Tim Spalding wrote:
> In such a context, however, and without being alarmist, I think special care
> need to be made to design systems that provide the benefits of data sharing
> without incurring too many of the risks.
Perhaps I am out of the loop, but I have never heard of an outsider
privacy breech of a library system. Hackers and criminals (if that's not
a redundancy) have little to gain from the information in library
systems. The library privacy concern mainly involves law enforcement,
and began with actual cases in which the FBI used libraries to seek out
"thought criminals."
The only "security" possible against court orders or PATRIOT Act demands
is to not have the data at all.
Because it is possible to commit a crime using library Internet
resources (read: child pornography, hacking, etc.) many institutions are
using this as an excuse to identify users and connect them to particular
uses of resources. I see this primarily in universities; public
libraries tend to be much more open to anonymous use.
We can now endlessly debate whether it's better to catch child
pornographers using the library computers, or to protect the privacy of
all users, including those people seeking out dangerous ideas (was:
Communism; now: Islam).
Tim, I like your idea of separating the social data from the small
amount of data that a library actually needs in order to function. I
also think that there should be more separation between the
authentication of the user and the user's data that may be needed for
other purposes (address, age, and other identification data). I've seen
library systems that display the whole shebang to the clerk at the
circulation desk when you check out a book. We could do a better job of
protecting this data.
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Mon Jan 28 2008 - 13:04:01 EST