Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! tftqpyhbjzngt

Remember guys, if we don't give up our rights, the terrorists win, cause they hate our... lack of freedoms?

Me again,

I just though of this : what good self-respecting terrorist would use is real name on his library registration form?

"On the news today, police are on the lookout for a terrorist named I.P. Freely that blew up a school bus using a library computer. Last know good adress : 666 Al-Quaeda street,
(in the I-eat-babies-for-lunch district), Bagdad, Irak. Hobbies include eating babies and blowing up school buses."

LoveGravy, would you please explain to me how the FBI can catch smart bad-guys (not the bad-guys that you see in american movies) by spying on library users?

LoveGravy: "Oh, so what the LAW says is OK, but if they use all this additional spyware that NOONE IS EVEN PROPOSING then it's bad? Um....ok... If you think Libraries are keeping keylogs, then you're whacked. In law school I worked in the library and KNOW the kind of antiquated stuff they have, and how technical the staff is."

I am whacked then. I am sorry your law library was in such sorry shape. You should come back to the library. They're much more aware than you realize. As for keystroke software...the whole idea is that you are not told about it.

LoveGravy: you obviously live in a world where power doesn't corrupt. I have seen power corrupt. Then again, so has your "police friend." Does he realize that it is against the law in many areas to run a police check for his personal business?

Public libraries are funded by public money. You want them to follow the Patriot Act. I don't. Why don't we vote on it?

Finally, do you really believe the FBI only wants a list of who used what machne and at what time? That would be a waste of time. It's often a list of people who didn't show their ID and gave any name they liked. In the past week alone I was able to sit down in three separate libraries without even giving any ID.

Good!
I'm glad librarians are doing this. The Patriot Act is a joke.

9/11 was allowed to happen in part because the CIA and the FBI didn't do their jobs. They ignored clues on a bust in the Phillipines, they ignored a call from the head of the flight school one of the terrorists went to and they refused to search the laptop computer that Zaccarai Moussai had when he was arrested.

So whats the the lesson in the Patriot Act being passed? That a bunch of law enforcment suits with a history of petty competitions between them were to shortsighted to stop terrorists right under our noses and now i have LESS rights because of them?

thats ridiculous. Ashcroft is making excuses for law enforcement in this country with privacy and freedom our expense. Law enforcement has shown they are inflexable unable to be creative in their pursuance of terrorsits and beurocratic.

Why should the citizewn pay for that with privacy? Can't we hold the CIA and FBI(the most well funded law enforcement apparatus in the world) to the standards they set for themselves?

Rights don't need to be taken away in this battle. Law enforcement is inept and needs a reevaluation.

Edited by author 03-28-2003 01:43 PM
"That would be the first time in the history of human existance where a society existed that wasn't hated, envied or feared by someone else. [...] unlike you I see the bad guys as the threat, not the US Government."

Jeebus! Power corrupts. Not everyone, but some people. By what great virtue is the US Government protected from corruption? Maybe you don't care if the FBI knows that you read "Great expectations" at 3h00pm on the 15th of march, but what if a company won't hire you because they learn that you read a book on "how to be a good French citizen" two years ago? Its a small possibility, but it could happen. Ah! "But it can save lives! Won't you please think of the children!".

Here is an hypothetical situation : Let's say that the terrorists never hear about the Patriot act. They commonly use library computers to make school buses explode. FBI promptly arrests said terrorists. After 8-10 arrests, they suspect that the FBI is snooping around on the library computers and they stop using these computers to make school buses explode. They instead go to McDonalds. FBI still has to snoop on the library computers just to be safe. It does not save lives anymore but it can still be used by corrupted officials. Net gain : 10 arrests, 250 children avenged but the corruption continues.

Btw, are the librarians breaking any law? Do they have to keep logs of everything? Should they? Do you keep a log of all the keystrokes of your computer? Why should they? I feel I should keep a video log of my computer room 24/7 in case a burglar comes in my house and blows up school buses with my computer :)

<offtopic>
Btw, I'm a french Canadian and I have nothing against the french or the US citizen. I also never read "how to be a good French citizen". :)
</offtopic>

Civil disobedience by the librarians is not only right, it is mandatory. A librarian who rolls over and gives the feds information has betrayed his or her basic principles.

The federal government under BushInc has become the enemy of liberty.

Library records are not public records. The argument that they are is the argument of a totalitarian state.

So your friend is a great example of why this sort of info-gathering is incredibly dangerous, because people like him (and far more powerful people) will abuse it. Under the Patriot Act, he gets to abuse his power with impunity. The libraries telling people about the Patriot Act via signs at the library etc. are treading on thin legal ice. Thankfully many of them have the guts to do so.

Edited by author 03-28-2003 12:54 PM
"Actually, any time I've had my licensed checked..."

That you know of.... :) A friend of mine is a detective (was a state trooper, got promoted) and he used to run background checks and licence checks all the time on people. He'd start dating a girl and check her for priors just in case...

If the sign-up sheets say "This information will be held as a matter of public record and may be turned over to the authorities upon request. If you do not wish to record your identity, then you may not use these computers." then I'd be happy with it.


"I don't believe the idea of destroying the daily records and all of that is the best idea I've ever heard, but the libraries that are making their patrons aware of the PATRIOT act are certainly doing what I'd consider a good job"

I 100% agree. Well put.

Do the police call you whenever they run a check on your licence (like when requested by an Insurance company)? Does the credit bureau tell you every time someone runs a credit check on you? Are you claiming the librarians would suddenly be FOR this idea if the Feds had to call you and tell you they looked at your records?

Actually, any time I've had my licensed checked (which I had happen about three times when I was shopping around for insurance) or my credit checked (cell phones, various store credit cards), I was told that they were going to check said information while I was in the store, and I had the right to refuse the check if I wanted to.

Granted, it's very similar to getting patted down at the airport - you can refuse it, but if you do, don't expect to get any service. But I don't see this extending to the library situation because essentially everyone already HAS the service.

Look at it this way - when privacy policies change for nearly anything else (banks, eBay, credit cards, what have you), the company (AFAIK) *has* to send you something telling you what's changed and what can happen to your information, and give you the opportunity to decline the changes (thus, often, ending your service). Why should the libraries be any different?

(I don't believe the idea of destroying the daily records and all of that is the best idea I've ever heard, but the libraries that are making their patrons aware of the PATRIOT act are certainly doing what I'd consider a good job.)

"You can try to heal cancer but cutting it out of the body, or you can find out what the cause of the cancer is, remove it, and not have it happen again."

That would be the first time in the history of human existance where a society existed that wasn't hated, envied or feared by someone else.

Furthermore, it's not an "Either-Or" situation. You must work to solve the root of terrorism WHILE you remain vigilant against it. Either without the other is dangerous.

"Now we can ask one question : why caused them to do such a thing? The fact that they are being silenced. "

Do the police call you whenever they run a check on your licence (like when requested by an Insurance company)? Does the credit bureau tell you every time someone runs a credit check on you? Are you claiming the librarians would suddenly be FOR this idea if the Feds had to call you and tell you they looked at your records?

Computers in libraries are funded with government money. They are offered for free for anyone to use. If you don't like the fact that you aren't 100% anonymous, then don't use it. If enough people are bothered by this, then none of the computers will be used and the government might have to rethink their position. A boycott by the consumers is valid, while civil disobedience by the librarians is not. Furthermore the boycott has a FAR greater chance of changing the law than the librarians actions.

Finally, who do these librarians think they are? They sure aren't speaking for ME, they are doing what they THINK is in the best interest of the public without being held accountable for their actions, UNLIKE the elected public officials.

Ask the public: "Would you be OK with having your name and time logged when using a public computer if it could potentially help law enforcement catch people who use public computers for illegal activities" and let THEM decide.

I like how some of you folks (you being the librarians, not necessarily the blog readers) elect yourselves as the "protectors of freedom" when noone seems to have asked you to do that. The "outcry" over logging usage has been a HUGE minority, yet that minority thinks they are speaking for everyone.

Put it to vote and see what happens. I'd gladly let them know my name and what computer I'm using and when if there's even a SMALL chance that it could help catch someone using that system for illegal purposes, and I know I'm not alone in that either.

Hey, don't get me wrong, thanks for protecting me from our malicious government and all, but unlike you I see the bad guys as the threat, not the US Government.

Edited by author 03-28-2003 11:59 AM
cypherpunks[!] wrote :

> Those do not seem like the same rules to me.

Exactly! LoveGravy said way back in at the start of this discussion that libraries would become a safe haven for criminials bacause of what the librarians are doing (erasing records etc). Now we can ask one question : why caused them to do such a thing? The fact that they are being silenced.

What if the authorities (FBI?) would publicly admit that they came and looked at some records at the library? *poof* no more magic safe haven for criminals.. Joe-terrorist would NEVER use a library computer again! It's much easier to gain access to wireless unsecured networks anyway :p

Of course, this would simply push the problem into someone else's backyard ... But libraries would be safe once more! To me, the one question that never gets asked enough is "what made them do that?".

I just wish people would try to answer that question about the terrosist attacks. That doesn't justify terrorist attacks of course, but it could explain why they exist. You can try to heal cancer but cutting it out of the body, or you can find out what the cause of the cancer is, remove it, and not have it happen again.

Utopia is better then witch hunts :)
(sorry for the engrish)

And now that we have "Free 802.11b Internet Access" in McDonalds, this point may be moot anyway. I can buy a happy meal and hack the pentagon. I don't know what level of logging they are doing there, but it's McDonalds for goodness sakes, and I doubt they have much in the way of network admins at their restauraunts.

"Oh, that's not abused. Not that at all. But combined with the keystroke capture and image redirect I now know your email address and password. I also know an organization you to which you belong. I also know a very bad man is a member of that organization. And since you belong to that organization you can't be trusted any longer."

Oh, so what the LAW says is OK, but if they use all this additional spyware that NOONE IS EVEN PROPOSING then it's bad? Um....ok... If you think Libraries are keeping keylogs, then you're whacked. In law school I worked in the library and KNOW the kind of antiquated stuff they have, and how technical the staff is. What you are saying is like "Pulling someone over for speeding and beating the crap out of them with a flashlight is bad" when all I was talking about is handing out speeding tickets.

Furthermore, Libraries are NOT a right! We pay for them and the Government provides them to the public. If they decide to capture info on you and let you know they are doing it (which, obviously, they are since you have to SIGN UP to use them) then so be it. Don't like it? Don't use it! Buy a computer for your home and use it there.

Why should these "free" public systems be completely unrestricted? Is it a RIGHT for people to have public Internet Access? Is it a RIGHT for them to have greater anonymity while using this free public internet access than those of us who pay for it have? Sure the Feds can get the usage logs from the library without a warrant, so what? It's a government facility afterall. They can run a violation check on your drivers licence too any time they want because the Police are a government service too.

Noone is forcing you to use library computers. It's a free service, and in return you have to leave your name. Big deal.

"Guns and anonymity are two separate issues - anonymity is not an offensive weapon in any way"

No? So if I send you a death threat anonymously then you don't see that as a bad thing? When I use a library computer to hack a commercial site to steal creditcards, isn't that a bad thing? If you don't think anonymous computer access isn't an offencive weapon then give me your IP address and I'll prove you wrong.

Ok, so you don't like the gun analogy. Sure, Republicans say "if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" but when you say "if you outlaw anonymous access, then only outlaws will have anonymous access" it's totally different. Ok, I'll go along with that.

Then answer me this, which is my fundamental argument here:

Why should Library computers be exempt from the same level of logging that every ISP and corporation in the nation conducts?

When you lease an IP address when you dial into AOL, they know who you are and how long you've had that IP address on what day. When you login from a library, we'd have NOTHING if not for the sign-up sheets. AOL wants to know who had what IP when so that if you do something illegal that they can find you and terminate your account. Why is it OK when AOL does this, but bad when the government does this? AOL doesn't need a court order to see who had the IP address, why should the government?

Guns and anonymity are two separate issues - anonymity is not an offensive weapon in any way. One cannot kill by hiding his identity. One can make poltical statements, share secrets with a friend, blow the whistle on their employer, and yes, conspire to commit a crime. However, the conspiracy does not commit the crime - the actual people do, with actual weapons, with actual actions.

But for the record, I am also opposed to most forms of gun control.

Lovegravy wrote:

> Get real folks, this isn't "big brother", this is simply
> applying the same rules of accountability towards the
> users of public computers that we have today with
> private ones.

To get information from my ISP about what I've been doing, the police would need a warrant to get it, and the ISP could tell me that they were served with one.

To get information from a public library, they could just show up, and the library would be *forbidden* to tell me that it happened.

Those do not seem like the same rules to me.

LoveGravy: "Ok, they know LoveGravy was on computer #12 for 2 hours today between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. Please tell me how this info will be abused?"

Oh, that's not abused. Not that at all. But combined with the keystroke capture and image redirect I now know your email address and password. I also know an organization you to which you belong. I also know a very bad man is a member of that organization. And since you belong to that organization you can't be trusted any longer.

And since I can't trust you I must suspect all the groups to which you belong. After all, any of them could be terrorist cells. Just because you pretend to be a right-wing America lover doesn't mean you aren't secretly meeting with the terrorists.

And since I have your email and password I can easily set up your terrorist friends by emailing them under your name. If they don't turn you in then I know they're terrorists!

Now I have a list...right here in my hands...of 30 members of the Free Public Library who are known terrorist sympathizers!

LoveGravy: you trust me don't you? I have the information. I'm a member of law enforcement. I must be right. Didn't Romper Room teach you "always trust the police?" After all, information has never been abused by men in positions of power.

Edited by author 03-28-2003 09:37 AM
Alison, so what's your position on Gun Control?

So if a criminal can do it illegally, we should make it legal so everyone can do it? Odd.

And xradio, you are still drawing a comparison between 2 factions used to LIBERATE a group from oppression to the Terrorists. If your point is that the technology that is used to keep terrorists out can also be used to oppress revolutionary "freedom fighters" then that's fine. We have a mechinism in place to change government policy, but if you feel that sabotage and civil disobediance are the ONLY ways to effect government change, then I'm sorry but I completely disagree. Sure, putting together a PAC and fighting for a cause in court isn't as exciting is blowing up an ROTC barracks or blocking rush hour traffic in San Francisco, but it's certainly more effective. Being a vocal MINORITY is tough, but unfortunatly in a Republic the majority still rules.

Edited by author 03-28-2003 09:28 AM
Ah, now I see the light of my ways: I'm a lazy terrorist sympathizer. Whew! Now I know what to do: go to the library and try to hack the al Jazeera website....

Get a clue, LoveGravy, and read what is written. I never said the terrorists were the ones who were right--I said autonomous cells were not a new thing--like the UR or the FR. Which is not a value judgement.

But your reaction is a FANTASTIC clue to your position.

It's statements like yours that TRULY harm your cause. If you want people to question their attitudes, the best way to do that is NOT by appearing as an extremist nutcase, and actually reading and responding (as opposed to knee-jerk reacting) to their posts.

(I don't know why I bother, but)... Great! let's make is so only those who want to (illegally) break into servers to set up an unlogged proxy have any hope of true anonymity. Only criminals should have that right. The fact is that the terrorists will always have a way to subvert things like the Patriot Act - it's only the average citizen that has anything to fear.

Rich Gibson, absolutely. Plus I could find and exploit any of 10000+ servers that aren't patched that I could break into and run an unlogged proxy to re-transmit my IP traffic. There ARE options to remain anonymous, but why make it as easy as walking into a library?

Craniac:

"Hey, let them have the library data, I'm sure that they'll behave responsibly with it. "

Ok, they know LoveGravy was on computer #12 for 2 hours today between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. Please tell me how this info will be abused? I'm dying to hear your conspiracy theories about how they can beam thoughts into my head once they have that info.

Comparing terrorists using computers to the French Resistance or the Underground Railroad is a FANTASTIC clue to your position. Apparently you feel the terrorists are the ones that are right and the US Government is the bad guy. These poor, oppressed terrorists are being persecuted based on nothing more than the fact that they kill innocent people (which is no different than the black people in the Underground Railroad), and the US Government is an occupying force here in North America... Rrrright... It's statements like yours that TRULY harm your cause. If you want people to question the government, the best way to do that is NOT by appearing as an extremist nutcase.

You all are big on the "slippery slope" argument, but it is fruitless. Logging who uses what computer when is NOT the first step to mind control. I could apply your logic to any of a billion liberal causes and get the same results:

"Legalizing marijuana is the first step to making hard drugs legal in the US. It starts with pot, then before long we'll have gradeshoolers shooting heroin in the school bathrooms."

"Enforcing anonymity will eventually lead to allowing terrorists to freely enter and leave our country, wreaking mass havoc without a paper trail."

Your argument of it being a "Slippery Slope" is hyperbole. Taking something as mundane as recording who is using a public computer and somehow saying it will lead to the oppression of all personal freedoms and privacy is a HUGE leap. I'm not discussing the merits of the Patriot Act as a whole, I'm only referring to this one small piece of it. It's not an "all or none" situation, there are parts of it I agree with and others I don't, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We are at war (agree with it or not). We had a major terrorist strike 2 years ago, the second act of international terrorism (not conducted by a state) on US soil. We are uncovering more and more plots every week. Ever since the first bombing of the WTC we should have been paying more attention, and it took the towers finally falling before we started to. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence, and for us to have NO reaction to the change in climate is almost as bad as an overreaction (which, I agree, is the worst case). The topic being discussed is NOT an overreaction. Claiming it's the first step in a slipperly slope is paranoia, and I strongly feel that it is NOT the librarians place to decide what laws to abide by. If they disagree with the laws then they should GET OFF THEIR LAZY BUTTS AND DO SOMETHING REAL.

I think that's what makes me the most angry about these movements: Their laziness. Instead of working to FIX what they think is broken, they simply do the lazy thing and ignore the law. If I think speed limits should be increased, I could simply drive faster, or I could gain popular support and lobby my government to affect REAL change. Oh, but the second option is too hard, I'll take the first option that has no real impact but I'll call it a "political statement" to lend some credibility to my lawbreaking....

I tend to agree that Patriot Act 2.0 is pretty bad, but to play devil's advocate, has anyone read David Brin's "The Transparent Society?" His argument is that as various types of surveillance and information gathering-technologies get cheaper and more common, wanting some kind of absolute "right to privacy" will tend to become more and more unrealistic--the real choice we face is between top-down surveillance by the few in power, or bottom-up "information wants to be free"-type surveillance where everyone can easily access all kinds of information about everyone else. If Brin is right, we shouldn't be objecting to things like the Patriot Act on the basis that there is something fundamentally good or important about "privacy" (I certainly don't think it's as important as, say, free speech, and the constitution does not appear to protect it in the same way), but more on the basis that it's so top-heavy and that there are not enough checks and balances to prevent the government from abusing this information. I'm not sure what the solution would be--make the database publicly accessible? Have something like a "freedom of information act" to make sure that any investigations using the database will eventually be subject to public scrutiny? I don't know, in the absence of any good alternatives even those who agree with Brin's argument are probably better off just opposing things like the Patriot Act for now, but these kinds of issues are going to keep coming back and so I think his thesis is worth thinking about.

Some excerpts from "The Transparent Society" can be found here:

http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

[caveat: I am a tree hugging liberal. With a beard.]

Hey, let them have the library data, I'm sure that they'll behave responsibly with it. It's not like the government has set a precedence for taking laws and using them to nail people thay want for completely different reasons. Except for Nixon and marijuana laws. Oh, and Ruby Ridge and Randy Weaver. And Waco. Frightening how easy it is to get labeled a druggy, gun smuggler, or pervert, and then the doors get kicked in.

I am starting to sound like my libertarian brother, so I'll stop now. He lives downwind of the nerve gas destruction center in Tooele. That scares me more than Iraq ever will.

Edited by author 03-27-2003 11:32 PM
I am utterly outraged. How dare someone from the continent of Africa criticize our US policies. Liberians should clean their own house, don't they have a few human rights issues of their own?

Oh, libRARians....

Never mind.

Chico...You're right for my case! Let me keep my reading anonymous and you're welcome to know where my money goes :-)

Reading the Patriot Act, it's surprising how large a portion is devoted to the government unchaining itself to scour the financial world, freely tracking funds to "suspected" terrorist groups. But here, in this blog, most of the talk's about the relatively minor, but insidious, snooping librarians. My conclusion: none of us has any fucking money.

Yes, LoveGravy, if you're innocent you have nothing to fear.

Have YOU ever driven over the speed limit? Rolled slowly through that stop sign? Right-clicked on that copyrighted image to save it to your hard-drive?

There are no innocents. And every little bit of datum will soon be available to prove that premise to whoever needs to prove it.

And don't spout that crap about distrubuted groups being a new concept and threat. Ever hear of the Underground Railroad, or the French Resistance? But perhaps you're right. If only we could have stopped them when we had the chance, those uppity french would know their place.

Actually, jessamyn, it's closing the outhouse door after the horse gets out; that is, it wouldn't have helped in the first place!

The PATRIOT Act is more than just the logging of net traffic -- your point that you are more anonymous in the library than you are at home is well-taken. 100x more, I'm not sure... However, the USAPA allows law enforcement to monitor keystrokes [your username, your password, your email] on library computers which I have the privacy to resist while at my home using SSH and other encryption techniques. My ISP will only release this information about me with a search warrant *and* they will likely let me know that the information release has happened. Or, they would have, pre-PATRIOT. They probably still would; we have similar, as you say "X-Files" ideas of how the world works. The gag order and the ability to install monitoring software go hand in hand and the logging is most noxious when juxtaposed with the silencing of librarians. Patrons have had anonymous access in many public libraries for years, where's the abuse?

Other provisions of the PATRIOT Act allow agents to learn what books you checked out of the library, bought using credit cards at a bookstore, or in a weird reverse-lookup tactic, which patrons have checked out a particular book. As far as the library goes, these were all privacies afforded by various state laws specifically giving patrons of libraries these rights. These rights have been overruled by the PATRIOT Act for, in my opinion, no compelling law enforcement reason. It's closing the barn door after the horse gets out. Terrorism is terrible, but so is reducing the US to a panopticon.

Anonymous proxies, LoveGravy Baby, Anonymous proxies.

Edited by author 03-27-2003 04:49 PM
I knew you'd all jump on the "The government wants to spy on me and my everyday activities!!" plot!

Comparing this to Hoover's sexuality list is funny too.

"I am also sure that the Patriot Act does more harm than good. For over two centuries American law enforcement was able to capture criminals without assuming everyone was guilty until proven innocent. "

For over 2 centuries the enemies conformed to the rules of war. For over 2 centuries we've had only ONE attack on US soil (Dec7 1941) and it was by an organized military, now we've been attacked again, but this time by distributed group with no home country and no army. And YES, for the past 2 centuries we MOST CERTAINLY could detain criminals without filing a single charge. Law enforcement has 72 hours to file charges when they detain you, and they don't have to file charges and can simply let you go after that time.


Do ANY of you realize that YOUR ISP RIGHT NOW tracks who has a lease on which IP address at what time? It's been that way for 10+ years, but somehow you should have a GREATER degree of privacy when using a PUBLICALLY FUNDED computer than you do when using the one in your own home? Get real folks, this isn't "big brother", this is simply applying the same rules of accountability towards the users of public computers that we have today with private ones.


"This is awfully reminiscent of the sort of Soviet propaganda that said "Innocent citizens have nothing to fear!"

Thanks for defending my "freedoms", but quite frankly this is silly. The "Slippery Slope" argument of "WHERE DOES IT ALL END!!!" is played out. This is about logging users on a public computer, while we already do the same on private ones! That's it. It's about knowing who was on a computer at what time, same thing your ISP does today.

Man, I don't know how most of you go on with your daily lives. I mean, if I thought the US government made every decision based on how they can intrude on my life and spy on me, I'd be a paranoid wreck!

I'm in the computer business. I run an E-Commerce development division. I know how ISPs work, how DHCP servers log leases on IPs, etc. I know that RIGHT NOW you are 100X more anonymous when using a computer in a library than you are using your computer at home. What logging users does is NOT an invasion of privacy, I don't see the negative repercussions, and I don't know how this is anyway comparable to the USELESS logs of homosexuals.

As for other aspects of the Patriot act, I'm not commenting on those. What I AM commenting on is that if you want to keep users anonymous at libraries then it WILL be abused. I know I would. So why not put the same level of logging on the library computers as you have right now on your home PC?!? I don't see how logging that "Lovegravy was on PC#13 from 3:00pm - 4:00pm) is such a bad thing.

I guess some of you just like feeling like "Freedom Fighters" and buying into every government conspiracy and wearing "Microsoft Suxors!" t-shirts, but I guess you have that luxury since you aren't tasked with keeping people safe. Instituting the same level of logging on Library PCs as they have on home pc's, and indeed on your work PCs too, isn't some X-files plot.

LoveGravy wrote:
If you aren't doing anything wrong then I don't see any reason why the government would want to find out your book reading, or internet usage, habits.
----
This is awfully reminiscent of the sort of Soviet propaganda that said "Innocent citizens have nothing to fear!", for the purpose of allaying the concerns of people who thought they were doing nothing wrong ... and those same people got screwed when the rules changed. Not to sound like a paranoid or anything, but it's true. The only difference here is that you're talking about maintaining records on what people did even before the rules changed, regardless of the legal or illegal status of those actions.

I'm a linguist, but my advisor is a joint appointment with Library/Information Science, so I interact with a lot of library types. I laughed, at first, when he said "Librarians are some of the most radical people you'll ever meet!", but he was spot on. Want to spend time with some of the most pro-privacy, pro-Open Source, pro-free-information people you'll ever meet? Hang out with LIS people.

LoveGravy wrote:

'The government doesn't have time to go snooping around and saying "Oh look, LoveGravy was looking at pr0n on the library computer!"'

Ever read about the files J. Edgar Hoover kept on things like the sexual preferences and kinks of various people he didn't like or wanted to be able to blackmail? Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was John Lennon? What about our Senators and Representatives?

People who want power badly enough can _make_ time to snoop whereever they think they can get an edge.

Another thing is, if these records are relevant to a real criminal investigation (as in your school bus bombing example), I believe they can _already_ be subpoenaed. Now, records of what books a person has read are unlikely to be much use in actually convicting them of a crime, so such subpoenas are pretty rare, as they should be.

The Patriot act isn't about catching criminals, or even about stopping terrorism; it's about eliminating protection of the innocent against government snooping.

Edited by author 03-27-2003 03:50 PM
the issue with the "if you've done nothing wrong" argument, to me, is that there is a whole class of behaviors and preferences and ideas that while not legally wrong may be offensive, problematic or just plain old personally objectionable to people, and potentially law enforcement people.

Witness right now the Supreme Court hearing a case on whether gay men have the right to have consensual sex with eachother in their own bedrooms. If I had 100% certainty that personal information about me -- information like passwords and emails that could be *legally obtained* via the PATRIOT Act -- was never going to be used to put me in an awkward position [like when applying for a job, trying to get security clearance, going through an international airport, etc] then I might have a diferent opinion on this surveillance. As it is, there are no such assurances, we live in difficult times and I believe that this act is far worse than life without it.

What you're describing would be a regime under which we'd open an investigations into everyone who undertakes some task -- going to the library, walking down the street -- in order to catch the small minority of people who perform that task who are malefactors.

We've never countenanced this type of regime. Indeed, the cold war was nominally fought to keep this regime from emerging.

The argument that "innocents have nothing to hide" ignores the entire Constitutional notion of checks-and-balances, the idea that human frailty means that no authority's power should be unchecked by due process, public oversight and transparency.

If you honestly believe that the innocent have nothing to hide from the government, then you'd have no problem with a law that banned envelopes in favor of naked postcards that can be read by any mail-carrier between you and the letter's destination.

The outcome of authority without check is dismally predictable throughout human history: despotism, totalitarianism. The nominal purpose of "liberating" Iraq is to free the Iraqis from a regime that offers no due process, that tramples the principles laid out in the Bill of Rights (a document that was penned when this country was far more threatened than it was even on Sept 11, a document that *still* rejected ubiquitous surveillance of the innocent in order to catch the guilty).

Explain to me how the fight against totalitarianism justifies shredding the Bill of Rights, the privacy whence all other freedoms spring?

LoveGravy: I am sure none of us wants our children blown up. I am also sure that the Patriot Act does more harm than good. For over two centuries American law enforcement was able to capture criminals without assuming everyone was guilty until proven innocent.
I don't delete our user files so no one knows you're looking at porn. I delete them to make sure no one knows you're viewing subversive works such as those written by persons such as Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, or Herbert J. Biberman.

"If a bomb blows up my kid's schoolbus [...] I'll go completely and totally ballistic."

Technically, wouldn't it be the bus that went ballistic? :)



The problem is, where does the tracking of what people do stop?

Edited by author 03-27-2003 02:39 PM
If a bomb blows up my kid's schoolbus and the terrorist's letter claiming responsibility is traced back to a terminal in a library whose records have been destroyed by a protesting librarian, I'll go completely and totally ballistic.

The government doesn't have time to go snooping around and saying "Oh look, LoveGravy was looking at pr0n on the library computer!", so I don't know what people are all upset about. If you aren't doing anything wrong then I don't see any reason why the government would want to find out your book reading, or internet usage, habits. If you ARE doing something wrong, then these records could prove invaluable.

Instead of MY kid on a bus that blows up, maybe it'll be poetic justice and it'll be one of the librarian's kids on the bus instead. "Sorry M'am, we could have caught him, but since there are no records of who had the terminal when the email was sent, there's nothing we can do about it"...


Oh well at least I now know where to go when I want to email death threats to people, or hack into computers, or perform credit card fraud. Their "activism" has helped spread the word that that library's computers are "safe" for nefarious activities. Cool.

Shhh!2.0