Slashdot Mirror
Library to Require Fingerprint to Use PCs
FearUncertaintyDoubt writes "Three libraries in Naperville, IL, soon will start requiring patrons who use the library's PCs to provide a fingerprint scan. The article says, ' Library officials say the added security is necessary to ensure people who are using the computers are who they say they are. Officials promise to protect the confidentiality of the fingerprint records.'"
The Patriot Act requires libraries to turn over that sort of information to the feds when asked.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
What does that mean exactly? Doesn't the "Patriot" Act allow for law enforcement officials to easily obtain library records during investigations?
The FBI can obtain a warrant from a secret court. The librarians are forbidden from telling ANYONE about the warrant.
In my opinion, this kind of secrecy and power is dangerous and wrong. I do not relish the prospect of living in a fascist society.
Fortunately, a number of librarians appear to agree with me. In one case the FBI backed down after issuing the warrant.
Interesting reading.
Not true. Most libraries only have records of what you currently have checked out. They don't keep those records after the books are returned. The historical exceptions have tended to be totalitarian regimes like Stalinist Russia.
Fingerprinting library users is insanely over the top. If it was happening in my country, I'd be really worried.
I grew up in Naperville and spent my childhood using the Naperville Public Libraries, and I visit often still because my parents live there. Now that I've moved, I have some perspective I didn't have when I lived there. Naperville is an interesting town. It's a land of burgeoning housing developments and SUVs piloted by soccer moms where people come to raise their kids and shield them from the outside world, because it's a very safe and insulated place. The police department really does have nothing better to do than issue traffic tickets and harass partying high schoolers for violating curfew.
Property values are high, and that keeps the riff-raff out. In the first Naperville neighborhood I lived in, the Chicago Housing Authority had a plan to build mixed-income housing. This was met with bitter resistance, under the guise of worry about gang activity and declining property values. This from a group of senior citizens for whom lower property values would save a lot of money in property taxes.
It's about the last place I'd expect a public outcry against anything claimed to be "for the children," privacy be damned. But maybe things have changed since I left. I hope so, but I'm not optimistic. So should there be such an outcry, I'd gain back a lot of lost faith in Naperville.
On the plus side for the Naperville Public Libraries, they were very receptive to my suggestion of installing Firefox on the same machines that will have the fingerprint scanners. Though that may have been because I said the popup blocking would suppress inappropriate popups, you know, for the children.
It's KOREAN old people, not Chinese old people. If you insist on using a clichè, please use it correctly.
Now I know, the ACLU is a bunch of commie liberals, but let us not forget the very public rebuke Ashcroft et al. received because not only were their search warrant requests being rubber stamped by the judicial panel, but they were also full of errors (one agent was even barred from appearing before the court because he regularly included errors): "In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors."
Now for some corrections (from Section 215 text):
In other words, they don't need the director's approval, and an "Assistant Special Agent in Charge" is a run-of-the-mill agent assigned to a case. So basically, the cleaning contractors and secretaries cannot request the warrants, but most everyone else can. These warrant requests go to:
This very close congressional oversight you suggest is really a semi-annual report by the attorney general to those committees to tell them the requests that were made, the number requested, and the number accepted, modified, and denied (this from the new 'Sec. 502 Congressional Oversight').
So we've established that you are technically correct that not just anyone can make the requests (as I mentioned, the cleaning crews and secretaries are excluded), and there is oversight (that rubber-stamps the requests, no matter how factually in error they are).
The PATRIOT Act is interesting reading. I suggest you read the text some time instead of getting the boiled down versions off of Fox News.