Privacy Rights and Circulation

(00:31:20 CDT)

Privacy Rights and Circulation

I thought I would continue looking at the various codes of ethics of the ALA and how they relate to specific places and events. How about privacy? Some people consider privacy to be a huge deal and some consider it to be a generally nice thing, but not necessary in a well-behaved society. I'm a middle of the road, man. Privacy does not need to be absolute, especially not in our increasinly networked society, but one of the major arguments for privacy is that the handlers of information have bumbled lots and show no signs of letting up. Monster.com, various credit card companies, certain stores: all have released information about their clients to hackers or to information thieves. Insurance companies train young staff on how to handle the accounts but giving them time with personal files. Most, 99%, have no problem with being decent and not using them for anything but the proper intention. There is always a chance that the one student will think it funny to jot down some personal something and forward it on.

In the library, a person's circulation and Internet usage history can be quite interesting to obtain. Let's say "mildy quite" interesting. This comes down to that 1% who might have books that could be painted as dangerous or whatever. Like my last post about Baby Be-Bop. That book being checked out by someone might be used against them by the same people who feel it is burnable. Probably not, but that's just a possible. Books like Civil Disobedience, maybe books by Ayn Rand and more definitely books by Trotsky (especially a few years ago), and books about hacking cultures or underground cultures or drugs or whatever, could put someone in a pinch. How about if the librarian, to alter a type of case discussed in class, outed some teenage girl for checking out a book on abortion? In a small town, that could hurt a lot of things no matter what the book is intended for. What if they show some typical "terrorist profile" often contains things like checking out books on travel as well as books on survival gear? What if they start reverse searching this profile? I don't know. In some ways, even having the world know that you checked out Freakonomics can be annoying, whether or not anything is ever done with it.

In the ALA CoE, this is handled by Statement III: "We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted". However, it should be pointed out that the "right to privacy" is not something unique or unanimously controlled by the library. This is a state generated right. It has some federal standings, but each state, and some municipalities, have their own standards for what constitutes the right to privacy. In Alabama, the right to privacy in circulation is handled by Section 41-8-10 of the Alabama Code, as quoted below:

It is recognized that public library use by an individual should be of confidential nature. Any other provision of general, special or local law, rule or regulation to the contrary notwithstanding, the registration and circulation records and information concerning the use of the public, public school, college and university libraries of this state shall be confidential. Registration and circulation records shall not be open for inspection by, or otherwise available to, any agency or individual except for the following entities: (a) the library which manages the records; (b) the state education department for a library under its jurisdiction when it is necessary to assure the proper operation of such library; or (c) the state Public Library Service for a library under its jurisdiction when it is necessary to assure the proper operations of such library. Aggregate statistics shown from registration and circulation records, with all personal identification removed, may be released or used by a library for research and planning purposes. Provided however, any parent of a minor child shall have the right to inspect the registration and circulation records of any school or public library that pertain to his or her child.

Note the last line, parents or those interested in the debate about parent/child privacy rights. I had to dig around a little, but Section 26-1-1 of Alabama's code says the "age of majority" is 19. This means, assuming you are under 19, that youre parents have the right to see your public and library. Note the word "school". Beats me if that is defined as public school or if that includes colleges and universities. Kind of a minor point, either way (pun kind of intended).

What I find interesting is that the law can be read to say that law enforcement officials don't have the right to see individual records. I'm going to go ahead and say that that's wrong. Maybe, though, only supra-State entities (FBI, CIA, NSA) would have that right? I do not know.

An interesting wrinkle in all of this is ask why circulation records should be kept anyhow. You can keep records of misuse to materials (damaged books, late fees, so forth) without recording titles. Libraries usually do not develop "buyer profiles" that help them to upsell or anything like that. You can develop aggregate records of circulation (this book was checked out this many times) and even somewhat sophisticated profiles (these books were often checked out together, this section's biggest hits are) without ever needing to store this under a patron name. Likewise, a patron's name could have a list of how often they check out books without ever needing individual titles given. I am game for someone to enlighten me, but all I see as far as reasons to keep them around is to take up hard-drive space and to have them on hand in case a government official comes up.

By the way, for those curious, I looked up California (figured it would be about as "liberal" as you can find in such matters). Very similar. In Government Code 6267 they cite much the same language involving only certain persons though they specify that law officers can see them with appropriate warrant. According to San Francisco's Public Library's Privacy Policy anyone over the age of 13 has to give written permission for a parent to see their records. Something for a different time, but doesn't 13 seem a little young? How can you expect parents to take responsibility for their children if children can simply keep them out? I would say 16, at least.

Si Vales, Valeo

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