[49] in Information Retrieval
Re: access to circ data out of Barton
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ganderso@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Wed Jan 8 09:42:43 1992
From: ganderso@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: elibdev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 07 Jan 92 21:37:26 -0500.
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 92 09:41:25 EST
There are many important and very serious issues related to security
and confidentiality of patron's circulation records, and it is much
more than "just a list of overdue books". Just as for security for
grades, patrons should be equally concerned about the privacy of what
they are reading, especially for long-term protections.
Just a couple of examples. The FBI instituted a program in the 1980's,
to encourage librarians to identify patrons who were "foreigners, i.e.
eastern europeans, and who were using technical collections and seeking
access to high-end reseach material in a variety of topics". Librarians
made a big stink about this intrusion into individual rights, and protested
this incursion into the bill of rights arena. And librarians refused to
cooperate, and some of them came under tough scrutiny themselves from
the FBI. It all smacks of 'big-brotherism' nicht wahr?
A foreign case involved the Baader Meinhof Gang in West Germany back in the
70's, where the West Germany government supoened their library records in
order to determine what they were reading and how that assisted/influenced
their activities.
Libraries love statistics, including patron stats. We are very careful,
however, to restrict this gathering to classes of information - grad
students, ug's, faculty, etc. and to type of materials, physics titles,
etc.
As I descend not so gracefully from my soapbox, I think it is important
to understand that beneath the seemingly innocuous list of books charged
to a patron is a fundamental right to privacy that cannot be violated.
Thanks,
Greg Anderson
MIT Libraries
