By Eric Klein Free Speech Radio News airs a 4 minute version of this story, Wednesday, Feb 17.
In the Bay Area you can listen to FSRN at 3:30 on KPFA, 94.1 fm.
Check HERE for station's airing FSRN across the country.
Posted by Eric Klein on 02/17/10Our reporter's piece on Google Book Search was published today at one hour and 11 minutes into KPFA's morning show. (Update: Also made available at PRX)
Eric's piece was followed by Peer Review Editor Brian Edwards-Tiekert interviewing Pamela Samuelson, a professor of law at UC Berkeley discussing issues around the "fairness hearing" which is set for February 18th.
Below is a transcript of the audio piece Eric put together and audio embeds.
We will continue to fundraise for this piece until Wednesday at which point, we will close it up. We can't thank you enough for your continued support.
A transcript
Suggested Host Lead:
In 2004, Google launched the ambitious plan to scan millions of books and make them searchable online. Then authors and publishers sued, sparking a massive dispute over the comlpexities of copyright law. Now that lawsuit is working its way toward a settlement with the next big step being a fairness hearing on Febreary 18th. A number of groups and individuals are trying to block the Google Books deal, including privacy watchdogs. Eric Klein reports:
KLEIN:
Nicole Ozer is the technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California. She says that Google's real interest in digitizing the world's libraries is not to sell e-books, but to obtain more information about who we are and what we read.
OZER:
You sort of have to imagine a world where someone followed you around the library or the book store and they took notes on who you are and what books you picked up and then they were able to follow you home and read over your shoulder and take more notes about every page you read and how long you read each page – even what you wrote down in the margins. If you imagine that world – that world is actually google books.
Of course, no one would force you to use Google Books. But going without it would be as awkward as using the internet without a search engine. It's bringing the dewey decemil system into the digital age.
The same way Google helped make the entire internet more useful about 2 decades ago when it revolutionized web searches – now it's trying the do the same thing for all of the world's books. Part of the business model will be to sell books – digital copies as well as ink and paper – but hopes to cash in on the data it will collect about individual users. That's got privacy watchdog groups sounding the alarm
JESCHKE TEASER:
Google doesn't need to be evil for evil things to happen.
Rebeeca Jeschke is a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
JESCHKE
They collect a massive amount of information on you. They collect less now than they have in the past, but still google knows a lot about you.
Less now, in part, because of pressure from privacy groups like EFF. Google now keeps up to 18 months worth of search terms linked to each user, which is shorter than “forever” - but a lot more than EFF thinks is necessary or for that matter, healthy.
Again Nicole Ozer
OZER
These companies that are relying on a targeted advertisizing model to make money are monetizing very private details about our lives. When you're not paying with money you're usually paying with your private information.
Now if Google was keeping these extensive dossiers in it's own private vault that would be one thing. But the ACLU and EFF say that The Internet's biggest destination web sites are also giving private information away.
Nicole Ozer says that Google (and Facebook) have extensive staffs dedicated to responding to requests from third parties and law enforcement - and they are handing it over without judicial oversight.
OZER:
That's not because the companies are evil that's because the federal privacy laws that are supposed to be controlling access to electronic data was written in 1986, before the internet as we know it even existed.
1986 – before most people had email accounts, or online social networks. Before people used the web to meet friends, find news, and pay bills. Before “google” was a verb.
OZER:
Most of these things, the data that these companies collect aren't encompassed by this privacy law. So if Google collects information about who you are and what you search for and the government comes to ask for it the law says that Google turns that over with a supena. No judicial oversight. The same thing for location information. The same thing for anything other than content on facebook – what you click on and what you do and who you know.
In September 2009 the ACLU and EFF filed an official objection to the proposed settlement of the Google Books lawsuit.
They asked that Google Books increase user control and transperancy, delete all user information after 30 days, and most importantly – reject all third party requests for reader information that don't come with a court order
OZER - “If the Governement comes knocking we're going to tell them they need to come back with a warant.”
Two dozen authors and publishers signed onto the objection. One was Julian
Dibbell
He's a non-fiction writer and tech journalist who writes for Wired magazine, and has published two books about online gaming culture.
Dibbell is still very excited about the Google Books project, because of how it will broaden access to so much written history. But - he's also concerned the settlement is about to give Google a defacto monopoly over a good portion of that history.
DIBBELL
“Maybe a corporation is not the ideal entity to undertake this project”
There's a lot of potential for abuse. Google could limit access to books. It could price gouge. And its data gathering could spell the end of reader privacy:
DIBBELL
If you have just one Hub where everyone goes to read in the digital age, then its much easier for third parties, government or hackers to go find out about you.
They don't have to go checking from place to place. Nicloe Ozer:
OZER
Google really wants a court to let it become sort of a one stop shop for reading, but do nothing to make sure that it also is not a one stop shop for the government being able to spy on the private lives of americans.
DIBBELL
It makes it cheaper to invade people's privacy. In that sense it's not so much the technology itself as the consolidation of the market that makes it easier to invade people's privacy.
Julian Dibbell would like to preserve the culture of privacy rights that we enjoy at libraries and book stores.
DIBBELL
The idea that books can come along with us into the digital age is great because that preserves for us that mode of thinking even in the midst of this digital explosion. And yet whats crucial about that is that you are alone with that book. Just you and your thoughts and nobody looking over your shoulder (as everyone is when you are on twitter) or as definitly somebody is when you're reading the web in China. You are alone with that book. The idea that that private relationship with books would be threatened as we move forward into the digital age is really kind of disasterous. In fact it should be strengthened if anything because we need that space, we'll need to preserve that space in order to preserve the health of the intellectual ecology.
Take Debbie Nathan who writes for New York Magazine and The Nation.
NATAHAN
“I think probably a day doesn't go by that I don't use Google Books in my own research. I'm looking for something – I type in some key words over in “books” and a bunch of stuff comes up and I poke around and I say 'wow, this book looks really interesting,' and I either go over to a book seller on the left side of the page and I order that book or I find the nearest library and I go read that book.
Nathan often writes about sexuality – and her research often takes her to the margins of what's considered appropriate in mainstream society.
Her most recent book – written for the teenagers in clear and sober language – is titled “Pornography.”
Nathan says just knowing her privacy is vulnerable can have a chilling effect. For example, she recently sought out and read a book written by a man who was advocating for lowering of the age of consent.
NATHAN
I could imagine somebody doing research like myself who would be very very worried about looking at that on google.
And that could leave gaps in our understanding of controversial subjects
NATHAN
I'm not so scared of it but a lot of people really are, which is the problem, because when people are scared of an idea the government will just take that idea and run with it and put out a lot of disinformaiton.
For instance Nathan says that the Federal Government has used the false specter of a massive epidemic of on line child pornography to justify spying on Internet use under the PATRIOT Act. Research like hers can de-bunk fears that child pornography is on the rise, but not if people are afraid to do that research in the first place.
Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that reader privacy is a free speech issue.
JESCHKE
people forget is that our first amendment right to speak also includes our first amendment right to read. To hear what other people have to say. Its something that our courts have always recognized. That the right to speak and express yourself doesn't mean anything unless people are able to hear it.
And if people feel like someone's looking over their shoulders, they might censor their own reading. Again, author, Julian Dibbell:
DIBBELL
This is bad for the culture of reading that we have inherited. Books and the emergence of books as the really central way of interacting with information have carved out this space of interriority, of individuality. The place where you go, you and just that book, to sit for a while and think through and digest what's being presented to you. We are heading into an age – and I'm not knocking it in a luddite fashion as a lot of people do – we're heading into an age where that kind of reading is getting rarer and rarer
Google has done little to address the main concerns of privacy advocates. Now they hope the judge in the upcoming fairness hearing on the settlement agreement will step in and force more protections onto the Internet Giant.
A spokesperson for Google made it clear that they could not arrange an interview for this story.
Rebecca Jeschke:
JESCHKE
Looking at something like Google Books its very clearly the way that reading is going, and thats good. That this sort of digital access to large amounts of information is exciting and one of these great developments in 21st centruy information gathering. We want to make sure that these privacy rights that have long been recognized in the physical world parlay into the digital world. That we don't loose these important privacy gains that we have as the technology changes. Jeschke says that Google has promised to follow all existing privacy laws but she says those laws need to be strengthened when it comes to protecting digital information.
I'm Eric Klein reporting - With funding from spot us.
Posted by Spot. Us on 02/08/10
The KPFA Morning Show, heard in the San Francisco Bay Area on 94.1 fm and online at kpfa.org will air spot.us and Eric Klein's Google Books radio piece on Monday, February 8th at 8am. Following the piece the morning show will have U.C. Berkeley law school professor Pamela Samuelson on as a live guest. Samuelson worked directly with EFF and ACLU on their objection to the Google Books settlement.
(Check back here on Monday when the piece will be available for listening/downloading)
The next big date for the future of Google Books Search is February 18th, when the fairness hearing for the settlement deal will be held. This hearing will determine whether the judge will impose further conditions on Google before it is allowed to launch the entire Google Books project. The ACLU and EFF hope that the judge will call upon them to testify at the hearing regarding their concerns over reader privacy.
Posted by Eric Klein on 02/04/10
Below (scroll to bottom) is a radio piece Eric produced around a similar topic of privacy. It has been republished here (with transcript) with his permission. This will give you a sense of his work.
Some travelers entering and leaving the United States are having their
laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras searched and copied by
customs and border patrol agents. Recently released documents show
that the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a decades
old restriction on extreme border searches like these without probable
cause. Now there's a new bill introduced in Congress to protect
American's privacy when they travel. Eric Klein has the story:
Tahir Anwar doesn't know for certain if he's on a list or not
[Anwar (:10)]
"Every time I travel internationally I get this. I can't remember now
if it's 11 or 12 times, I think it's 12 out of 12 times that I come
back into the country I've been stopped."
Anwar is a US citizen and an Imam with the South Bay Islamic
Association in San Jose California. Each time he returns to the US
since 2006 he's subjected to 10 to 45 minutes worth of questioning by
Customs agents.
[Anwar (:07)]
"All my stuff is being gone through. My paper work, my laptop, my phone..."
Anwar has tried to find out why he's being singled out – but he is
told simply each time that he's been randomly selected. He was even
stopped after a trip he took on behalf of the US Government.
[Anwar (:17)]
"I went to Germany – I was speaking in Germany on behalf of the State
Department – the State Department has payed me to go – and I'm stopped
at the airport when I return. They copied all of the business cards I
collected on that trip."
[Shommo (:10) teaser]
"They didn't let me go until 5 hours later – and then since then every
time a come or leave I get searched.
Mohamed Shommo is a Technical Marketing Engineer for Cisco Systems in
San Jose. He has also been subject to intrusive searches and
questioning since 2006. Border agents have taken a look at his laptop
and asked him about his specific google searches. They've brought in
an interpretor to verify the Arabic book titles he's carrying. They've
gone trough his digital camera picture by picture.
[Shommo (:07)]
"Where did you take this picture? Who took it for you? A lot of
questions about pictures."
Both Mohamed Shommo and Tahir Anwar called the Asian Law Caucus – a
San Francisco based civil rights organization. Shirin Sinnar is a
staff Attorney.
[Sinnar (:21)]
"We find that a large number of people who complain to us about
intrusive searches and questioning are of south Asian or Muslim
background, but that's not true of everyone. We've also received
complaints from people of eastern European backgrounds, from Americans
who've been here for generations. Essentially the government believes
it has the power to investigate anyone at the boarder."
The Asian Law Caucus along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act to
obtain relevant documents on searches and questioning of travelers.
Last week they made made those FOIA documents publicly available for
the first time, revealing that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection
loosened 22 year old restrictions on the examination of travelers'
documents and papers. Rebecca Jeschke is a spokesperson for EFF.
"The new guidelines that the border agencies are going by is that they
can copy your computer and that they can transmit that information to
other agencies – copy your hard drive! That's pretty terrifying
because lots of people have their tax information on their laptops or
information on their health histories. This is very invasive to do on
a suspicionless basis, just to randomly pick you out and decide to
take all the information you have about you on your laptop."
The Asian Law Caucus and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are
seeking further documents from the Department of Homeland Security and
Customs and Boarder Patrol (CBP), but in the meantime they say that
lawmakers need to step in to reassert the rights of travelers.
There have been a series of bills in Congress since June that seek to
do just that – the most recent, and perhaps the strongest is the
Travelers Privacy Protection Act.
Tim Sparapani is the Senior Legislative Council with the ACLU in
Washington DC. His work focuses on Privacy issues on Capital Hill.
"This Bill would really make clear that CBP has gone too far and that
the boarder is not a lawless area. It is an area where the
Constitution still guides agency action.
The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, introduced by Senators Russ
Feingold with Maria Cantwell and Ron Wyden, along with Adam Smith of
Washington with a companion bill in the House, would force Government
Agents to get a warrant from a judge before they seized a laptop, cell
phone, or camera.
The Bill will likely be back before the Judiciary committee sometime next year.
For Free Speech Radio News I'm Eric Klein.
