Bugged e-books in the future? And how might the library world respond?
Via Trojans and the like in e-mail, the German government hopes to use malware to snoop on people under suspicion.
The White House, of course, aspires toward a point-and-click, KGBish system, assuming it isn’t in place already.
Pols and civil libertarians in both countries are the debating little details such as exactly who’s to be spied on.
The snoop-copyright connection
Now here’s a question. Will the day come when Washington uses bugs in e-books, especially the multimedia variety, as a snoop tool? And would this happen in alliance with the entertainment industry, in return for still-more restrictive copyright laws?
Someday will Washington not only know whether you read an e-book but which pages you lingered on? And what about the politically related blackmail possibilities?
Spooky entertainment biz alliances?
In fact, some of the technology associated with tracking of copyrighted material might well lend itself to snooping. Someday might a large publishing conglomerate, dependent on the feds for TV licenses and friendly copyright laws, publish an uppity book and then be forced to hand over to the feds a list of readers.
The library angle: Just as with the Patriot Act, will Washington hush librarians, so they can’t reveal outrageous civil liberties offenses—in this case, involving books that they discovered to be bugged? Will libraries use anti-spyware programs to try to screen books for fedware? Will such precautions be legal?
Fun tourist attraction: No matter how you feel on the above issue, you might check out the International Spy Museum if you’re doing the tourist act in the D.C. area.
And a reminder: Massive spy operations, especially against U.S. citizens, are different from security-related taps authorized by due process.
Related: Chinese military hacked into Pentagon, in the Financial Times, via Techmeme. Perhaps time for the feds to worry less about emulating the old KGB and more about protecting their own secrets?
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