the real estate transaction lists routinely printed in newspapers?

Having government employees keep straight who owns what cars and real estate is one of the fundamental purposes of government. Countries where the government doesn't keep clear records of who owns what real estate and motor vehicles are unpleasant to live in. You might want to check out some of what Hernando de Soto has written on this topic.

Unfortunately, we're all just sitting back and letting it happen.

No, I am leaning forward and actively typing this post, which can be read by anyone who wants to, government employee or otherwise, and perhaps for all time. You are the one who is letting it happen; I'm helping it happen  

With these views, I'm a little confused why you apparently have a Kindle rather than an eReader that lacks 3G or WiFi. Some Sony models would work.  

[J.R.Mooneyham]

The internet and digital data allows big entities to compile everything about you and your loved ones into a single summarizing file with a chilling comprehensiveness you cannot imagine. And whatever stripping of personal identification you hope is taking place with some of the data is just as easily regained and added to the file again elsewhere. I don't say this lightly. Here's just a FEW references...

The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70914

You've Got Someone Reading Your E-Mail
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/technology/12drill.html?ex=1150776000&en=102080db1df05d5d&ei=5058&partner=IWON

Big Brother is watching you 24/7 The roots of America's surveillance culture are deep - and ominous
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0918/p20s02-bogn.html

Bush may have crossed the line by tracking every US phone call - World - Times Online by Tim Reid; May 12, 2006; timesonline.co.uk

Government Increasingly Turning to Data Mining
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402063.html

National Security Agency Whistleblower Warns Domestic Spying Program Is Sign the U.S. is Decaying Into a "Police State"
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/3/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_warns

The Other Big Brother - The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far By Michael Isikoff Newsweek; Jan. 30, 2006 issue

"The privacy war is over--you lost"

-- The privacy blitz is coming By Brock Meeks, MSNBC, April 6, 2001

Tinker, Tailor, Miner, Spy
Why the NSA's snooping is unprecedented in scale and scope.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2006/01/tinker_tailor_miner_spy.html

The Snooping Goes Beyond Phone Calls
How the government sidesteps the Privacy Act by purchasing commercial data
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_22/b3986068.htm

AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHB9C1.DTL&hw=at&sn=002&sc=870

Gov't Break a Law? Change It
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2006/06/71238

"The following is a list of some 500 software tools, databases, data mining and processing efforts contracted for, under development or in use at the NSA and other intelligence agencies today..."

-- EXCERPT FROM Telephone Records are just the Tip of NSA's Iceberg By William M. Arkin | May 12, 2006; blog.washingtonpost.com

What we don't know
Just how pervasive is the Bush administration's spying program? Hard to tell — the documents are secret. And that's just the beginning
http://www.sfbg.com/40/23/cover_bush.html

Psst, Your Car is Watching You
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1223380,00.html

"Get ready for Microsoft, cable and phone companies, and quite a few other people to know a lot more about what you do on your computer..."

-- The Watchers by Ben Fenwick; okgazette.com; April 05, 2006

"If you used a commercial tax preparer, your data could be at a lot of places other than the IRS - a bank, a mortgage company or some other business that wants to sell you something."

-- For sale: Your 1040; April 4, 2006; USA TODAY; news.yahoo.com

Police blotter: Judge lets Feds track cell phones
http://news.cnet.com/Police-blotter-Judge-lets-Feds-track-cell-phones/2100-1028_3-6006453.html?part=rss&tag=6006453&subj=news

Using cell phones to track employees | Tech News on ZDNet; Reuters; February 5, 2006

Your cell phone's location can be tracked, and it can be used to eavesdrop on your conversations even when turned off-- all without your knowledge;

"Your phone most likely has a lithium-ion battery — the same kind that was catching fire in all those laptops. A special circuit keeps them from overheating and, potentially, exploding.

I wonder if that circuit can be disabled with a remote command. "

-- Your cellphone is more powerful than you probably know by Andrew Kantor; 12/29/2006; usatoday.com
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-12-28-cellphone-privacy_x.htm

"The program allows ground-level party activists to track voters by personal hobbies, professional interests, geography — even by their favorite brands of toothpaste and soda and which gym they belong to."

-- The GOP knows you don't like anchovies Unpopular Republicans still own the art of politicking. By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger; June 25, 2006; latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-hamburger25jun25,0,906381.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

-- The Plot To Hijack Your Computer They watch you surf the Web. They plague you with pop-up ads. Then they cripple your hard drive; JULY 17, 2006; businessweek.com
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_29/b3993001.htm

We're giving up privacy and getting little in return by Bruce Schneier; May 31, 2006; startribune.com

"Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with."

-- The Eternal Value of Privacy By Bruce Schneier; May, 18, 2006; wired.com
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886

[J.R.Mooneyham]

LaraAmber: 1. These are not all in one giant database.  We're talking servers all over the planet with various levels of encryption.  It also requires reporting.  Target is not going to tell American Express what I bought when I went into their store.  American Express doesn't care and Target will be territorial about the data.  My bank does not know how I spent the money I got from the ATM.

Yes, they are. In at least one giant database: the NSA's. At least if you live in America, or whatever interaction you have with an American (and the NSA scoops up such info from many other countries too, either by treaty or illegally (the NSA is a spy agency).

Also, every company you do business with routinely sells everything they know about you to any and all comers. If there's anything held back at all, it is very little. So unless Target tells you in writing somewhere that they don't do that, they ARE. Selling your data to AmeEx (at least if AmEx wants it). Your bank can find out where you spent your money if they want to; all they have to do is buy it from the proper agency. Whatever tiny bits of your life aren't directly tracked somewhere can be filled in by calculations based on everything that IS tracked.

Therefore, other entities can build much the same gigantic one-stop database as the NSA runs, for themselves.

LaraAmber: 2. Many of these things are already available via papertrails.  My assets like cars and real estate have been available through government agencies forever.

Yes, paper trails have existed for a long time. But now they are largely obsolete. For the data is entered into an electronic database somewhere, and so is right at the fingertips of anyone with access to the system. In the past, you had some protection because a snooper might have to physically travel to your hometown to access some records. But that's increasingly no longer true.

LaraAmber: 3. Only as long as it is reasonable for them to store the data.  Archiving data is not free.  Every pile of information costs money for them to store.  It means more servers, more harddrives, larger facilities, more energy (it costs a fortune to run and cool those machines), more employees, and more money spent when trying to upgrade systems and needing to transfer data to the new system.  Companies actively purge information to save money AND protect themselves from liability.  For example, once a lawsuit has started, it's illegal to destroy documents, but if you haven't been sued or aren't being investigated by a government agency, and your company is following their standard document purging protocols, suddenly those improperly filled out I-9s from 1995 that could have gotten you in trouble have been destroyed.  Here is a real life example we have right now at work.  We have a server full of digital X-rays in a format no one uses any more.  The server is starting to fail.  We are only required by law to keep the X-rays for one more year.  So our choices are "pay a huge amount of money to have a specialist come in and try and translate those images to the new system and re-establish all the links between images and patient records" or "make a backup copy, wait a year just in case, and destroy the server".  Guess which option we picked?  The one that DOESN'T cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

Mass storage is dirt cheap now-- and getting cheaper. For large entities like big government and big business, mass storage is now ridiculously cost-effective-- and effectively infinite. For it's easy now to possess far more storage than you can fill. There's very few restrictions on how long many entities hold onto your data, and few motivations to let go of it; for as long as they have it, they can keep selling copies of it, or mining it to sell specialized reports including your data. There's been only sparse debates on how long various parties keep the data; and in any case, whenever a party like the telecoms has been found to be breaking the law there on such things, Congress changed the law to make them immune to such restrictions.

Your personal data is money in the bank, since it can be sold in so many different ways, to so many customers. That's why they don't purge it. The aggregate data on the daily lives and preferences of millions of Americans is worth a fortune to big business and big government, while one patient's ancient X-ray has only a very narrow niche use, and isn't a commodity likely to be in demand by various corporate or government agencies. Hence, few are interested in retaining it.

LaraAmber: Most data mining is stripped of non-essential information to make it easier to crunch the numbers.  (Again, we don't want to overtax machines.)
VIP?  No.  Government agency?  Well if they know where to look and have a warrant.  

The stripping of one narrow range of data of personal identification is easily reversed by the sophisticated software now available, which simply matches that narrow range back up to its original set again by virtue of all the NON-stripped data available. Sort of like if you take a type-written sheet, and use scissors to snip one very narrow column or row out of it. Now say you have a hundred such sheets, and a hundred such snips. Given enough time, you could easily match all the snips back their original sheets again. Now picture this all being electronic, and computers doing the matching rather than people. It's practically instant, in most cases. And if any difficulty IS encountered, they simply hand the task over to super computers for a few minutes...

And yes, VIPs get privileged access to a great many things in American these days (and by VIP, I mean someone like a wealthy backer of an important politician, or the politician themselves). Government agencies buy such data from corporations all the time. For much of it, no warrant is necessary, as our laws are somewhat behind the times on such things, plus filled with loopholes. But even where a warrant is SUPPOSED to be required, that's been ignored or waived so many times that there was a minor scandal about it in regards to the telecoms a few years back. So what happened? Congress and the President declared the lawbreakers immune to the old law, and then changed the law so that warrant requirements were vastly weakened in regards to future actions of that sort. But I guess you missed all that in the news.

[PhillyGuy]

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

This insults my own many relatives killed in political violence.

The question the above quote raises is whether, on a nice friendly board like this, which people joined to talk about the Kindle, I should just "quietly submit." For this post, I won't. Government officials need a lot of information about you to keep ours a free, financially sound, and safe society. And, if inclined to oppression, they only need a smiggen of information before destroying you.

[Sean Patrick Fox]

Oh well. There are other things that are far more invasive, and to be totally honest I don't care if people know what I'm reading.

[J.R.Mooneyham]

PhillyGuy, I think you've got your wires crossed. That quote from Businessweek was referring to what abuse an unethical (or maybe incompetent, or insufficiently regulated) business might do to folks-- that they might push them right to the edge in terms of what was acceptable. I provided the link in that post so you can read it for yourself.

[mom133d (aka Liz)]

My library already stores the last 100 items that I've checked out.

Personally, I'm more worried about that Progressive "SnapShot" thing they're doing. Now that is Big Brother watching and you're signing up for it! Sure thing America, lets complain about how our rights and privacy are being violated, and then sign up for "SnapShot" and let your insurance company monitor exactly how you drive your car.

[kindlegrl81]

Anything that I do on the internet, radio, TV, or phone can be monitored and recorded; and not just by the government or corporations...there are regular people who get a kick out of following people online and in real life just see how much information they can accumulate.

This is a part of living a digital life, which is why when I choose (emphasis on choose...we are not being forced to use a cell phone, internet or the library) to participate in these activities I do so with the understanding everything I do is being watched.

If I had a problem with all of this, I would not own a Kindle, a library card, a computer, a cell phone or a TV and I would pay for everything in store with cash.

[LaraAmber]

Mass storage is dirt cheap now-- and getting cheaper. For large entities like big government and big business, mass storage is now ridiculously cost-effective-- and effectively infinite. For it's easy now to possess far more storage than you can fill. There's very few restrictions on how long many entities hold onto your data, and few motivations to let go of it; for as long as they have it, they can keep selling copies of it, or mining it to sell specialized reports including your data. There's been only sparse debates on how long various parties keep the data; and in any case, whenever a party like the telecoms has been found to be breaking the law there on such things, Congress changed the law to make them immune to such restrictions.

What do you do for a living?  I'm pretty sure from this response that you don't actually work in IT.  I'm on the IT Committee for my hospital and oversee our IT subcontractors.  My husband is a computer programmer for a state agency and spends his days in one of those massive server rooms you see in movies.  My sister and her husband both work in computer software development and have security clearances with the government so they work classified projects of the kind that freak out conspiracy theorists.  Several of my friends work for government agencies as software developers, chip designers, and information specialists.  Hell, several of them have projects currently orbiting the earth or deployed in the Middle East.  The last thing any one of us would say is "mass storage is dirt cheap".  Sure your 8 GB flash drive is dirt cheap.  When you're talking about real data and accessing it, that's serious money.   

 

[Chad Winters]

OMG!!! You mean Amazon knows what books I read!? That's outrageous

Oh.....wait.....I already review most of the books I read on Amazon and Goodreads.....So technically the whole world knows that I'm reading David Weber......

[J.R.Mooneyham]

LaraAmber, I've been IT chief for an R&D corporation serving DARPA. I've provided research to US Special Operations at their request. Contributed lots of tablet computer ideas to Apple, prior to the unveiling of the iPad (including discussions of the subject with one of the VPs). I've been an independent software developer, and involved with computer hardware and software for almost 35 years now. So your opinion on the declining cost of mass storage is most puzzling to me. Note that it's easy to find references online about the decline, too (both processing power and storage space have plummeted in cost over past decades). But if you've actually been in the industry very long at all, this should be obvious to you. Anyone in this forum can Google those facts for themselves.