Morgan Wilson: library privacy

my thoughts on government-mandated web filtering in public libraries

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 04:05:34 GMT

It almost goes without saying that I think that this decision is wrong. Another example of the US Supreme Court being split down the middle with Justice O’Connor being the swing vote that gave the conservatives another thin majority. I hope that history judges the Rehnquist Supreme Court as harshly as it judges Dredd Scott.

That said, I do think that this is a difficult issue. I don’t want weird people viewing porn and wanking over the keyboards where I work! It horrifies me how the most innocuous search term in a search engine -- or mistyped URL can lead to some very nasty results. This may sound like heresy to some librarians, but I don’t think the status quo was working well. Something needed to be done, but I think CIPA went way too far. It’s wrong to make everybody (meaning the less privileged teens & adults on the other side of the digital divide who can’t afford their own internet access) view the internet through the filter of what’s appropriate for a child. Even the Supreme Court admits this, but says that it’s sufficient that an adult can request to have the filters temporarily turned off. A commentator on today’s FutureTense (I must give a link to this Minnesota production) was correct when he mentioned how people will be very reluctant to ask library staff to have the “porn filters” turned off.

So I call on all adult library patrons to thwart this paternalistic Supreme Court decision to demand that filters be turned off when they visit their public library. Not so you can look at porn, but just so that you can use the internet that hasn’t been filtered or dumbed-down or bowdlerized (now that’s a word that’s due for a revival!). Any librarian worth her or his salt would be happy to turn off the filters for this reason. Don’t expect such a positive reaction if you actually are planning on looking at porn in a public library.

Whenever I get a minute, I should reread some jurisprudence. The law is only one means (the very official and blunt tool) for governing people’s behaviour. There are also personal ethics and social mores. I would hazard to guess that although most librarians would fight for your legal right to read anything you want, they would not be thrilled about somebody viewing porn in a their library or any other public place. Generally, social restraints are more pervasive but less enforceable than legal rules. That is why there is a danger when conservatives want all their social mores embodied in the law. There is a place for socially disapproved but legal behaviour. It is a murky area which is both a nasty cesspool and a helpful compost heap – which is fertile for humour, self-analysis and new ideas. Furthermore, there is something about the smell of this cesspool/compost heap which keeps the Borg of Conformity & Tyranny at bay. Because as soon as you want the law to mirror social mores – the first issue is who’s mores get chosen. Because that’s the thing, although a lot of social mores are held in common, they are not uniform. And although in a democracy, the majority has the right to do what it wants according to its constitutional powers, it would be very dangerous for a majority to use the its power to impose all of its social mores on everyone else – whether that majority happens to been in Parliament / Congress or the Supreme court.

dissecting arguments for investigating library patron information under the Patriot act

Wed, 21 May 2003 08:56:16 GMT

ALA Aiding And Abetting Terrorists. Gerry writes "David Horowitz's FrontPageMag, dedicated to rooting out the fifth columns, left-liberals and hate-American conspirators among us, turns its withering gaze to LIBRARIANS.....
Please have some fun baiting true believers in the comments forum. "

At least they admit ALA librarians are not the quiet, unassuming stereotypes you see on TV and in the movies, but they go on to say while the ALA ostensibly wants to protect the First Amendment rights of all people to read what they want, they themselves seem to have not read the USA PATRIOT Act and its guarantees to protect First Amendment Rights. [LISNews.com]

Maybe it's my legal background, but I'm always interested in dissecting a controversy into the exact areas of disagreement. Although I heartily disagree with almost everything written in this article (authored by Paul Walfield), I find that it illuminates very clearly the differences in the two viewpoints.

"The idea is simple; terrorists use things like airliners against us. Now, we make it harder for them to do that by federalizing airline checkers, and putting marshals on planes and beefing up airline security in general. The Feds want to do the same for terrorists that use our libraries." Let's develop this argument a little further. The terrorists didn't just use airlines and libraries (allegedly) against the US - they exploited weaknesses inherent in an open, democratic society - freedom of association and movement, freedom of thought, and freedom to read. Let's cut to the chase - 9/11 wouldn't have happened in a police state without those freedoms. Does this mean that these fundamental human rights are to blame for the tragedy and must be curtailed? Of course, even John Ashcroft is not going to admit to that, but we live in an age of doublespeak. So instead of abrogating these freedoms, they attack the tangible institutions and professionals which protect these abstract ideas - in the name of patriotism and preserving the American way of life. The danger is that human rights expressed in the constitution become meaningless because there are no ways of protecting infringements of those rights by the executive branch of government.

"The librarians say they will not break the "sacred" trust between a patron and a librarian. The American Library Association seems to view this bond as literally sacred." This has to be the most offensive part of Walfield's article, the way that he scoffs at the idea of librarian's ethics in general, and librarian-patron confidentiality in particular. Without this confidentiality, we librarians could report all patron borrowing, reading and web surfing habits to the government - or sell this information to marketers. Everything you read will be on the record somewhere (but not accessible to you), and people will make inferences about your beliefs and security risks from this - without any input from you or any ways of fixing errors or erroneous assumptions.

"She didn't explain that when you take a book out of the library, you are giving up any right to privacy. The employees at Santa Cruz know what their people check out but will not allow our government to know the same ..." Does Walfield really think that because library employees might know what a patron is reading or borrowing, that patrons have given up all their rights to privacy? And that the government might as well know everything too? That's like saying that there's no such thing as medical privacy because doctors and nurses might know your medical information. Well, I'm glad that I can clarify that this is another reason why we emphasize librarian-patron confidentiality in our professional ethics. We know that this information is potentially very sensitive - not unlike medical records - and we take pains to be very careful with it. Library-patron confidentiality is not something which we invented after 9/11 so we could be a thorn in the side of the Bush administration and advance our left-wing agenda. My mother was an academic librarian in the 1970s and this was as central to librarianship then as it is now.

"[The Patriot Act] prohibits the government from doing anything that would infringe on an individual's First Amendment right." Yes, that's how the law is written on its face. But in effect, this protection is meaningless. It's up to the FBI to decide if they may be infringing on your first amendment rights. The only restraint on the over-zealous investigator is at a secret summary hearing where you will not be represented. Even if the secret judges do care whether an investigatee's first amendment rights are protected, it is very difficult for them to do so, because they are only told the would-be prosecutor's side of the story.

"Unlike our Founding Fathers, the ALA gives First Amendment Rights to "all individuals," presumably including non-citizen terrorists." LISNews.com commentor Daniel Cornwall pointed out that in fact Jefferson believed that the first amendment should apply to all indviduals "against every government on earth" and that he thought that the constitution was flawed for not stating this more clearly. 12 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 438, 440 (J. Boyd ed. 1958). Also, while I don't like the idea that terrorists have human rights and may use these rights to cause destruction, it is dangerous to say that terrorists can never have any legal rights. What if you are mistakenly found to be a terrorist, and thereby lose all your legal rights? Including the right to appeal the mistaken terrorist designation? Mistakes happen all the time in any legal system, which is why there need to be procedures - natural justice at the trial level, procedures for appeals and accountability against abuses.

After discussing the ALA's resistance to the Patriot Act, Walfield gives a brief chronicle of the ALA's "left-wing agenda." Included in the ALA's list of sins is campaigning for more openess in government records. Towards the end, there is a mention of the ALA being upset at the destruction and looting of the National Library and Archives of Iraq. Of course this was interpreted that the ALA did not care about the safety of American troops. Forget the fact that the Ministry of Oil had been protected, or that the US Government had been warned of the dangers to Iraqi cultural institutions and chose to ignore them - and their international legal obligations as an occupying force.

I can't ignore Walfield's mention that the ALA's left-wing activism happens despite the organization's tax-exempt 501(c) 3 status. This struck me as a veiled threat which is so typical of these times. Yes, you still have freedom of speech, but if you express unpatriot/lefty views, we will try to punish you until you shut up!

the FBI would have a field day snooping in Amazon.com's customer profiles

Tue, 06 May 2003 20:57:17 GMT

Recommendation Systems in 2003. Recommendation Systems in 2003
Source: The New York Times
"Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial"
Lisa Guernsey takes a look at recommendation systems being used by Amazon and others. Interesting reading. You'll also learned what happened to the Firefly technology after it was purchased by Microsoft. [The ResourceShelf]

I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but I've found some of Amazon's recommendations to be quite spot on. Admittedly, this has required me to be proactive and remove the anomalies from my purchasing history. It also helped to tell them which things I already have and how much I like them. The question for me is whether it's worth it, considering how much personal information I'm entrusting to Amazon. Because I don't really trust them not to share it without my permission, And then there's the spectre of the PATRIOT Act. The information in library borrowing records is nothing compared to some of the goodies which might be contained in Amazon's customer profiles. These would surely be "business records" for the purposes of the Act. So why do I continue playing Amazon's recommendations game, knowing of the risks to my privacy? A part of me thinks that the damage is already done, so what does that it matter. Also, I'm too interested in this technology to be able to ignore it.

Patriot 2: this isn't really happening, is it?

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 04:04:20 GMT

Patriot II.

In Deliver Us from Ashcroft (in The Washington Times), Nat Hentoff begins with "Attorney General John Ashcroft, with support from President Bush, has increasingly forgotten that the Constitution is ours [~] not just his." He continues

one of the most damaging abuses [in Patriot II] is found in Section 201. According to this section, a federal court decision can be overturned, mandating that the government reveal the identities of those persons it has detained in the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The new bill states that "the government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations of terrorism until ... the initiation of criminal charges," no matter how long that might take...If passed, this would become the first time in American history that secret arrests would be specifically permitted under the American rule of law.

I haven't written about Patriot II yet, not out of a lack of interest, but due to a sense of weariness with all of the things happening to Americans after September 11th. I heard a lot of negative commentary about President Bush last week in London, and I remember telling someone that Bush wasn't the real threat--the real threat is Ashcroft. At least, Ashcroft is doing more harm to Americans and "the American way," however that might be understood. I'm trying to fight my inertia, and so I'm posting this in the hopes that it motivates me.

As a side note, a draft version (dated January 9, 2003) of the Act in .pdf format is available from the Center for Public Integrity. Be forwarned, though--it is a 12 MB download. CPI also has a list of related documents.

[klyjen.blog]

anti-PATRIOT Act resolutions

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:45:25 GMT

West Hollywood CA passed an anti-PATRIOT resolution specifically mentioning library privacy. This is one of over 30 anti-PATRIOT resolutions passed so far, nationwide. [ thanks eoin ]

[librarian.net]

hey, I thought the all-seeing eye belonged to Sauron, not TIA!

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:30:55 GMT

Total Information Awareness tchotchkes
The Total Information Awareness program may have removed its ominous logo from its Web site -- but you can still get your TIA-insignia T-shirts, teddy bears, mugs and thongs! Hurry, though, they're going fast (into detention)! [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

play about spying in libraries

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 01:42:53 GMT

WOW Café Theatre announced today the world premiere of this original play for its month-long run in January 2003. Based on actual domestic defense operations, and eerily prophetic of recent government invasions of personal privacy, Spies in the Stacks begins in 1962, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A New York librarian is approached by the FBI to spy on patrons, including those people close to her. Initially opposed to such tactics, her convictions waver after the assassination of President Kennedy. When a beautiful Cuban woman begins to visit the stacks, the librarian's surveillance becomes obsessive in this play about danger, desire and spying as an erotic impulse. Spies in the Stacks, written by Lori Bonfitto and Marie Laure Léger and directed by Lori Bonfitto runs Thursday-Saturday January 2nd through January 25th (previews January 2nd, 3rd and 4th officially opening January 9th ). All performances are at 8pm, tickets are $10. WOW Cafe Theater is located at 59 east 4th street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue. For reservations call 212-777-4280 or visit the website, http://www.wowcafe.org. Ms. Bonfitto's previous writing and directing credits include Groupies, A Very Special One Hour Georgie and the cult-hit Felony Femmes on the Lam at the Hamlet on Bank Street Theater. Ms. Léger is a student of Creative Writing at New York University.

the politicization of the library profession

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 06:31:00 GMT

- " Former congresswoman and one-time presidential .... - " Former congresswoman and one-time presidential candidate Pat Schroeder is hardly a Washington novice, but she took a political drubbing recently from the unlikeliest of foes: a bunch of librarians."

"Schroeder, who now heads the Assn. of American Publishers, had the temerity to publicly criticize libraries for their stance on copyright laws and for distributing free copies of electronic books and articles that publishers are trying to sell. Schroeder's spokeswoman made matters worse by complaining about the libraries' "radical factions."

"Librarians pounced. They roasted Schroeder for "library-bashing." They confronted Schroeder at public appearances, demanding an apology. They wrote to lawmakers en masse to complain."

"Eventually, Schroeder raised a white flag and backed away from her comments."

"The lesson? Don't mess with librarians these days." (from The LA Times - Thanks Cyndi for the submission) [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen]

This is a very interesting article.

"If we are going to provide these funds, how will they be used?" asked Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.), one of the chief sponsors of the Internet filtering bill that libraries blocked. "Will they be used to promote a radical, extremist social agenda? Libraries are like Mom and apple pie. Why would they want to squander their goodwill and good reputations to get involved in issues like child pornography?"

Politics is a dirty game - and I think librarians have surprised themselves (and their opponents) by getting their hands dirty lately. This isn't all good, but it's essential, otherwise the profession might as well be prepared to roll-over & die - as it inevitably becomes irrelevant to its ethics and the public. Everybody would be more comfortable staying out of the fray, but that would be letting the Content Cartel and the forces of paranoia set the agenda.

Every profession or industry is politicized to a certain extent. An apolitical profession is a like an innocent lamb that trusts in the goodness of the world. I used to work in the credit union industry - which is in virtually constant political/legal strife with the banks. The important thing is that you don't have to be partisan to be politcal.

I also had to post this one so that I could flout the L.A. Times' regressive anti-linking policy.