Slashdot Mirror
Librarians As the First Line of Privacy Defense
The Guardian features a look at the influence of librarians in the evolving fight for various of the liberties that here on Slashdot we group together as Your Rights Online. The article points out that the evolution of libraries from book repositiories to more general centers for information technology means that librarians have been pressured in many small ways to give up their patrons' privacy, and have (at least often) successfully resisted that pressure, including some from the NSA. A small slice: The first politician to discover the danger of underestimating what happens when you have thousands of librarians on your case was attorney general John Ashcroft who, in 2003, accused the American Library Association of “baseless hysteria” and ridiculed their protests against the Patriot Act. ... US libraries were once protected from blanket requests for records of what their patrons were reading or viewing online, but the legislation rushed through after after 9/11 threatened to wreck this tradition of confidentiality in ways that presaged later discoveries of bulk telephone and internet record collection."
My local librarians don't even understand why you wouldn't want them keeping a record of who used the computer and when. Some librarians may understand privacy, but most of them are completely clueless about technology.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Offering my two cents.
It's true that libraries operating in this century are faced with the grim spectre of obsolescence. With the advent of the Internet and the ubiquity of computers, tablets, and smartphones, most people have a wealth of information at their fingertips that dwarfs anything to be found among the physical holdings of your local library.
However, this is beside the point.
Libraries offer more than a given collection of information. They offer the principles of universal access, privacy, and the freedom of ideas, all of which seem to have fallen by the wayside in modern times. The American Library Association maintains an Office for Intellectual Freedom specifically dedicated to teaching ethics, supporting privacy and confidentiality, and fighting censorship. Your library is one of the few organizations today that is actively looking out for your best interests and those of your fellow citizens, and asks for virtually nothing in return, save for a few tax dollars to keep the lights on. When you think about all the other stuff your taxes will be used for--including the NSA's continued efforts to spy on you--I believe that's a more than fair trade.
In his interview with John Oliver, Edward Snowden said that by conducting surveillance on Americans, the NSA is effectively holding a gun to your head and asking you to trust that they won't pull the trigger (unless you give them a reason).
Your library is asking the NSA to put down the gun.
Haven't thought about that peice of shit for a while... what an asshole.
So? Can't "the man" just request the list of currently checked out books once a week? It should be sufficient to automatically reconstruct the vast majority of lending metadata.. Seems likely the FBI doesn't really care all that much (there's probably an just A.D somewhere that has this book malarkey on his yearly performance pay evaluation).
They could, but then the equation changes from "I need to know about Bob, go get his lending history from the library" to "I need to do a bunch of paperwork every week, get all the information on everyone, and then store it, in case I someday need to look up Bob (or Sue, or Mike)".
It's the extra layer of hassle that makes all the difference. If Bob suddenly becomes interesting, then they're only going to get his current checked out books. If they want that massive database, they have to be constantly filing paperwork.