NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden doesn’t want the government snooping on what you are researching or purchasing on Amazon.com, or what he called “the world’s largest library.”
“Let’s encrypt your browsing habits. Let’s encrypt the world’s library,” he said, during a talk on Friday at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., reports The Washington Post.
Snowden called Amazon’s encryption practices “morally irresponsible,” because its customers can browse for books and other products without any security measures. According to The Post, Amazon encrypts credit card transactions, which would hide a customer’s purchases, but product searches are conducted in “plain text,” meaning that governments and others can monitor those searches.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment to GeekWire.
Other companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo, have launched major encryption campaigns after the former National Security Agency contractor released documents last year with personal data on tons of people worldwide.
“Wherever you’re at, wherever that jurisdiction is, they can see what books you’re looking at,” Snowden said. “This is morally irresponsible, and as a business it’s problematic to allow this to continue when we know for a fact that they have the capability to provide for secure communications because as soon as you go to purchase that book, as soon as money’s involved, they turn it over to encryption.”