E-book snooping in the future? Airport reading-searches a bad omen. An ugly new America?

Remember my warning against bug-infested e-books in the future, courtesy Big Brother in Washington, D.C.? Well, it turns out that Washington is already recording the p-reading tastes of some travelers under suspicion during airport luggage inspections. It happened to EFF cofounder John Gillmore.

The e-book angle: So does this mean that the screeners at the airport or elsewhere will systematically search your cellphone or PDAs for suspicious e-book files? Or maybe Washington will ban user-initiated encryption so you can’t hide that evil anti-Bush book? The possibilities reel the mind. Perhaps the International Spy Museum should consider building a new collection of obnoxious snooping tools that governments use against their citizens in massive dragnets on a KGBish scale.

Off-topic NOT

I’d love just to run the usual e-book blog and not worry about these greater issues, but in the present White House, we have a mix of Big Brotherish tendencies and sheer passion for corruption—with too many members of both major political parties failing to fight back. The snooping and the corruption may very well go together in the future if they are not already, with spying and gotcha laws used both to control political opponents and keep at bay the business rivals of the Bush-style cliques.

Because the prosperity of some book publishers depends in part on the ability of their customers to read in private, perhaps it’s time to consider DRM in this new light. I continue to like the idea of Social DRM (not really DRM in the traditional sense) since its approach can be mainly psychological. You don’t need to have any definitive identification via technical means. But given what the Bushies are up to, I wonder about hidden IDs and other technologies that Washington in the future could exploit in Orwellian ways against e-book readers.

An uglier new America: Student’s 50,000-volt jolt—for being uppity

If you think this is the same America as half a dozen years ago, I invite you to watch a video of a student Tasered with 50,000 volts because he asked uppity questions during John Kerry‘s recent visit to Florida. Kerry, for those who don’t know, is supposedly a progressive Democrat.

Oh, well. People who’ve followed the TeleBlog in the past know our past feelings about this guy based on his ‘tude toward copyright issues. A wimp, capital W. Could copyright issues be a “canary in the coal mine” on other questions? By the way, John Edwards, too, continues to be mum on copyright matters, at least last I knew. Ideally, however, he’d have shown more backbone than Kerry did while the cops were zapping the journalism student with 50,000 volts.

For those outside the Unites States

This is relevant to you, too, alas, since America sets the political and financial tone for so many other countries.

In the financial area, one of the hottest new investments for Wall Street is stock in a company that will help the Chinese eavesdrop on citizens.

The Adobe e-book angle: Hook-ups possible with Chinese snoopsters?

Will China Security and Surveillance Technology forge alliances with Adobe and Microsoft? Unlike some, I’m willing to forget Adobe’s sins of some years ago against a Russian programmer—jailed for breaking inept encryption—if the company will change.

Hey, Adobe and others. Will you or won’t you do business with the Chinese-snooping company? Will you pledge, now, to avoid building hooks into e-books that totalitarian third parties, foreign or domestic, could use for mass surveillance? And specifically agree to avoid any other dealings, direct or indirect, with China Security and Surveillance Technology? Here’s a chance to show the moral leadership of which Kerry was so incapable during the Tasering.