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?
hmm i agree that the users rights should be protected. but maybe the RAM disk is a little bit of over kill. i think potentially it could be solved at a software level rather than having to reload the OS into a new location. theoretically, browsing habits can be covered easily at the software level with many programs available on the internet. i sure wish the CoDC would come up with something for this. :)
[ check out my ruby book @ http://ww
WHY on EARTH would you want to hide from Big Br... er, Our Benevolant Government? You must be guilty of something! Stuff him and cuff him, boys!
Does anyone really think that the privacy to look up whatever info you want is important enough to justify the fact that that privacy WILL be used by someone somewhere to take lives?
The people who built the propane bombs that thankfully didn't kill anyone at Columbine got their info off the internet. Kevin Mitnick was able to escape justice by using anonymous chat rooms. No doubt there are terrorists using it to communicate as we speak. I just don't think that your paranoia about what someone might find out about your computer habits justifies the risks that have to be taken.
Why not just accept that what you look at might be known by someone else? If you aren't trying to make bombs or Anthrax or anything, you'll be fine. To do otherwise is to put your own wants above the lives of others.
... but the library could have a service where they download a book into your eBook or other reader, set to expire when the book is "due".
If their software doesn't keep records -- which they won't have to, as "overdue" downloads remove themselves -- there is nothing to subpoena.
That said, my borrowing habits are innocuous enough that I'm having trouble mustering a lot of outrage over this whole business.
now if only we could build an anonymous-friendly slashdot, that doesn't place posts at 0.
Perhaps the information on the reader could be encrypted with some sort of "dead man's switch", except that it is triggered to release the information to the library in the event that the book is not returned in a timely fashion. At this point, the encrypted record is purged from the system.
Maybe I'm not sure what exactly the submitter means by Anonymous Checkout, but if they don't know who checked out a book, why would anyone ever return it? I guess I'm just confused about that issue of this idea, they have to maintain some records so that they can fine people that don't return books, right?
It's my understanding that a lot of libraries don't keep any records of who has checked out a book in the past. The only records kept are who currently has the book and any info pertaining to fines. The same could essentially be done with computer usage. The records of who was using a computer need not be kept past the end of a day, and the hard drive could then be synced to some disk image (I know some places already do this too, just to keep the machines working properly). I'm not sure any fancy technical solution is really necessary. If libraries are really interested in protecting privacy they can do it.
Ben
..the Feds will complain and Congress will simply mandate that any US library that receives any federal aid (ie, all of them) use a browse/borrow system that can supply exactly this kind of information.
Patriot Act, indeed. If you want to be a patriot these days, go vote in November and boot these current idiots out of power.
If you dont like laws such as the patriot act that give such broad powers to the FBI... you should have voted in the various elections. If you did.. congratulations .. if you didn't then you have absolutely no right to talk about your sense of privacy. Voting really is alot more powerful then people think it is. Granted we run on a republic. But even then we still have the power to change legislation. If the government starts thinking... "crap.. the people don't want this and I'm not going to get reelected next term" .. guess what the members of the government will do :)
Point is.. I don't want to sound racist or anything but take a look at how the US intervenes with Isreal and Palenstine. Two countries with not much significance to us in the US (I am grossly simplifying and I honestly don't care about the justification that comes with "but we're a superpower and we should look after the world").. however the jewish population has one of the strongest turnouts when it comes to vote. In NY for instance pretty much 100% of the jewish population votes. Compared to like a measley what 10-40% of hispanics and asians?
Anyhow this country is built on the vote. If you don't like a legislation find out who supports such legislation and put up a website to try and convince people not to vote for that person come reelection.
Respect for the anonymity of the library patron (at a minimum) needs to be codified in law. Otherwise, at any point the government can stop funding libraries that don't track patrons (like McCain's initiative that flew through Congress mandating web surfing filters) or worse.
If all these conditions are met, then if the libraries refused to use proxy logs or anything of the sort, and set up network PCs that ghosted themselves from a server (preferably with Linux) every time a patron logs out to fight trojan loaders and such, then things would go pretty well. But I don't think that it's the technology that's at issue.
Our librarian is pretty cool about these things, by the way, and probably would go for setting up something along these lines if she thought it'd be worth the investment. It wouldn't be, however, because there's still a lot of other variables that prevent such a setup from presenting anything other than a false sense of security.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
A borrower could get an anonymous ID number (anytime) and leave a deposit, refundable upon return, for the replacement cost of each book checked out.
The only problem I see with this is that some people might not be able to come up with the deposit -- they could use the old, non-anonymous system.
If you ask most any librarian, he or she will tell you that they do NOT give out information regarding borrowing histories without a warrant from an official and will not give out to anyone else for ANY reason. Most libraries in colleges and universities purge all those records as soon as possible if they know what is good for them. Public libraries aren't so good at that, but still don't like keeping that information longer than they have to.
My mother has been a librarin for over thirty years at various places of business, including private corporations, public libraries and at colleges and universities and from listening to her, I believe it is the general sentiment of the ALA to protect their reader's privacy. If you all take a moment to recall, it was the librarians who fought the most against COPPA because of they inherent censorship created by the requirements.
What does happen, however, is libraries will outsource their searching services because they don't have enough money or manpower to handle the computer equipment themselves. When that happens, the business they outsource to may not have the same ideas in their head concerning privacy and censorship and will start storing this. Unless libraries get more funding, it's likely that outsourcing will continue and records will be saved.
... Privacy is extremely important to us. We allow not only Web browsing but also offer full the full MS Office package on several hundred computers so that people can work on their projects as they conduct their research.
While not completely secure, we clear the web browser cache and history each time the browser loads (and it closes itself after 10 minutes of inactivity o further help this along).
We also remove the contents of "My Documents" and then the Recycling Bin each morning before the library opens. This is all done via scripts of course.
Granted this isn't the best solution, as the info could still be retrieved, but between not requiring login's (there-fore not knowning where anyone that comes into the library was sitting) and deleting as much as we can, as often as we can it should help.
the government has no such right. the people determine the rights of the government. all rights not expressly given to the government are the people's and the institutions to which those people wish to grant rights.
government has no property it is not given by the people.
(this is true even in non democratic/republican forms of government. see Gandhi's writing on non-violent resistance for an interesting object lesson in this fact).
You must have some pretty good crack in your pipe today. Anonymous Checkout? Sure! I'll just anonymously check out a few expensive books I've always wanted, and just keep them. Since it's anonymous, they'll never know who has them, so they can't bill me for them or come looking for them. The only way you're going to keep theft out of the equation is to keep tabs on who has what, but throw away that data the minute the book is returned. No amount of encryption is ever going to make anonymous checkouts work, since you must always be able to tell who has what.
As for running your entire OS in a ramdisk...yea...sure...that's...great. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't pass any mileage that simply wanted to put 3GB of ram in every public computer. All so that the entire OS can run in a RAM disk so that we can have a false sense of anonymity on those machines. If the FBI wants to see where a computer has been, they will find out. Yes, if they turn off the machine, everything is lost. But this will only get them once or twice. They aren't fucking idiots. They will catch on, and start going to the library's isp instead and plugging a nifty little black box between the library and the internet. "Wow, look! I can see every packet going in or out of that building. How nice!"
Three words: Waste of money.
If you don't want to be hooked by some large data-mining net you can always read the book in the library and take handwritten notes.
Says the article poster:
Of course you have to be active about protecting your rights. If you let someone else "protect" your rights for you, you let that third party decide which right you have (i.e. which rights that someone will defend for you).
Methinks that instead of looking for technological solutions that will take a while to implement, we would be better off making a big deal of this issue. The more the general public knows about how FBI snoops into library records (about other things), the more stringent the public outcry.
I am not saying drop the search for a technical solution, I am saying a lot of policies can be balanced through social means rather than actively fought through some kind of enforcement tool (e.g., technology).
You need to install an RTFM interface.
Sonar guns? What are you driving; an aqua-car?
This is a wonderful oppertunity to use Knoppix or another similar, customized Linux-On-CD. Just lock the cd drive (or have the main case behind the librarian's desk) and you're good to go. an external floppy or zip would take care of any need to save information. It'd protect anonyomity and eliminate any records to search, as the OS reloads from CD every time it is booted. No hard drive is even needed. Just a little time for the initial setup.
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
It's not an ideal solution, since libraries should be in the practice of lending books for free, but it would work.
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _government_. The government has a right to collect information from the library. It is not a private citizen's business or residence
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _people_. The people have a right to peacebly educate themselves, assemble, and petition government for greviences. They have a right to perform these activities anonymously, else they could be subject to harrassment by those individuals who currently control the government.
Remember in the turn of the century when black people had the right to vote, but had to do so publicly so that their owners knew how they voted and what they were up to at all times? This is called opression and we are quicly headed back to this stage... only this time it won't just be along ratial boundaries.
I am reminded of a public service ad which demonstrated how lucky Americans are that reading activities at libraries are kept private. Ads, such as this, were produced after 9/11 to show an appreciation of individual rights.
Ironically, the new government policies for our libraries seem to have, now, deteriorated our privacy. And the ad is, now, an excellent demonstration of how the current administration has run amok.
PSA's ad, "Library" is in realmedia format. And, no. America is no longer America.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
What OS do you run that requires 3GB of space?
Linux w/ X could easily run in 128mb ram, possibly 96 or 64 if you fit things right and get rid of everything absolutely not needed.
Might you have an alternative idea?
By all means, do share.
I hope you aren't dellusioned into believing that creating a hypothetical and unrealistic situation then proving it wrong is helpful.
"Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _government_."
Not necessarily. "Public" does not necessarily equal "Gov't." Some are indepentent non-profit orgs, with a public charter. And the others are part of the local gov't, NOT the federal.
"The government has a right to collect information from the library."
Again, not necessarily. The Feds have even LESS right to tell the states what to do than the states. State governments are sovereign entities, except as delimited by the constitution - a document you are apparently unfamiliar with.
"It is not a private citizen's business or residence. It's almost like your telling the government not to use sonar guns to catch people on the roads."
Now you are just a goofball. It's RADAR, idiot. And some areas DO limit what the police can do with it. What's next - the prosecutor is allowed to see the public defenders records because it's a gov't office? Jeez.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
While a bootable Linux/*BSD CDRom is feasable as an semi-anonymous browsing device, a anonymous checkout system would not. The problem with checking out a book or any other material that a library might offer is how they track and recover a forgotten book. How many times have you missed a due date? Almost everyone has missed a due date once. Compared to this, theft is a minor problem.
Lets roleplay for a moment. We are a librarian and John Dole has forgotten a book. Lets look up his record and remind him that his book is late. What information do we need? A contact. That means an adress or an phone number. Email? Forget it as an unreliable medium which a majority change addresses often and don't check often enough to be effective. Plus, email from the masses can be traced with little effort.
The only way to make library checkouts anonymous is to make communication completly anonymous, and as of right now that seems to be quite some time into the future.
It's not Flamebait; it's Unintelligent.
My town thinks a library is an important thing to have, so we tax ourselves to fund one. I haven't seen any money filtering its way down from Washington to buy our books. Let Ashcroft search for borrowing records and browsing habits in the Library of Congress. That's the library owned by that government. He can stay out of my library, because my town owns it.
Where are you pulling this radar gun thing from?
_However_, when it comes to the FBI demanding book histories from stores like Borders, they can bugger off until they get a warrant.
You actually have less of a leg to stand on with book stores. They don't need a warrant, or even a subpoena. They could just ask. They could just walk in and seize it, claiming it's a terrorist related investigation. You don't own the bookstore, and if you signed up for their card club, you're asking them to collect information on you. It's their data, and they can sell it to anyone they want or give it to the FBI. They could sell it to the FBI. I hope you didn't buy a felafel cookbook, because then you're going to get detained. At least with your local library you can get the town to resist handing the info over to them. Borders probably made money selling you out.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Possibly all of them.
Moot website
no sig.
government has no property it is not given by the people
Philosophically or constitutionally?
That said, I still think a RAMdisk based system is a good one, the computers could be booted from a boot image on the network or even from a locked CD drive and then run completely from RAM. While it offers no protection from Carnivore, it does protect people's information from other people who come to the computer later and snoop for e-mail addresses, account information, and the like. Lets not forget to try to get libraries to close this door just because the shadow government can still get our private information.
The NPR story made claims that the government could somehow link information between a user's sessions. The reference was to someone who looked up information about atomic energy and then came back later and looked up something about the Koran. Unless they have logs of who used the terminal and when, how can they make such a link? Do they just assume that the person doing the Koran lookup must be the same evil doer as the person who previously committed the heinous deed of reading about atomic energy?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Considering that terrorists and the like usually have many aliases and false identities I think these folks already have the anonymity they need. What is the privacy advocate afraid of if the FBI has access to public library records? I'm not trying to troll but I just don't see it. As for bookstores and purchased books I can see the argument. The buyer and seller are both private entities and their transaction should be a private manner. A libary is however a public entity and I don't really see a problem with records being public for that matter.
'Same speed C but faster'
I hate it when the government used SONAR guns for speed enforcement on the highways. The ear-shattering pulse almost made me wreck my car. And the pings bouncing off all the other cars just makes a cacophonic mess.
(Perhaps you meant RADAR?)
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
... not requiring login's (there-fore not knowning where anyone that comes into the library was sitting) You see, that's the part that annoys me. Yes, protect the privacy of what they were searching for, but dammit, keep track of who they are and where they were working. Crackers aren't idiots, they know damn well where the anonymous computers are. We have this trouble with library labs all the damn time. I don't care if they were reading info on HIV, downloading insurrectionist pamphlets, or searching any number of embarrasing topics, but when ebay shows up at our door step with proof of credit card fraud coming from that pc, I damn well want you to be able to tell me who was sitting there...
A technological solution to any problem posed on Slashdot is always the community's first response. As we've seen from the history of encryption, any realistic and practical method of protecting data is eventually going to be broken.
Legislation is the answer. Not happy with a law? Last I heard America was a Democracy of sorts -- let's get out there and use the classic techniques for creating change. Vote. Write. Talk. Protest. Rage.
Or has the wealth we enjoy in North America made us too complacent?
If you've got a Knoppix CD with you, just boot from it and cast your fears aside about locally installed software snooping on you.
_However_, when it comes to the FBI demanding book histories from stores like Borders, they can bugger off until they get a warrant.
How ironic, bookstores such as Borders are more likely to keep exactly the type of records, the FBI thinks it needs. Libraries, by way of contrast, really have no need to keep copious customer data profiles, and might even consider it unethical to do so.
The FBI can piss off. They don't need warrants to view reading records. They don't need to prosecute individuals based on their choice of reading material.
I don't take pride in this, but there is one big reason I don't vote.
I don't know enough about the issues or the candidates.
I try to be informed, but I don't subscribe to a newspaper...I did once, but the newspaper's went unread because I really didn't have the time to read them (yet, I have time to post to slashdot, go figure).
I've picked up books from my college library, one about israel and palestine. It seemed like a good book introducing some of the issues that are happening over there. But I honestly never got beyond the first chapter. The book was kind of dense for someone with the typical American knowledge on foreign affairs.
And I've heard arguments such as yours, that democracy requires a lot more people voting. But it almost seems to me that having uninformed people vote doesn't make the system more democratic. It just makes the system more arbitrary and more whimsical.
And the politics really gets in the way. For instance, trying to find political information online is difficult, since you can never really trust the source of information. Especially as we got closer to voting time, everyone starts putting up articles supporting their own personal political agendas, and people like me are the worse off, since the uninformed are not going to know much difference between truth and outright lie anyway.
The solution, of course, is to get information from a variety of sources. But then we are back to the same problem of lack of time. Especially with the vast number of candidates and issues we have to decide upon come voting time.
Another thing I've finally figured out. I've tried watching CNN or FoxNews for a while, so that hopefully I would get some insight into what is happening. It took me a while to figure out that I'm not just dumb, but the television station doesn't actually tell you enough of what is happening, and certainly provide almost no context of the issue. And the biggest waste of time are them talk shows where they have a number of "analysts" debating a certain topic. Usually the person hosting the show (who usually gets the most time speaking), either (a) doesn't under the issues anymore than I do or (b) has some political agenda of their own. And given that these shows are on most of the time, television is practically useless for getting information.
So it seems to me that voting isn't just something you do once every two years. Its almost a part time job to keep up with the issues, and then research your candidates. Maybe I'm exagerating. But without spending a good amount of time on this, many of us couldn't tell the difference between one candidate and the other.
It would be great if someone could post where they get thier information from. Is there an unbiased MiddleEast for Dummies book somewhere? Where do we get information about the various political candidates that doesn't come from the candidates themselves?
So I may not be voting this November either. Maybe the best way would be for me to get information on the local politics, and then vote for the local candidates. But I'll have to see.
Security measures such as firewalls and anonymous browsing would still be needed, but I'm sure that much more educated individuals could point you toward good solutions for that. I just wanted to bring up the idea of an OS on a CD-ROM. It leaves no records and viruses and worms cannot be installed on it, because it cannot be written to. It's a security solution for both Big Brother and the stupid, worm-downloading idiots that he watches over.
You can run an entire OS from RAM. Miniature Linux installations are available for free download on the WWW. They require under 50Mb of HD space, so what makes you think that it wouldn't fit in RAM? You don't need a power installation - just a GUI, a database, and a network connection to ghost the machine.
"If the FBI wants to see where a computer has been, they will find out. Yes, if they turn off the machine, everything is lost. But this will only get them once or twice. They aren't fucking idiots."
Whether you're an idiot or not, you can't just magically extract all the data from some RAM after it's been turned off. It's physical law. It's math. It's not an issue of IQ points.
"They will catch on, and start going to the library's isp instead and plugging a nifty little black box between the library and the internet."
Libraries do not need an Internet connection to look up databases for books. This can be done across an intranet, with no access to an ISP or the outside world whatsoever. To break into that and run a packet sniffer, the FBI agent would have to be sitting on the premises, where they could easily be seen.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
As far as I see it, anonymous checkout won't work in a free library. OTOH, if you require the library patron to deposit the value of the book before they can check out the book, that would work. You might be able to decrease the deposit amount to a percentage, depending on the honesty of the patrons, but I wouldn't count on it. Put money into the equation, and dishonesty increases.
Another method would be to give a "library card voucher" to every new resident, and allow them to obtain a card with the voucher, using some sort of random hat draw or something. Have some type of card trading system in the library, where people can trade cards, reliably knowing that each card has no books on it. (Scan cards, it tells you, "No books are checked out." You then randomly decide whether or not to exchange cards.) Of course, if you lose your card, you're screwed. This method would require a bit more honesty than today's libraries. IOW, it's susceptible to many of the same no-return attacks as modern libraries, (Borrow books, and never use the card again. Not much they can do about that either way.) But the fact that it can be traced back to you seems to encourage honesty, regardless of the library enforcing returns with external mechanisms. IOW, being anonymous increases dishonesty.
The best method seems to be to delete the records of a patron's borrowed books as soon as they are returned.
both.
in the US case the 5th amendment grants the government the power of eminent domain. this means that the government can take private property for public use and must provide the owner with just compensation when doing so.
philosophically it should be self-evident (one way or another depending on your leanings).
Because you're not thinking straight. Knowing that, at any moment, the gov't could walk into the library and demand a list of everything everyone has been reading, or searching on the internet, is incredibly chilling to people's willingness to read, or search, materials that aren't "popular."
It's our responsibility as citizens to remain informed, that's the point of the whole "Informed Democracy" thing. Nowadays, we have the govt regularly telling us "You don't need to know these things, we'll know them for you."
Lets take the current anti-terrorism campaigns. If you oppose the way the detainments and trials (or lack thereof) are going on, then it behooves you to do research to be sure you know all the facts. But wait, our own presidents press secretary has been more than hinting that asking those kinds of questions is unamerican "in this time of war". So the feds raid your library and add you to the list. Next thing you know a friendly FBI team comes by your house, or place of employement because "they have concerns about your reading habits."
As another example, there are plenty of reasons to read up on bomb making, other then planning on actually making one. I'll ignore completely the concept that you might actually be hoping to get into a job involving pyrotechnics, or might be taking a class in it. But I've heard some extraordinary things come out of the mouths of officials about what a particular device built by someone could have done or not done. If I had no idea what the facts were, I'd have to take their word for it, and allow my opinion to be shaped by my own lack of knowledge.
Also, who says the Feds will protect that information right? What if a loved one is HIV positive, and you're researching it for them. Now the FBI has that you've been reading on that topic, and eventually that slips out, and eventually your insurance company gets hold of a 4th hand database, that implies you're hiding that you're hiv positive, and finds an excuse to cancel *your* insurance... Then just the concept that you might be dieing gets to the credit agencies, and all your creditors cancel your credit. Just because you read a book in the library.
Read John Varley's "Press Enter" for a view of a world taking to the logical end of this nibbling away by the "well, if you don't have anything to hide, why do you care?" folks...
It has nothing to do with "sensitive" research. We shouldn't be forced to scurry into our holes like so many mice, there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence in this country.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Why? Is there established precedent that makes you personally or the library institutionally liable? Wouldn't your life be much simpler if you could tell them you honestly don't know?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Great, maybe you can join the TIPS program, or CitizenWatch, or just annoy the hell out of your local police by calling them whenever anyone uses a computer in your lab.
It's Ebay's problem, not yours. You're already wildly underpaid, do you really feel it's your responsibility to protect Ebay's credit card accounting? It's not.
Criminal stuff is happening all around you, all the time. If you can prevent it, or assist in prosecuting the perpetrators, great. But when your "assistance" means *assuming that everyone will commit a crime* and recording their identities *before the crime is committed*, well, now you are, in my mind, much worse than the Ebay hacker.
He's only ripping off Ebay, you're assuming that every library patron is a criminal.
I've come to the conclusion that privacy activists are fighting the wrong battle.
There seems to be two main assumptions when dealing with privacy:
1) X can't be trusted. With X being any group other than the privacy group advocating something.
2) X needs to insure our privacy.
In all honesty, these two beliefs are mutally exclusive. If you can't trust the government or the corporations or anyone else (and I'll agree that you probably can't), then stop looking for a method for them to insure your privacy.
The only solution to insure your privacy is to insure than no external entity is capable of tracking you. In the case of libraries, this means NOT checking books out. It means paying with cash everywhere. It means no phone service, credit cards, charge cards, discount cards, banking accounts, driver's license, car, or anything else that involves filling out an application or showing any form of identification.
And even that isn't a safe bet. You have to also not allow your face to be seen in public, where a camera can record you in a specific location at a specific time.
It's simply too easy to track data. Giving outside agencies method to quit tracking your data only works if you trust those agencies.
Maybe a better solution is to make all, or at least as much of the data as possible, public. After all, the problem is the ability of someone to use data about you in a method you don't approve of. Another solution to that is to level the playing field. When spammers and telemarketers can't hide behind a wall of anonymity any more than you, when goverment officials have all their dirty little secrets made public, then perhaps we'll see a change in behavior.
But as long as some groups have access to information that everyone else doesn't have, you'll have the same problem over and over. Either you need to insure your privacy yourself of you need to insure that they have no pricacy either.
No Zen is good zen
Having the OS on something that is loaded clean at each boot would be a good idea for other reasons.
If the browser history were filled with porn, if the computer were infected with a virus, or if a keystroke logger were installed, everything could be cleaned up with just a reboot. (The keystroke logging thing happens more often than you would think on public machines.)
An OS that boots from read-only media (like some CD-based Linux distros) would accomplish the same thing.
Run for a seat on your local library board. I can almost guarantee you that you won't see much competition, and heck there might even be an open seat that you can run for uncontested.
Libraries are not run or operated by the Federal Government, at least in the United States. They are run by local government, paid for my the local library district's taxpayers.
Show up to the library board meetings, bring your friends with you. Ask them what they think about these issues, and what they are doing to keep a balance between needed record keeping and just letting Project TIPS or the Homeland Security department grep through records for "nuclear weapon" or "anthrax."
You can make a difference! Most people it seems lately take no interested in local / town / area governments, but that is where the normal citizen can make the MOST difference!
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
I wasn't bringing up the "wasted vote argument". I was saying that the voting process needs to be restored to the proper electoral college. The forced Biparty system only works for corrupt politicians and factional groups.
She gets paid large sums of money to spew questionable advice about dealing with your pet based on her 'communications' with them... This is stupid? Nah, that is genius... The people who bring their pets to her, on the other hand....
No, if you'd get your head out of your ass, and read the actual post, instead of just deciding what it said, your post would have been far more useful. And no, my job isn't to protect ebay. But my job *is* to cooperate with legal authorities tracking actual wrongdoing. If crimes are commited with services we provide, and we don't have any clue who was doing it, we start getting smeared with liability. Given I have *plenty* of evidence of the number of events that come from public labs (be they libraries or what) I have *plenty* of justification for my stance, despite your pathetic knee jerk response to it. Over 80% of crap that we deal with comes from those labs. I'm not assuming everyone will be committing a crime. If the criminals would register at the door, I'd leave the rest alone. But I am assuming that those 1% that are need to be tracked. As I clearly stated, I don't care *what* they were doing, and I don't want to be logging that. But, if it turns out that they were doing something illegal at the time, and it's tracked back to a particular PC, I want to know who was sitting there at the time.
I work for an academic library (state university). I'm not a librarian, I exclusively do computer "stuff" for them. So I am familiar with these issues.
We do not save historical checkout information. Our feeling is that there is no reason for us to save that information. The only way that we could know what books a person had checked out and returned would be if they returned them late and have unpaid fines. Once the fines are paid, they go away. So be sure to pay your library fines ;).
For anonymous browsing we are currently using a product called Centurion Guard. It keeps files from being written to the hard disk permanently. Once the computer is rebooted, the browser cache, history, EVERYTHING is reset to the state it was in when I installed it.
The reason for doing these things was not anonymity initially. We didn't want to waste a hard disk on the automation system logging user's browsing habits. The Centurion Guard is really to keep users from breaking systems, but has the nice side-benefit of hiding user's identities.
I have talked about this a little with our Dean and he staunchly supports the patron's right to privacy, so I don't see us changing any of this any time soon. Which makes me happy.
Don't think that libraries are ignoring privacy and freedom issues. Some of the most fierce freedom of information advocates I have ever met, I have met in the library setting. ALA is one of the best freinds that we have right now.
No. We're only protected if we innocently didn't realize it was an issue. If we *knew* people were doing things from there, and do nothing to stop it, we open ourselves up to cival liability.
Secondly, some of those attacks are against our own systems - people trying to crack admin systems, or just own systems, and the "oops, we can't track that" gets very old...
If it was an environment where I knew that kind of crap *couldn't* come from the boxes, but they were still useful for what they were intended for, I wouldn't worry.
So you do impliment this whole privacy thing and the feds come in and raid the place, guess what happens to you? You get thrown in jail for obstruction of justice.
Those towelheads down in cuba could only be so lucky. They get everything they need to live absolutely free and the quality of life is better than in afghanistan. Why don't you look at how some of our POW's were treated in vietnam?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I am posting this from Konq on Knoppix right now. It is a live-cd version of Debian running KDE. Very, very user-friendly and by default it does not touch the hard-drive at all. All modifications are on a ramdisk.
really are....It must be tracked...
....world economy.
Information and who's accessing it....
So as many may be trying to rationalize invasion of privacy by thinking only of terrorism excuses, perhaps there is the other side of the coin as to what the feds may be looking for......like those assessing information in order to see the truth:
take a look at this: World Meters
Take a good look at the different meters! Then look at this: What the World Wants
We have the technology and we have the funds to make good things happen.
So why is it not happening? You want to fight about it?
Assuming you don't want to fight about it, that fighting is not the goal or main desire of people, then there must be something else, something bigger that is the problem. You know, considering annual world military spending is $780 billion dollars (US) and to solve the major world humanitarian problems only needs 1/3 of that....
The problem has to be more than something under a trillion dollars.
A CIA Fact Sheet on Indonesia -- see the religion percentages (88% muslim).
OK, (given the above muslim population of indonesia): from the pbs trillion dollar bet article:
"In the summer of 1997, across Thailand, property prices plummeted. This sparked a panic that swept through Asia. As banks went bust from Japan to Indonesia, people took to the streets - events so improbable they had never been included in anyone's models."
and in Indonesia May 1998:
"Sources all over Asia tell Uscher that Asians know about local corruption but believe America is taking advantage of the situation to grab Asian markets and Asian wealth."
and (read the article!!!) another article from CNN:
"The austerity measures were a condition of the International Monetary Fund's $43 billion aid package to bail out the southeast Asian nation. "
World Bank wanted to help Indonesia out but charge interest (usery) entrapment???? Funny how China is the only country who did not participate in this stock game and are better off then the rest of us for not doing so.....
Where the US bailout was only (pbs article):
"We expect that they're going to explain to the members of this Committee why the Federal Reserve has organized the $3.5 billion bail-out for billionaires, why Americans should be worried about the gambling practices of the Wall Street elite"
And there is Something Else I have run across for that timeline as well (making the "trillion dollar bet" just icing on this cake?):
(note: overall I find information from this resource to be integratingly correct enough to be both useful and insightful, though with a touch of blind bias towards capitalism, though it does try not to be blindly biased, it is to subjective to capitalism to completely avoid it.)
"During the 1993-1999 bubble era of false economic progress, many CEOs, executives, employers, employees, even customers adopted the scams of clintonian-era politicians, lawyers, journalists, academics to become increasingly dishonest, corrupt, even criminal. The bubble-building, stock-market fraud began when Chairman Alan Greenspan clintonized the
Federal Reserve. He signaled that politicization by blatantly breaking a time-honored apolitical precedent when he sat as a special guest in the president's box during Clinton s first State-of-the-Union address. Greenspan, the former acolyte of capitalism-champion Ayn Rand, then married a socialist/clintonian journalist. His drive to create a Clinton-boosting, economic boom -- a high-tech bubble economy -- escalated from that point. He with Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton artificially increased the value of the dollar, relentlessly increased the M-3 money supply, recklessly created sloshing liquidity, and pied pipered consumers and corporations into bankrupting debt. He engineered those cancerous long-term policies to continually fuel the equity markets for baleful political ends and unearned glory.
The bubble burst in early 2000 causing losses of four-trillion dollars. After several sharp bear-market rallies, those equity losses launched a long-term economic decline -- the feared L-shaped recession or worse."
Oh yeah and this 5 year stock market link comparing the DOW with the S&P and most important the NASDAQ. Where you can tell where the money went and also know what the dot coms were all about.
Given the above
From theCBS article on the NSA (National Security Agency) total system failure:
"In January 2000, Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of the NSA, received a call from the agency's watch officer alerting him that all of its computers had crashed."
In that same article (in fact in the previous paragraph):
"A phone call intercepted by the NSA is often the first warning that a terrorist such as Osama bin Laden is planning an attack against Americans. To find that threatening phone call, email or radio transmission among the billions made daily, the NSA relies on rooms of supercomputers."
The date of this CBS article is Aug 29, 2001.
Do you really think maybe Y2K brought the systems all down? For what is supposed to be the top spy agency in the US? (they don't say what caused the three and a half day crash.)
Or do you perhaps see a simpler Truth to the matter, such as:
Stock market gamblers and Gov. screwed up the world economy so bad and especially for muslims that the NSA had damn good reason to KNOW what was going to happen and that they needed an excuse for their total inability to deal with it.
*And then there is this, how might Afghanistan participate in global* *humanitarian issues:*
And the Bill of Rights
How about now? Do you want to fight now? And if you were an Afghan Muslim, instead of a US citizen?
Targets....White House for it's political control over Pentagon military backed control over World Trade Center
We taught them how to do it, How to fight smart, how to learn what they need to know and where they can get supplies (anthrax, planes, etc..) from us to use against us....... then we lite a bon fire under their ass to motivate them into action while we turned our backs to intelligence....played ignorant......so they could more easily do it.
And Ted Turner (CNN) said something about the attack being an act of desparation. Which he later apologized for.....because of why?
I mean does it? honestly? Is it really an issue if the govt knows how often you get Monkey Spanking for Loners vol 3 out?
:-P
Just because they information is there doesn't mean they will do anything (not that there is that much you could do with library information). The govt wants access to the info for a reason - to find terrorists, peadophiles and the like. If you don't set off any flags in their search, then your data gets bypassed and life goes on.
Don't get me wrong I think there are limits and I wouldn't want to live under the watchful gaze of big brother all time.
However all this talk of big brother is always being thrown about and you are just fueling the fire. Yes the govts around the world should not have access to every aspect of information about you, but if them seeing what books you read, or if you need to carry around an id card with a chip on it that has a load of info about you (medical info would be damn handy if you got run over or something) then I think it's a small price to pay if it means the govt can get more terrorists, peadophiles, rapists, etc off our streets.
The trick isn't stopping them having info, it's controlling what info they have; and for the average citizen, most things the govt would want to know aren't going to affect your day-to-day life.
Now that I think about it, maybe you posted the topic because you have something to hide from the govt.
Now, should I be arrested? Should my Encyclopaedia, which I purchased at quite some personal cost while I was a seaman in the United States Navy, be taken from me lest I use the dangerous information it contains? Or does that only apply to electronically-conveyed information?
Roxio's GoBack 3 has an "Auto-Revert" function that automatically restores the hard disk to a pre-determined "clean" state, at a given time/event (midnight/shutdown/whatever.)
:)
They tout it as being ideal for cyber-cafes and libraries.
Unlike GoBack's normal working state, where a detailed history of the drive's activity is maintained, when Auto-Revert is enabled, no history is kept after a revert; all that's left is the "clean state."
Sounds ideal for preventing authoritarian agencies from snooping on their citizen's web surfing habits.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
- While this is often true, so what? The rest areas in national parks are also owned by the government, but that doesn't mean they have the right to put webcams in the latrines.
-
Further, it isn't always true. Lots of private universities have libraries; there are a number of privately-owned museums with libraries attatched.
-
Finally, while it is true your bog-standard municipal library is owned by `the government', it isn't owned by the federal government; it's generally a service of the municipal government, paid for by municpal ratepayers. Why exactly, again, does the FBI have the right to get any information at all from the library just because both the FBI and the municipal library are owned by `the' government?
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank and about as right-wing an organization as you can imagine, a group I seldom have occasion to agree with, published a report on these sorts of issues entitled ``Preserving our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism'', which, in discussing exactly the sort of new powers like being able to search library records with no probable cause, says:"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."
The fundamental problem with this is that an anonymous checkout system would mean that the library would have no way of getting their books back. Not that a lot of people are out to steal books from public libraries, but I know that if there weren't a fine for returning it late, I would probably put my borrowed books down some place and forget that they were borrowed and not mine. After two weeks of this, they usually give me a call reminding me that the books actually belong to them.
Now picture a world where they can't call me, and when I check out a book, they have no idea that I have quite a few sitting in my apartment waiting to be brought back. Multiply that by the number of people checking out books, and the nations libraries would soon be depleted.
Another thing, I know quite a few people who work in libraries, and they tend not to enthusiastically embrace anything. Especially anything that even sounds like it might require having to re-enter every book in their collection to a new database, and unfortunately they equate the people I know equate "new software" with "new database:. Of course this view is probably a little bit skewed because I'm used to pivcking around small libraries in sleepy towns in the sticks.
Some years ago, the Hampshire County Library service in the UK had two different styles of library tickets. One type was the standard cardboard wallet into which went a ticket identifying the book. On this carboard wallet, about 1.5" square, was the borrowers name and address. When you returned the book, you got the cardboard wallet back, leaving no trace of who borrowed what, and when.
The other type of ticket was the 'Fiction Token'. This was a simple, mass-produced plastic card, identical to every other plastic card, which was simply exchanged for fiction titles. You take a book, you give 'em a token. You return the book, they give you a token back, but not the same one. There's no way to track who has what.
This was all removed in the name of efficiency some years back. The current system uses barcodes in books, and barcoded member cards, tying all books to borrowers present and past. Any librarian can browse through your borrowing history, or the history of a book, almost instantaneously.
So, take a backward step for privacy. Replace your lendng libraries computer system with cardboard wallets. When a book is loaned, you do have the borrowers details, but ONLY while the borrower has the item. This allows you to chase borrowers who have not returned items. Once the item is returned, you lose the association. Simple, private, and virtually idiot-proof too. The system doesn't even need electricity. For low value items, such as paperback books, issue 'fiction tokens'. Borrowers get, say, four tokens, and if they want more, they pay the average cost of a paperback for one. Keep a log of who has how many tokens, but nothing more than that. This will catch abuses, but not provide any tracking. Librarians: You're in the library business, not the espionage business! Do your community a favour, and take a step backwards.
So, now the new thing will be for the seedier kids to hang out at the library and ambush anyone walking out. Books have a pretty high value and with this system, thieves are able to get full-face value for their loot. Hmmmm. Methinks it won't work. . .
This is a good idea to collect ideas on how to enable libraries to rpotect individual privacy in borrowing books..
we need to send this thread of ideas to people like Jenny levine at
http://www.theshiftedlibrarina.com
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Unfortunately, this isn't true. Look at the number of seizures without court hearings, etc. of 'drug lord' property.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Again, not necessarily. The Feds have even LESS right to tell the states what to do than the states. State governments are sovereign entities, except as delimited by the constitution - a document you are apparently unfamiliar with.
I agree with your analysis of the traditional view and the US Constitution. However, states have repeatedly ceded their authority to the Federal Government. I blame the Federal Income tax. My state taxes are roughly one half that of my federal taxes. If the situation were reversed, the federal gov't wouldn't have nearly as much power over the state governments.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Who thought "Programming Libraries".
::shakes head, sighs:: I am such a geek.
The answer to make sure they weren't spying was to create open-source ones, duuuuuh.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I don't think the "American" people would agree with you on any of these statements. Quite frankly, that makes you a PRO-TERRORIST communist. Don't you know that the cable news opinion poll has replaced the Supreme Court as the mechanism of judicial review?
I think every elected official and appointed bureaucrat should be required to recite the entire Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights on TV at least once. That way they cannot plead ignorance of fundamentals of our country, like the IX Amendment.
Too often, all the polarized political rhetoric emphasizes either the I for "liberal"s and the II for "conservative"s. There are many others, and they are not just historical artifacts or relics.
At any large university there is a small problem of people stealing textbooks and selling them back. It's not an earth-shattering problem, but it exists. There's nothing you can do about it, some theft is inevitable when you have 40,000 students. That doesn't mean schools should end book buybacks.
If you want to steal things that are readily tradeable for cash, you've got a lot of options. Anything that can go to a pawn shop, for example.
First of all, regardless of whether government owns libraries or whether we the people own the libraries it does not matter. Our records are private because we have a constituional right to privacy. Just because we go to a government school or a go to a government building does not mean we are surrendering ourselves to a polygraph or a piss test or a background check.
The way to make a library system secure against violations of our privacy is simple. When a person checks out a book, a record is created, when it is returned and any fines due are paid it should be erased. The record as to what book was checked out should be erased as soon as that information is no longer pertinent to the library or the customer.
Seems nice and subversion - invokes "paternalistic".
what isn't true, the 5th amendment?
....')
when the government takes property in the manner you describe they are not excercising eminent domain. the government seizes property under other laws made by congress under the authority granted it in the consititution ('provide for common defense and general welfare'...'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers,
whether the law is constitutional is another question.
Hell no.
Note what I said about the system becoming whimsical.
Also, I believe in public education and government regulation. So libretarians isn't the answer.
Neither is arbitrarily choosing third party candidates.
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.
Your milage may vary depending on your country's constitution, but in the U.S., there is no generalized right for cops to go fishing for criminals. They have to have "probable cause." Radar is still somewhat controversial on those grounds, and it is one reason speeding is not a misdemeanor but a civil infraction.
Indeed, as you point out, a warrant is required for accessing most records, and a warrant has to be based on credible testimony, and a judge has to sign his name to it (a standard that is often enough abused, but...).
So a library simply being property of a municipality or charitable foundation is not enough to enable a completely free hand in records access.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Knowing that, at any moment, the gov't could walk into the library and demand a list of everything everyone has been reading, or searching on the internet, is incredibly chilling to people's willingness to read, or search, materials that aren't "popular."
I would also suggest that if the vast majority of peacable citizens could be persuaded to educate themselves about science which would prove useful militarily (they don't need to read the books dammit, just borrow them) then such people would help to preserve others' anonymity at the library.
The article tells us that since the 50's, every single state has passed laws making library records confidential. What does that tell you? Overwhelmingly, every single state in the United States is against this release of information. So how does El Presidenté Bush's opinion over-ride that of the people who elected him?
What isn't true is that the government must provide fair and just compensation when it takes the property of citizens. Sure, that's what is says on paper, but that's not how things work. In the case of _suspected_ drug dealers, property can be seized without warrant, without trial, and without compensation.
I suppose it falls under the authority you cite, but I think my point was that the government does not always have to provide compensation for property seizure.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Assuming that:
1) librarians want to know how often a book is checked out and in.
2) librarians want to be able to get their books back
3) Librarians are Good People(Tm) and want to protect privacy:
The system should look like this:
3 separate databases/tables:
1) book check out/in information. contains 3 fields: Book name/barcode, date out, date in. This is written to at the same time as the other database
2) Personal holdings: the table is set up as follows: Personal ID, Date Out, Date Due.
3) personal info: name, address, etc.
The second table is checked against the current date to see if the book is overdue, if any are, it sends you a letter.
When your book is checked in, the check in date is filled in in table 1, and the record is DELETED in table 2.
Simple, easy, completely safe.
hmmmm?
Having once worked in a small Librariy I can say thay we could not keep track of all the books ckeked out. The server just could not handle keeping that much data,even the AIX server that ran it all. The couple of thousand books ckecked out every week would be a maintance money pit for the IS staff to keep backed-up. We keept track of fines and what is CURRENTLY checked out only and who has a library card. Anything else is too expensive for the tight budgets of any Library.
no
The 64K questions is why do they keep this information in the first place! I can see why they may want to know how many time a certain work is taken out so they can make intelligent choices in picking books that are of interest to the individuals that use their facility.
Maybe librarians are just nosey b#####ds!
If I had no idea what the facts were, I'd have to take their word for it, and allow my opinion to be shaped by my own lack of knowledge
Very true. Time after time since the whole Anthrax scare I found myself correcting people about what this or that biological agent could do, how you could spread it, etc etc. The only reason I happen to know these things is because I did a report in high school on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. It sort of makes me cringe to think that I'd probably be put in prison now for researching that report. I mean how do you protect yourself from terrorists, if you don't know how they think, or what they would do?
Carnivore is not limited to SMTP packets (if it was it would be defeated by all the web based mail readers). It can capture any and all IP traffic, so it can reconstruct anything a monitored site does on the Internet. No, it can't capture information off of a computer, but one does not go to a library to store information onto their hard drive. Anything on the hard drive of interest would have been sent over the Internet, either to or form another location: E-mail, user/passwords (even a /. login), news stories, stories about evil doers who think they are entitled to "rights" after peeking at an anti-government site, and so on.
It's been a while since I did this, but at some libraries I believe it's necessary to "unlock" a computer by somehow presenting your library card or some similar token, and so they could in fact know who was at which terminal.....
Clearly this is a needless action to take at a library. I can see the need to present your card when checking out a book, as it gives them some level of expectation that the book might be returned. But I've never had to present a library card at a library to read a book on site. I can read books in just about any public or university library in this country without a card, I just can't check them out. Why should I have to show a card to use an Internet terminal? The only reason seems to be to track people's usage. If they are doing this then we are hardly going to convince them to boot to RAM disk to protect people's privacy.
They might also look for things like what signin you used when you were checking your webmail...
And again, Carnivore will get that, a RAM disk will not provide privacy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _government_.
The US gubment does not own anything. They maintain property for the common good of the people. As a citizen of the US, you have every right to question how the gubment uses any of the public's property.
Furthermore, in the case of public libraries, the local municipality is charged with maintaining the local library. Not only is the FBI infringing on the rights of the people, they are also infringing on the rights of the states which is in direct violation of the US constitution.
It amazes me how many of my fellow Americans do not understand that the US government exists to serve them, not the other way around.
And no, the corporations do not control the gubment. The most powerful government lobby has always been and will always be a "grass roots movement."
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Did they teach you *anything* about the constitution?
Libraries are not as popular as they used to be. If librarians want to keep their libraries open and funded, they need as much traffic as possible to justify their existence.
;)
If people believe their privacy will be jeopardized by visiting a library, they will stay away from libraries even moreso than they do now. Thus, a pro-privacy stance makes perfect sense from a librarian's perspective, and it is an economically rational position to take.
That isn't to say the librarians don't prefer it that way, of course. If the government said "you only get funding if you invade people's privacy" it would be economically rational to take an anti-privacy stance...but I think some would still fight it.
After all, what good is a library full of books with nobody there to read them?
At least it would be quiet.
In the 70's a friend of mine in high school and I decided to check _The_Communist_Manifesto_ out of the school library. This seemed like a rebellious thing to do, and we were feeling rebellious.
...
It turned out to be a boring read for a couple of guys in high school, so it was thrown in the back of my locker.
It came due and my homeroom received two late lists. One had my name alone. The other had the four or five other late book folks in the homeroom. We laughed about how a copy of that late book list was in a file at the FBI.
Ha Ha Ha
Information should only record that you have something checked out, but not exactly what you have in your possession. Use a one-way hash such as MD5 on the ISBN as a key. When you check out a book, only this hash is recorded. When you return the book, this information is purged from the computer.
Downside, the library can't tell how much the book is worth when it is lost. If you record the value along with the hash, it could theoretically be used to figure out the exact book. To fix this, only the value "range" is recorded, and the maximum is charged if the book is loss. For example, the book is in the "Under $10 range". If lost, you own $10 to the library, even if the book only cost $7.
Another downside, the library doesn't have a way of keeping track of which books need to be replaced. This isn't a good situation, but privacy overrides inventory tracking need. I think it's a fair trade-off. The library could implement an "inventory week". During that week, the actual ISBN is recorded when you borrow a book so they can do a proper inventory check. If you don't want that information recorded (even if purged when the book is returned), don't check anything out that week.
-- Will program for bandwidth
As the sys admin for a fairly sizable public library system, I'd considered doing an "Ask Slashdot" on this very same subject. Our library (and, I'd assume, many many others) is fiercely protective of our patrons' right to privacy. And, like many on this site, we were outraged at the passing of the PATRIOT act. (At least CIPA still isn't in effect.)
We can still do quite a bit to protect our patrons' privacy, such as not requiring log-ins, using DHCP and NAT to keep their ip addresses hopping, etc. But as for records of what people have checked out, there's another problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere; backups. As with any database of mission-critical information, we have to maintain at least a small amount of backup information.
Of course, once a book is returned, we wipe the transaction record from the database. But the government will still be able to see who has what currently checked out, as well as whatever is on the backup tapes. Unfortunately, I can't see much of a way around that.
Please keep this thread going! I'm kind of having to teach myself the basics of system administration at my library, and some of the ideas that have come up so far have been very interesting...
It seems that if the American people are going to protect their rights, they are going to have to do so actively.
That's always been true, not just in America but in every country. The fact that so few people seem to understand it, is the most serious long-term threat to our freedom. Politicians want power, that's why most of them became politicians. Unless constantly resisted, they will grab more and more power over our lives.
During the turn of which century did black people have both 1.) the right to vote, and 2.) owners?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
At Andersen, Worldcom and Enron, the technological solution to their "problems with anonymity and privacy" (document shredding) was illegal, even before there was evidence of wrongdoing. (Now I know this is slashdot, the home of the easily stretched bad analogy, so I'll right off state that I realize that their financial records are supposed to be available.)
When a planned, possibly conspiratorial crime/attack/etc. occurs, do you really want our law enforcement hobbled by an inability to unravel the methods, sources, and co-conspirators of the bad guys?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
It's just another thing to boost our false sense of security. The people who end up paying for it are law-abiding citizens. Anyone who flew in the US in the few months after 9/11 knows what I mean.
First, I am a systems librarian. I run the central "materials management" server for a public library consortium, so I believe that I can add a few things to the discussion here.
First, it is important to mention that privacy and the right to information is very important to librarians. All professional librarians have at least a master's level degree; we receive in-depth training and education in privacy laws, ethics, and technology. Yes, slashdotters, I am a professional librarian, but I am also run an E10K.
A librarian will be the last person to give any private information of any sort. We fight internet filtering just like we fight the people who want to remove those "blasphemous" Harry Potter books from the library shelves. It's just a part of our profession.
With that said, I can tell you what we are doing, and maybe calm some of the fears of the original poster. The practices that I use in my system administration are very common, and are widely used. First, all of our "private" information is stored on the central server. We do not keep any identifying data on the server past 30 days. This is a very common practice... we've done it this way since coming off the old card catalog (as do most public and academic libraries).
As for any information stored on the public access computers-- there is no way to tell who used what computer on the client end. Again, the usage records are all centralized and secure. Furthermore, I know that most of our branches do maintenance routines to clear the workstations' cache and such. Some branches even go as far as reloading the entire hard drive each night ( actually removing the partition, and starting again from scratch from a image).
So, there is no need for an "anonymous checkout system" or anything like that. We're handling this job just like we've been handling it since Egyptian times... and John Ashcroft does not scare us. Much.
You know, instead of posting this question to slashdot, you should of consulted your friendly local reference librarian, who would of consulted your local systems librarian (who is probably chained up somewhere in the server room). That is their job, afterall.
See, that's a really good point - and environment that's safe and anonymous might also be one that would make it difficult for crackers to work from. Talk to me about what things a PC should be able/not able to do to make it cracker-unfriendly.
closed minded is as closed minded does
I don't think anyone here has even a clue how huge and complex library software is -- nor how much money it costs, and the nightmares there are in maintaining it. We tried to create a GNU software system for libraries sometime ago, never got off the ground. There were quite a few volunteers, all who seemed to think this was just a simple database project, but when they took a look at what libraries actually are using and what it would take to create a whole new state of the art object oriented library system -- they all went away. Go to the SIRSI page www.sirsi.com or the Innovative Interfaces homepage if you want to see companies that have the best commercial stuff out there. And, BTW, up until now libraries didn't keep records of what you checked out -- the default setting in the software is to erase the record as soon as the book was checked back in. This was done precisely because the police and feebs had in the past tried to get that info. Librarians are not happy to be in this position, believe me.
clearly part of the system would try to limit the ability to snoop on the goings-on from the ISP - some kind of encrypted, anonymous browsing would be great (I posted above suggesting encrypted communications to an anonymous proxy (only as safe as the proxy is) like triangle boy (if I recall correctly that how it worked) or what ever happened to that IBM program 'crowds'?
I'm interested in any ideas you have on how to secure against ISP-level snooping
closed minded is as closed minded does
Knoppix is what you need.
Meanwhile, your bank knows how and where you use your credit cards, your phone company knows who and when you use the telephone, and, if you use one of those cute little discount cards, your local grocery knows what you eat.
All this privacy threatening activity existed before the current post-9/11 focus, and would still exist absent that. It is financially driven, even in the case of libraries who want their books back.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Its a republic. Democracy is a dirty word synonimous with mob rule. The word democracy apears nowhere in the constituion or related documents. Its use is merely a populist attempt to overthrow perfectly good and well thought out methods for maintaining a government.
The library is going to be required to turn over their keys legally. You can't hide the encryption from them, and you can get charged with obstructing justice if you have a librarian dead-man switch deleting files...
I've also been thinking up a system for checking out physcial books anonymously for sometime. This became especially important to me, when I realized my library was asking patrons for their SSN in order to get a library card.
So this is system I've got so far....
1) You need to get the libraries to add another field for all books in their databases: how much replacement costs are (not book costs, as those are far cheaper) for each book. This is *not* an inexpensive step for large collections. Also you need a flag for whether or not a book *can* be replaced. Many, if not most, books can't be replaced. And most books are out of print in under 5 years.
2) When checking out a book with an anonymous borrower's card, the value of the card is compared to the value of the book. If the book is less valuable than the $ on the card, then the person wishing to check out the book may check out the book. In total all the books the person wishes to check out must be less than the value on the card.
3) The person wishing to use the anonymous card, tells the checking out staff member their use-password, to confirm that they have permission to use that particular anonymous borrower card (an attempt to prevent theft of cards. It's not very effective it's still possible for the woefully underpaid staff members to fleece anonymous cards, amongst other problems). And the amount the book is worth is deducted from that anonymous card account. As per most libraries, you get a checkout printout (which is also your receipt - how much good it's gonna do you I'm not sure....)
4) There's another password, which is the refund password. That allows you to cancel the anonymous account and get your money back (minus set-up fee). Card is written off as a loss, but can be re-upped with more money later (ie: don't reuse the card numbers, or be willing to tell people their old card can't be re-used). The reason this is different than the use-password is so one person can fund an anonymous card with more than one user, or give to a child and not let them cash it out.
5) Books that are late are automatically depreciated by late fees, until their value is 0, and then the book is purchased. Otherwise, patron gets whatever value is left back into their anonymous account, when they return the late book.
6) Another large problem (like 1), is book returns. A lot of time returning a book to the library does not put it back into their availablity system, and there's no reciepts issued, and no way to prove that you did return a book on time (any library user of more than a casual amount has run into this problem). One way around this design problem is to assign another staff member to do physical check-ins and print dated reciepts, limiting anonymous people to risking their money or having set hours which they must do returns. Also, most libraries are woefully underfunded and understaffed to be able to assign a staff member to do this.
7) This system doesn't cover defacement or other problems.
Many thanks to a nameless (for fear of slashdotting) librarian news site, for covering these issues and many other that are essential to rights, and knowledge.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
While I like your idea in principle, it violates information physics. The idea that you can set [the book] to expire when the book is "due" is just as fallacious as the idea that you can rent a secret. "Information" isn't a block of cheese that can rot over time or a car that can be rented and returned. It isn't anything physical. It's simply the organization of discrete bits into a specific order. This requires physical material to store that order, but the information stored on the pages of a book is not the same thing as the book.
Linux is not the units of magnetic material on your hard drive that store it. A story is not ink and paper.
People fall into this way of thinking all the time because information is so closely tied to the material on which it is stored. Sure, you can rent a book, but you can't prevent someone from taking it home and scanning it in. That person wouldn't be stealing the book - she could still return it - but she would have a copy of the information represented by the order of ink blots on its pages.
When you introduce eBook readers into the equation, you mix two fundamentally incompatible areas of thinking: the old world view that can't properly distinguish between information and the physical material that contains it (book publishers), and the new world view that understands the physics of information (tech savvy people). By making easy the electronic distribution of information that is usually contained in books, it becomes easy to copy that information - much easier than scanning a page. Sure, you can have software that looks at a clock and zeros out flash memory depending on a rental table, but any technology like this, any technology that attempts to control information copying, is doing so artificially. Information does not naturally expire or resist copying.
This opens the door to widespread copying and distribution once someone hacks the eBook device. While there would be no "theft", people would have their desires satisfied (i.e. they wolud be able to read the book) without paying for it. Sure, those people could go down to the library and rent the book, but they would risk having to wait in a queue for a limited resource. Also, "renting" something is not nearly as satisfying (to most people) as "owning" it. However, it would decrease the amount of demand for that book that would be channeled into the purchasing process resulting in revenue for the book publisher and author.
Copying copyrighted information is not stealing - it doesn't detract from the quantity of stock the "owner" of the copyright has. It detracts from the market value of the stock the "owner" of the copyright has.
If someone builds a fantastic device that can't be tapped or logged, they will then only demand or legislate that it not be used. It's good to have that friendly solution in our back pocket, but we must confront the idiocy behind the forces that are eroding the rights we all deserve together.
We will not passively save our freedoms.
It seems a lot of people are under the impression that the library's
computer remembers everything you ever checked out. While it is
theoretically possible that there may be libraries whose automation
systems do that, it is certainly not usual. I work at a library,
and our vendor (Gaylord) produces two of the major catalog systems
on the market, Galaxy (which we use) and Polaris (which is newer
and less, erhm, mature). Neither provides even the _option_ of
storing this information.
The library _does_ of course know what books you _currently_
have checked out. That's sort of necessary for them to be able
to hold you accountable if you fail to return the item. They may
even be able to check a book that recently came back and see who
just had it out, but that information is not stored forever, either.
(On our system, it's stored either for three days, or until someone
else checks the item out and returns it, whichever is sooner.
There is no way to look it up on a per-person basis, not even
with the report-generation facilities.)
So, if you are worried that having checked out a book on bomb
making a couple of years back for a report will make you a
suspect when the next terrorist attack rolls around, set your
mind at ease.
Furthermore, it is in many states (including Ohio) illegal for
a public library to disclose to anyone outside the library
your personal information (such as what you have out or what
your phone number is) except in certain special situations,
such as at the request of a parent of a minor patron, or a
court order.
So, to summarise the risk, the feds could, with a court order,
find out what you _currently_ have out, and your address and
such. Actually, I'd be more concerned about J. Random Criminal
(or someone who decides to hold a grudge for some reason) walking
up to an unattended circ terminal while the librarian on duty
is off helping a patron in the stacks (this happens quite a bit
at smaller libraries) and quickly looking up your address, or
charging you fines, or whatever. Very little computer knowledge
would be required to do this, because library computer systems
are designed for librarians, many of whom are not geeks.
Perhaps the most interesting insight I have to offer here is
that librarians tend WAY further toward the privacy-nut view
on this issue than the typical citizen. A significant number
of patrons would prefer (some of them strongly, to the point
of being quite annoyed at our refusal) that we retain a
complete list of every item they have ever checked out, in
order to be able to inform them whether they've already read
a given book, which books we have by a given author that they
have not read, and so on. Our suggestions that they retain
such a list themselves fall on deaf ears. They don't want
to be troubled with that. They want the convenience. (I
personally am appalled that anyone could take the trouble
to read an entire book and then not remember the plot (or
the major points, or whatever), to say nothing of not even
remembering whether they've read it or not, but apparently I
am nearly alone in this view. Anytime I state it, people look
at like I've just announced I'm from Mars.) If there are
libraries that do retain such information, I'm quite sure
it's because they caved in to patron demand.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
No, he's talking about the other turn of the century (the 2000 election in Florida).
(Sorry, bad joke.)
My state taxes are roughly one half that of my federal taxes. If the situation were reversed, the federal gov't wouldn't have nearly as much power over the state governments.
Be careful what you wish for: your state may take you at your word and quadruple its taxes.
I remember growing up a classic social science experiment. A group of Boy Scouts took a modernized paraphrase of the Declaration, including the passage cited above, and circulated it at shopping malls as if it were an Initiative petition. Most people not only refused to sign the thing, but called the boys Communist sympathizers.
Yep, that democracy thing is heavy stuff...
The difference is that you have to pay for the stuff you buy in a store, and they store is paying you (indirectly, by giving a very small discount) when you use the card.
In my experience this isn't so. Around here, prices jumped 50%-100% just after the cards were introduced; those with the cards kept paying the same prices they always had.
I resisted getting a card for months, but finally settled for getting one with the name and address of our fearless leader. I make it a point to always use cash at the grocery, so there's no way to cross-reference a credit card number (maybe I'm just paranoid about that bit).
Last night, though, something interesting happened: I had forgotten to bring any cash, so I pulled out a credit card and claimed to misplace my discount card. The lady at the register pulled out hers and swiped that one! She must do this all the time, because the receipt announced that she had saved over $20,000 so far by using her discount card.
Of course, now my credit card number is associated with the purchasing habits of everyone within a ten-mile radius.
I believe the Cult of the Dead Cow's program "Peek-a-Booty" does just that...kind of an encrypted peer-to-peer internet proxy. Check out their website
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I agree with your analysis of the traditional view and the US Constitution. However, states have repeatedly ceded their authority to the Federal Government. I blame the Federal Income tax. My state taxes are roughly one half that of my federal taxes. If the situation were reversed, the federal gov't wouldn't have nearly as much power over the state governments.
Consider yourself lucky. In Australia, the federal government was took income tax powers a) as an emergency measure to fund WWII b) as a result of some delightful constitutional interpretation by the High Court of Australia, the members of whom were selected by, wait for it... the federal government (regardless of the left right preference of the justices, their centralist tendencies were rarely in doubt). The states were then beholden to the federal government because the delightful interpretation said that the states could tax anything they liked, it's just that the federal government got their slice first (this is known as the "First Uniform Tax Case" if anyone is interested) as a result every year the states go cap in hand to the federal government for their slice of the national income tax pie to fund such mundane services such as education and hospitals, both of which are the responsibility of the state government. It is a joke!
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I live in Maryland. I'm sure I'm not the first with the idea. Trust me, when our state government grows up, it wants to be Massachusetts.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This sounds somewhat similar to the situation in the US (although the mechanics are no doubt different). Large federal tax, small local tax (and in case of debt, the federal government gets money first). In order to fund roads, schools, etc. the state(s) must get various and sundry federal grants and loans. In turn, the states must follow all matter of federal laws and regulations. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is that road money is MY money. The money of a citizen of this state. The rules are those of Pennsylvania, California, New York (just picking big states and using as example).
Anyway, I think the politics and idea sound very similar to what you have in Austrailia. Although from your description, it sounds like you just pay one tax bill to the federal government, not two separate ones?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What is the point of your ranting? That the US hasn't done enough or that the US is responsible through its actions for all that is bad?
Maybe I should feel guilty, being a US citizen and all, that we haven't solved all of the worlds problems.
I suppose the Japanese and Germans would have done a better job of things if they had won WWII. Maybe the USSR would have exported their version of a workers paradise if there was no cold war. Maybe Mao's great leap forward wouldn't have resulted in millions of dead from starvation if the US had done something or nothing (you tell me, Nostradumbass).
Maybe. But I doubt it.
So go ahead then and take out a few books on STD's or some other such sensitive, private topic. Even if you are just curious, or looking at information because of something you heard. Then allow the public to have access to that information.
"So, have you heard that John Smith has" blah, blah, blah. It may sound far-fetched, but it isn't too far off-base.
You might say, "who cares, I don't care if people think I took a book out because I am sick", well there are quite a few people in small towns or not so small towns who don't wan't others to know their business.
And I that thought that the Goverment was supposed to be the peoples representative. But I guess it's not that way in the US.
=-kiOwA-> EOF
Much like sending post cards through the mail, it's hard to keep much private from ISP/FBI snooping.
One time pads are the obvious first choice for encryption (I don't trust that the FBI and their cohorts can't read PGP). That still can give away a lot of information, like who you are in contact with. While it might be considered an abuse of resources (no worse than most use of Usenet though), I would consider posting an encrypted private message to a binary newsgroup that I knew my contact was monitoring. One should be able to disguise it so that it looks like a stray file segment to the casual user. With a interesting subject line you should even be able to entice enough people to download it that our friends in the government who protect our rights wouldn't likely be able to find who downloaded it, even if they were monitoring all ISP (he would be lost in the crowd). Very short messages might even be stored in the file header, good luck sorting through the list of all people who downloaded those! Of course, if they see you pick up a response they would have an IP address they could backtrack on, so responses, if needed, might have to consider alternate forms of subterfuge.
Clearly there are ways, which should make it clear that Carnivore is more about snooping on honest citizens than it is about spying on terrorists who are taking precautions.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Perhaps you could set up a third party system in which you pay a regular fee or deposit that is placed in escrow with the third party. Said third party then checks out book for you. That way all that government officials would have access too would be all of the books checked out by that third party.