ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


1 1 4  /  C&RL News ■ February 2003

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n e Rick Weingarten

Privacy, copyright, and access— it's all 
connected
Political reactions in the aftermath o f  Sep­
tem ber 11, including the USA PATRIOT Act 
and the creation o f the Department o f Hom e­
land Security, have raised deep concerns within 
the library community about its ability to en­
sure library users’ privacy— particularly when 
they use the Internet. In responding to these 
current threats to privacy, w e need to remem­
ber that even these new, extreme measures are 
just tactical maneuvers in a growing war over 
anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality in the 
face o f new  information technologies.

In the early days o f the Internet, anonymity 
was king. O ver the last decade, the Internet 
has become global, widely accessible, and eco­
nom ically significant, changing the control 
points and the political influences on users. 
N ew  technologies are being developed to “civi­
lize” cyberspace— to tame its excesses and to 
exploit its economic potential more fully.

For those concerned about privacy, free­
dom o f expression, and public access to infor­
mation, these trends are alarming.

Social pressures
Law enforcement demands for access to library 
records are evolving in kind and scope. In the 
past, law enforcement claims for information have 
generally been based on finding and catching 
wrongdoers. Now, the post-September 11 politi­
cal mandate is to identify and nab terrorists before 
they act, leading to surveillance of a much broader 
population and a wide range o f behaviors.

Internet security concerns lead to calls for 
tightening government controls on the Internet. 
In the decentralized Internet environment, one 
person’s behavior may affect the security o f 
someone else. Hackers regularly mount their 
attacks from third party machines over which 
they have taken control. Thus, an insecure 
machine on the Internet can becom e a threat 
to other systems— basic national infrastructures

Rick Weingarten is director of the ALA Office of information 
Technology Policy, Washington Office, e-mail: rweingarten@ 
alawash.org

and services, such as telecommunications, trans­
portation, and government are dependent on the 
Internet and therefore vulnerable.

The growth o f e-commerce and e-govern
ment has generated both political concern and 
calls for control. The argument is simply that 
the public cannot depend on reliable and safe 
access to the market and to government with­
out secure Internet access.

Both social and technological pressures are af­
fecting policy calling for regulating and even re­
engineering the Internet to protect intellectual 
property in the digital realm. Digital Rights Man­
agement (DRM) systems are being proposed that 
can potentially be used to monitor and control a 
wide range o f information access on the Internet 
and in other digital formats. These existing sys­
tems, as well as those proposed, offer a variety of 
technological methods that are intended to en­
force proprietary rights over digital works when 
they are in the hands o f users. Any system with 
the ultimate purpose o f controlling access to in­
formation has significant privacy implications.

Technological pressures
Partly in response to these pressures, technology is 
also moving forward to provide more tools for 
monitoring and control. In most cases, these tools 
are being developed to serve very specific func­
tions, yet are potentially powerful technologies 
that could impact privacy and access.

More sophisticated digital identification tech­
nologies are being developed to authenticate the 
identities o f remote users participating in elec­
tronic transactions. In large part, the pressures 
underlying the development o f these systems come 
from the need to support commerce and e-gov­
ernment activities on the Internet. Again, these 
technologies have potential implications for pri­
vacy and confidentiality, however benign their 
original purpose.

In this column I have only been able to briefly 
identify and characterize a few  o f the major pres­
sures o f the Internet that will be affecting the 
privacy o f library users. You can be sure these and 
similar trends will involve ALA and ACRL in pri­
vacy and security policy for many years, resulting 
in educational programs and opportunities for 
advocacy within the ACRL community. ■



C&RL News ■ F ebruary 2003 /  115