Neither Bernie's nor Tim's examples show me that someone hacked into a
library system for the purpose of getting user data. The Library Elf
mess was, as they said, "inadvertent." It was more like leaving data
lying around that shouldn't have been (and was nothing that the
libraries themselves could have prevented). Bernie's example was of a
system being hacked but not for the purposes of obtaining patron data. I
still maintain that our primary threat is from law enforcement, and
there are hundreds if not thousands of examples of law enforcement
attempting to get or getting data on library use. I'm not advocating
that library systems be INsecure, but security doesn't help us with what
is, IMO, our largest threat.
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
>> 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."
>
--
-----------------------------------
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
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Received on Mon Jan 28 2008 - 14:13:09 EST