Slashdot Mirror
Building Anonymous-Friendly Computer Libraries?
H310iSe writes "Listening to NPR today and caught a story on All Things Considered about how the FBI has demanded information on borrowing and browsing habits, including computer seizures, from 85 libraries since Sept. 11 (utilizing their new-found powers from the PATRIOT act). Similar stories (which don't require RealAudio) are here and here. The American Librarian Association is providing information for librarians to help deal with this, and it seems heavily tilted towards supporting individuals' rights to privacy. It seems like the Slashdot crowd could come up with a great library computer setup that would protect anonymity (I'm thinking about things like creating a RAM disk and loading the OS onto it). How about ways to enable people to borrow books anonymously without opening the door to large-scale theft? I bet if we offered a packaged, free, easy to install Safe Browsing computer or Anonymous Checkout program, libraries across the U.S. would enthusiastically embrace it." According to the articles, these checks can be made for any reason, not just for suspected terrorism. It seems that if the American people are going to protect their rights, they are going to have to do so actively. Is the idea presented above, feasible? How would you improve upon it?
David Chaum, the inventor of the "blind" signature mechanism that is the core of most digital cash protocols, created an extended variant of this system [Chaum90] that explained how you can accomplish some rather tricky things with unlinkable identity systems. One of the examples he has used in the past a computer controlled library, the "librarian" would let you check out books with an anonymous identity and maintain policies such as "only three books out at any one time", etc. with strong security for the system and complete unlinkability among user transactions as long as they follow the rules.
This system handles the daily mechanics of such a digital library, but it needs an external hook to get a user into the system called an "isa-person" certificate (a cert that you could only get one of, probably biometric, that is a hard link to your meatspace identity) which is used as the stick to prevent people from walking away with your books. If someone checks out books and does not return them they get a negative mark on their isa-person cert that will follow them to around until it is cleared. A deposit of cash, as others have suggested, would probably serve an equivalent purpose.
If you really want a secure, anonymous digital system it is probably going to end up working something like NetFlix. You apply for an anonymous id and put down a cash deposit, the anon id lets you borrow titles with certain restrictions, when you are finished with the account you cancel your subscription and get your deposit back.
Jim
[Chaum90] David Chaum: Showing credentials without identification: Transferring signatures between unconditionally unlinkable pseudonyms; Auscrypt '90, LNCS 453, Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1990, 246-264.