Jenny Levine: Privacy

A round up of interesting links from other librarian sites:

The USA PATRIOT Act and Patron Privacy on Library Internet Terminals

"The upshot is that there will be a great many more surveillance orders, everywhere in the country, and in turn there will be more requests for library records, including Internet use records. Think of law enforcement as needing to enter two doors to apprehend a suspect." [at LLRX, via LIS News]

David Brin on Privacy

"What bugs me terribly is that there have been no accompanying and countervailing powers of oversight, enabling citizen watchdog groups to observe how these new powers of vision are used. That second half of the deal was never offered to us. Nor did most of our protectors in the civil liberties community even ask.... I just believe we'll all be able to enforce our own privacy much better if those few important secrets are kept in a general ambiance of accountable openness, one in which there are very few Peeping Toms because of a high probability that they'll get caught. Privacy will be better protected in a generally open environment." [via Slashdot]

An interesting interview with Brin, in which he recognizes the "hierarchy of privacy needs." There is a spectrum after all, Tivo to Terrorism. I haven't read his book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, but it sounds interesting. Unfortunately, Audible doesn't have it, and that's the main way I "read" books these days.

Washington Plans Unprecedented Camera Network "Washington police are building what will be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday. The system would eventually include hundreds of cameras, linking existing devices in Metro mass transit stations, public schools and traffic intersections to new digital cameras mounted to watch over neighborhoods and shopping districts, the Journal said." [at The Washington Post]

This is pretty scary. How long do you suppose it will be before they want to put the cameras in library branches? And then subpoena circulation records?

Another Salon pointer today: Big Brother Is Watching You Read. "Increasingly, the government is demanding that bookstores reveal what books their customers have purchased. Bookstore owners and privacy advocates say that's scarier than a Stephen King novel."

While it focuses on recent cases of law enforcement officials getting subpoenas for bookstore records, it does have a quote from Judith Krug at ALA. Unfortunately, they don't run with it and explore the impact on libraries, which is huge given the recent "USA Patriot Act" (a horrible misnomer at best). If you haven't started preparing for a knock on the door from the police, you should. Even though you won't be able to tell anybody about it.

Spyware: How Your Personal Data Gets Stolen Online "So it was only a matter of time until a program such as VX2 would hit the Web, and hit it hard. VX2 takes spyware to a new level by pulling information, not just from use of an application, but from the use of a computer. When freeware that includes VX2 is installed on a computer, the program saves itself to a directory on the hard drive. Once firmly in place, it keeps track of the user's Web browsing (current and historical), information entered into forms, and configuration of the user's hardware and software. Based on all this information, pop-up ads begin to appear incessantly in the user's Web browser, giving the false impression that the Web page being viewed is responsible for the constant annoyances." [via LibraryStuff]

This is interesting. AT&T is offering a beta version of free Privacy Bird software that "will help Internet users stay informed about how information they provide to Web sites could be used. The AT&T Privacy Bird automatically searches for privacy policies at every website you visit. You can tell the software about your privacy concerns, and it will tell you whether each site's policies match your personal privacy preferences. The software displays a green bird icon at Web sites that match, and a red bird icon at sites that do not."

It's built to take advantage of the W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). Only Windows and Internet Explorer users get to monitor their privacy, though, as these are the only platforms supported. Does anyone already have a privacy policy written according to the P3P standard? I'd like to develop a template my libraries can use.