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Congressman lobs bombshell at Amazon’s new Silk browser, claims shades of Orwell’s 1984

October 14, 2011 at 1:30 pm by 8 Comments

There may be a new “big brother” in town, and it might just go by the name of Amazon.com. That’s the worry of Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) who today sent a letter to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos expressing concern over the online retailer’s new Silk browser for the Kindle Fire. In the letter, Markey expresses concerns that Amazon.com could “collect and utilize an extraordinary amount of information about its users’ surfing and buying habits.”

“Consumers may buy the new Kindle Fire to read ‘1984,’ but they may not realize that the tablet’s ‘Big Browser’ may watching their every keystroke when they are online,” Markey said in a press release. “As the use of mobile devices, especially tablets, becomes ubiquitous, we must ensure that user privacy is protected and proper safeguards are in place so that consumers know if and when their personal information is being used and for what purpose. I look forward to hearing more from Amazon in response to these questions.”

Markey isn’t the only politician attacking the new Silk browser. Earlier this week, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) raised privacy concerns over how the browser will collect information from consumers, according to Ars Technica.

Here’s the letter from Markey to Bezos. We’ve asked the company for comment, and will update the post if we hear more. UPDATE: A spokeswoman at Amazon said that users can turn off the split-browsing mode and use Amazon Silk like a conventional Web browser.

letter_to_amazon

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  • Jsld

    Next, I will write a letter to Waste Management. 

    Dear WM:

    When you collect the trash, do you shred all documents you collect when you resell to 3rd world countries?

  • Anonymous

    The inquisition begins before the product has made it to market. This is how it starts.

  • Anonymous

    If you use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or IE, and use Comcast for your internet access, doesn’t all the traffic go through the Comcast servers?  They could just as easily capture and render any non-HTTPS traffic. 

  • Anonymous

    Dear  Congress who run the Post Office, IRS and Census.

    Do you really want to open up this minor can of worms?
    What about the Cable companies btw who know exactly what we are watching to include Commercials.
    Stop grabbing headlines and focus on improving the Government.

  • jasonjwarren

    I appreciate the interest from Congressmen and Senators to check whether consumer interests are being potentially harmed in cases like this. But – consumer interests include access as well as privacy, and our politicians need to be literate on the important technologies of their age. 

    Every intermediary on the internet and the endpoints has an opportunity to track user behavior to varying degrees. Informed and effective governance requires competence and domain knowledge. I’ve yet to hear a leading politician on the national scene who shows they understand how the internet works and the tradeoffs that are in the balance. It’s not enough to hire staffers to think for them, these pols need to grok this stuff themselves if they are going to bring bills forward to regulate the internet.

  • supralaunch21v

    Nothing more than competitors using politicians to get early info on a browser that may perform significantly better.

  • Anonymous

    Consider points below before buying Kindle Fire:
    - Amazon confirmed that you cannot download anything to Kindle Fire when traveling outside US.
    - Kindle Fire (or any other Kindle) doesn’t have microSD (or any other) card slot thus it is stuck with 6 GB USABLE internal storage unlike other tablets/ereaders that can get up to 32 GB card in to increase content capacity. Kindles are made to make sure you’re tied up to Amazon’s storage on the web (for which you need Wi-Fi connection to
    get to) and you can only store content you get from Amazon there, not other files. Quoting Amazon on Kindle Fire: “Free cloud storage for all Amazon content”. Get it, Amazon content?
    - The stats of how long the battery can last (Kindle Fire theory is 7.5 hours) are taken with Wi-Fi off. It will last about 3 hours if you use it to access content from their Cloud storage over Wi-Fi.
    - Amazon can spy on your web activity through their new cloud-integrated web browser of Kindle Fire.  
    - VERY IMPORTANT – lack of microSD slot means that if you decide to”root” your Kindle Fire (or any other Kindle) you’ll have to “root” the actual device thus there will be no coming back. On other devices you can make it boot from a “rooted” microSD card and if you want to get back to the
    original Operating System you can just take out the card and reboot, and you can go back and forth between different images of various OS’s.
    - Kindle Fire doesn’t have a camera.  
    - Kindle Fire has about 70% less usable screen area than iPad 2.
    - Kindle doesn’t support eBooks in ePub format that is the most used format in the world.
    - Kindle app store contains only Amazon approved apps and it does not include (and will not include) Netflix app that other tablets/ereaders have thus again you’re stuck with Amazon content only.
    - Amazon says it will review every app in its Appstore for Fire compatibility, as part of an automated process. Rejected apps will include those that rely on a gyroscope, camera, WAN module, Bluetooth, microphone, GPS, or micro SD. Apps are also forbidden from using Google’s Mobile Services (and in-app billing), which, if included, will have to be “gracefully” removed. In terms of actual content, Amazon has outlawed all apps that change the tablet’s UI in any way (including theme- or wallpaper-based tools), as well as any that demand root access (it remains to be seen how the company will treat the root-dependent apps already in its store) – this is what “rooting” can help with.

  • Terry Thorsen

    The silk architecture is truly revolutionary and a major leapfrog that will improve browsing performance for end users (and if they ever adapt the Fire for G3, will reduce bandwidth consumption for carriers). It would be a shame for ongoing paranoia regarding web tracking to derail this innovation.