________________________________________________________________________________ Wired News Big Brother, Big 'Fun' at Amazon by Declan McCullagh 3:00 a.m. 25.Aug.99.PDT A new Amazon.com service designed to create shopping communities worries some customers who are concerned about potential corporate espionage and threats to individual privacy. The feature lets anyone view books, movies, and CDs ordered by amazon.com customers at corporations, nonprofit groups, and government agencies. Some examples include evidence that Intel engineers are busily buying up books on Linux device drivers, that Netscape programmers are building certain protocols into future products, and that US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist's book on the history of impeachment is still a popular read among Congressional aides. But Amazon didn't ask groups for permission before using employees' and members' orders to create the corporate profiles that appeared on its Web site last Friday, and not all organizations are enthusiastic about even summarized personal-purchase information appearing online. Amazon.com sorts orders into company categories based on the domain name of the computer -- such as intel.com or microsoft.com -- where the order originated. "It's a step closer to Big Brother," says Sara Busch, director of marketing and business development for the Institute for Global Communications, which provides connectivity to many liberal and left-wing organizations. "How are they going to use this data? How are progressive organizations and individuals who see IGC listed going to perceive IGC? Are they going to think that IGC is endorsing these books? Are they going to think that IGC is endorsing buying from amazon.com over your local small community bookstore?" Busch says. (According to the IGC profile, its subscribers are devotees of the socialist manifesto Pedagogy of the Oppressed.) Amazon says it added so-called purchase circles in response to feedback and has no plans to let customers opt out of having their purchases profiled. "It's a great, fun feature. Almost anyone who visits the area will automatically identify with a purchase circle. It's a fun, interactive feature ... people will often find things they'll read, watch, and listen to," says spokesman Paul Capelli. Capelli says only information about purchases from large organizations or corporations with at least "many hundreds of users" will be listed on Amazon.com. But Tuesday, US Internet Council, a Washington, DC trade association with a staff of six people, was featured. "It gives us an uneasy feeling," says USIC spokesman Mark Rhoads. "Even though it's not personally identifiable, it has the feel of an invasion of privacy." (And who was busy using one of USIC's five computers to order albums by teenybopper Britney Spears? Rhoads says an intern was to blame.) Amazon's Capelli said his company had incorrectly listed the group, and intended to list United States Internet Inc., a service provider with thousands of customers. The U.S. Internet Council area had been partially replaced with U.S. Internet Inc. by 6:30 p.m. PDT Tuesday. A market intelligence researcher says purchase circles could offer insights into company planning and product development. "If you could monitor patterns over time, you might be able to draw inferences," says Bruce Love, research director at Minneapolis-based Smaby Group. "From an intelligence standpoint, I'll probably take advantage of it now." Company profiling comes at a time when consumer nervousness about privacy has, according to polls, never been greater, and a year after Ken Starr's investigation of Monica Lewinsky's book-buying raised questions about the confidentiality of purchases. Privacy experts say Amazon may not have thought through the implications of its new feature. "There are companies listed there that probably would not be pleased for the world to know what their employees are reading," says Lorrie Cranor, a researcher at AT&T Labs-research and chairman of next year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. "A lot of companies probably won't like it -- if they were aware of it. I can even imagine companies prohibiting their employees from buying books from Amazon," Cranor says. According to Amazon.com, Microsoft employees continue to order bulk quantities of Bill Gates' Business @ the Speed of Thought and are fascinated by the idea of computers becoming invisible and morphing into embedded info-appliances. Amazon says it plans to expand the service by adding additional profiles of organizations. The company's privacy policy does not prohibit any use it chooses to make of "aggregate" order information. http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21417.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org