Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Library Cards An Option?
Ben Ostrowsky writes "On the heels of the possibility of requiring fingerprinting to use library resources, librarians don't like hoarding personally identifiable information; many are keenly aware of privacy concerns. Now it appears that anonymous library cards may be a possibility on the horizon. Tell your librarian you want to be anonymous!" From the article: " You've seen anonymous cash cards already; you may even have received them before. They're better known as gift cards. Using the same principle, libraries can issue a borrower card that uses cash, rather than personal ID information, as collateral. Here's an example: If a privacy-minded user deposits $20 to get an anonymous library card, she can check out The Terror State without identifying herself. Her account balance is temporarily reduced by $15, and when the library checks the CD back in (in good condition), her balance is restored to its original value."
..because the "resources" that they speak of in the link only talks about requiring fingerprints to access computers, similar to re-entering your password when you go to bid on something at ebay, just to make sure you are you. Unless im mistaken, you would have to have the balance of a PC on your card to use what you are being fingerprinted for, so why not just have cards that don't need to be fingerprinted, and those accounts can only use the paper resources of a library?
Because A) Not everyone who uses a library frequently has the $$$ to plop down on a book, even temporarily. One of the benefits of libraries is that the books are for everyone and not just us rich snobs who go to barnes and nobles every day. B) Sane people will not appreciate the library holding their dough unless they credit a decent amount of interest. Sure, it's only for a few weeks, but that money can add up fast (see: Office Space, Superman, etc).
These fingerprint scans for PC use are a stupid idea implemented by some town in Ill. I've never heard of. I'm sure that program won't fly...
Let's stop creating solutions for problems that don't exist. We have enough real problems in the US that need solutions...
this sig deleted by another sig
i have an interesting story regarding my friend's incident at the airport security. at the security checkpoint, my friend was about to walk through the metal detector. he had on white sneakers, which usually aren't required to be taken off.
the metal detector guard asked if my friend wanted to take off his shoes. he didn't request it, just asked if he wanted to. my friend, being lazy, of course said he'd rather just walk through. the moment he expressed this, he was asked for follow the guard and they went into one of those corners and he closed the drapes around him and did a full body search (no cavity search though).
either way, by saying you want an anonymous card is similar to this situation, where you have the option to, but you'll be more suspicious for them to check you out, probably finding stuff about you that they wouldn't have else known.
HD Trailers
The library has no way to contact the homeless person and tell them a book is being held, so the homeless person needs to stop in each day to see if the book has been returned. That's no different than a homeless person currently checking in each day to see if something popular is available for them to read on the premises.
The big problem with these $1 cards is that someone who doesn't want the public to read a book could buy a bunch of them and say "hold this book for me", then never return to read it. That would prevent the library from loaning the book out to other people so they could read it.
They're also known as cash, money, coins, etc and predate magnetic stripes on pieces of platic by thousands of years. And they aren't subject to expiration dates and can be used at any retailer.
Librarians as a profession (http://ala.org/) are privacy conscious. That doesn't necessarily mean that the policies of an individual public library, funded and run by the local political system, will be.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
In other words, if you want to check out 5 hardcovers at a time, you're going to have to deposit more than $20.
Well, sometimes librarians are the only ones fighting for you to keep having some of these rights and not having your reading habits looked through.
They seem to be the only ones who really appreciate the issues involved in the freedoms involved. Oft-times it's counrt challenges made by them that preserves such freedoms.
By protecting your currently held rights to read what you want with privacy you legitimise attacks on your privacy?
That's effectively saying that you concede that only criminals would want to keep things private from the government, so not-guilty people have nothing to hide.
The US constitution was designed to prevent this kind of state-control of the citizenry, not make everyone who tries to uphold it into an outlaw.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And may I ask, how do you know that I don't contribute to Wiki? Because as a matter of fact I do. [...] Why don't you stop making assumptions (because you know what they say about assumptions) and take a reality check.
I'm not making assumptions, I just don't respect the "get your priorities straight / think of the children" posts (your post being an independant entity from you, btw) because they never contribute anything to the discussion. Off course there are other problems in life, more pressing, more life threatning, etc.
If you're going to say there are more pressing matters to this thread, why not write a macro that'll post the exact same thing to every. single. thread. up until such times as hunger, war and disease have been wiped out from the world? Might as well.
You can't take the sky from me...
Let's say libraries had the resources to implement this. There is no replacing an out-of-print book, even if it originally cost less that the deposit amount.
-- We live in a kakistocracy.
But seriously, are you suggesting we should have universal anonymity with universal trust? You must be mad. Did you follow the 'white bicycle' and 'green bicycle' experiments?
Anyway, the 'rich' (in this case those with 20 bucks to spare) only get to be anonymous by forfeiting access to some of their money.
You might as well complain that parking schemes are only for the benefit of those who can afford a car.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I would only think this would work if the deposit was much higher.. but of course then no one would use it.
Elite Level: For a fee large enough that only rich people (and well-funded cells) will pay it, you can have a library card not traceable to you (until you show up to use it again).
Comrade Level: For free-as-in-police-state, you can have a library card that logs every transaction you make. (Future upgrades will upload the logs directly to DCS1000.)
The surveillance situation in this country is just wrong and it keeps getting wronger(TM), but look where this solution leads us: two classes of access. The principle of libraries is that free public access to information improves society. Free -- not paid, not surveilled -- free.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Most of the only time knowing what the bad guys did at a library is only helpful after the fact, but that can help a lot.
All of this is based on the theory that government is honest, never makes mistakes and always lives up to the principles laid out in the Constitution by our founding fathers.
The truth falls well short of this - during my lifetime there have been multple large scale abuses of power by the federal govenerment - and I think history will show the Patriot Act to fall into that category.
And pray, tell me WHY reading a book, no matter how inflamartory should make one bit of difference in a criminal context? This is surely only a back door towards eroding some of our most basic freedoms - of speech and the press.
What next, are we going to record how individuals voted in the elections? Surely, if you vote for a Muslim candidate that must mean you have terrorist leanings, right? And don't laugh - people lost everything during the McCarthy era simply because they associated with somebody who belonged to the wrong political party. Look at the case of Robert Oppenhiemer.
We live in an era where there have been many proposals by agents of the goverment to establish centralized databases full of data characterizing the actions and behaviors of citizens without any restraint on who gets cataloged. There is a bill before Congress right now that would mandate a national id card.
Can you imagine how data of that nature would have been misused by the likes of McCarthy and Nixon?
No, rather than this incessant data gathering and spying that seems to be the idea of moment (and in reality it signals victory by the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life) we should be working to STRENGTHEN the erosions of privacy that are occurring in the digital age.
Anonymous library cards are a WONDERFUL idea.
Some people prefer not to, and get a card with features that reduces their potential loss at the cost of it being possible to trace transactions, and other prefer to walk around with anything from a few small bills to large wads of high denomination bills.
Why does it have to be either/or?
Except that if you check out a book non-anonymously, you have no right to privacy beyond the transaction. The government can see that you're checking out perfectly legal books from a public library and use it to build a case* to arrest or further invade you. The government has so far not said "The library must keep track of this information", it has only said "The library must turn over what information it keeps track of". So, yes, in this case anonymity is the only way to preserve your privacy.
*"OMFG NOBODY IS BEING ARRESTED FOR CHECKING OUT A BOOK U MORON" == irrelevent, not actually related to what I said. Beware of magic qualifying words: they need to be read for the sentence to work.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
ACLU-fantasized????
How about Supreme Court established. There is no provision in the Constitution to abridge the rights spelled out therein because you want to. That's what MCarthy tried to do, and the climate at the time allowed him to get pretty far with it.
The consequences of the first and fourth ammendments is that you have a rock solid right to read these things, hang out with other people who have read these things, and be free of extra-ordinary scrutiny for having read these things.
One thing you'll find about attorneys/groups that vigilantly defend these freedoms, is a willingless to defend the ability of people to say controversial things. I may not side with, for example, white supremecists. But I sure as hell defend their right to advocate such positions -- as long as it stops short of incitement to do violence and the like.
The reason is simple -- those rights in your Constitution (I'm not American) are intended to be absolute and guaranteed to everyone. Not the ones who are politically sanitized and sanctioned by the current administration.
The laws of the US are founded on a moral authority. When you selectively apply that law, you erode that moral authority -- kind of like what the current administration seems to be happy to do. In the long-run, your constitution will prevail. In the short run, people keep trying to do an end-run around it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.