Jessamyn

The new ALA website has a Communication
Preferences section that deserves close attention from
current and future ALA members. The decisions being
made at ALA could affect your privacy and set
troublesome precedents for the way your personal
information is used. ALA\’s new communications
preferences page will have a default setting of \”opt-out\”
forcing members who do not want their personal
information sold to mailing list to log in to change it. An
\”opt out\” setting means that your personal information
is considered available for marketing and mailing list
purposes unless you opt out. With an \”opt in\” setting
members must specifically request to have their name
and information used for such purposes. Privacy
advocates support \”opt in\”.

The new ALA website has a Communication
Preferences section that deserves close attention from
current and future ALA members. The decisions being
made at ALA could affect your privacy and set
troublesome precedents for the way your personal
information is used. ALA\’s new communications
preferences page will have a default setting of \”opt-out\”
forcing members who do not want their personal
information sold to mailing list to log in to change it. An
\”opt out\” setting means that your personal information
is considered available for marketing and mailing list
purposes unless you opt out. With an \”opt in\” setting
members must specifically request to have their name
and information used for such purposes. Privacy
advocates support \”opt in\”.
Previously, when a person joined ALA, or when they
renewed their membership, they were given a
checkbox that gave them an option to say \”count me
out, I do not wish to receive mailings about products
and services…\”. This check box, though not totally
obvious, allowed members to make a conscious
choice at the time they were providing personal
information, about how this information should be
used. If members did not click this box, their name
could be added to a variety of one-time mailing lists
that ALA sold to vendors and other interested
businesses.

To provide background, for a short time, ALA offered the
confusing Customer
Service site at cs.ala.org. Besides grating on many
ALA members who didn\’t like to consider themselves
customers, and having contact mailto links that are
blank, the site enabled users to
register for conferences and change their contact
information with ALA. Since the ability to change contact
information, except for email address, has not yet
migrated to the new site which launched April 7th,
users still have to log in to both this site and the main
site to change their contact information with ALA online.
The page is still linked as the main \”Customer Service
Center\” on ALA\’s contact page.

The \”opt-out\” message that users receive when they
register for a conference currently looks like this

Attendees may receive exciting information
from exhibitors like invitations, contests and other hot
news. Count me in: Yes No

[Incidentally, the ALA 2003 registration page was
available online until this week. It emailed a registrant\’s
credit card information to the ALA offices, apparently in
cleartext. A new registration web module is in the
works.]

Cloying, but clear. Good enough, right, ALA is giving
people the choice of whether to receive spam or not?
Well, not exactly. The new website at ALA.org has an all
new Communication Preferences section. It gives
members three, not two, communications options.
They are, in brief, with my comments added in
brackets:

1. Keep me in the Know [i.e. feel free
to sell my name to one-time use mailing lists]
2. Just ALA Please [swap my name
and information among divisions, but not outside of
ALA]
3. Official Communications Only [I
only want to know when my membership is expiring, or
other similarly important information]

The page where you set these preferences is live and
functional on the new site, but the preferences
themselves have not yet taken effect and are still being
discussed internally. ALA plans to announce this page
to members in the near future and let them know that
they have the option to adjust their communication
preferences. The ALA web team has assured the Web
Advisory Council that anyone who opted out previously
will have those preferences respected.

The problem is that any new members, members who
have not yet set their preferences, or people not aware
that there are preferences to be set,
will have their communication preferences set to #1,
\”Keep Me in the Know\” This gives ALA the option to sell
their address, phone numbers and email address to
mailing lists. Members who do nothing will get their
personal information sold. Members who try and fail to
set their preferences — due to inability to log in or
inability to access the web site — will get their personal
information sold unless they take further steps.

ALA does claim that your privacy is important to them,
and the ALA
Privacy Policy reinforces this, stating \”The
American Library Association is committed to
protecting the privacy of our members, donors,
customers, and other contacts… Any information you
choose to provide on the website will only be used to
provide or improve services. ALA guards your privacy
and appreciates your trust.\” but are their actions in
keeping with a strong stance towards member privacy?

Other for-profit companies such as Yahoo
and eBay have tried blanket-switching their marketing
preferences to \”opt out\” and have met with large,
organized resistance.

ALA obviously needs revenue from a variety of sources,
but setting the default member preference to \”opt out\”
is a hidden policy change that could backfire and cause
more financial harm than good by
providing yet another example of \”do as we say, not as
we do.\” ALA members should have the right to decide
whether \”opt out\” is good practice for our organization.
This is a policy change directly related to years of
privacy policy and practice we have advocated for
libraries and other organizations. If we tout it for our
own use, can we criticize other organizations that do
this?

What to do?

• make sure you login to the ALA website and set
  your communication preferences to reflect
  your choices

• Contact ALA at webmaster [at] ala.org with feedback
  on this issue

• contact your ALA
  Councilor directly to discuss this issue further.

• read up on privacy issues so that you can inform
  your colleagues

  for more reading…

  Center for Democracy & Technology\’s
  Top Ten Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online
  http://
  www.opt-out.cdt.org/featured/

  \’Opt-in\’ will win the privacy wars
  http://
  www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/
  privacy/story/0,10801,73976,00.html

  The Opt-in Approach to Choice
  
  http://www.cdt.org/privacy/ccp/
  consentchoice1.shtml

Senator Joseph McCarthy called nearly 500 witnesses
before his subcommittee and made them answer all
sort of invasive questions about their loyalty to the US
and/or allegiance to the Communist Party. The
transcripts of most of these interviews were sealed for
50 years and have just been made available
online, in annotated form, all 4,200 pages of
them.

“the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
held extensive hearings, in both executive and public
session, that focused on the U.S. Information Libraries
worldwide. It examined the books that the libraries
stocked, and called some of the authors to testify.
During the course of the investigation, chief counsel
Roy Cohn, and chief consultant David Schine,
embarked on a highly publicized tour of the overseas
libraries in major European capitals…

…the State Department ordered the
removal of any books by Communist authors or
Communist sympathizers from the Information
Libraries’ shelves. Hundreds of works of fiction and
non-fiction were discarded, and some were burned.”

[The libraries contained the poetry of Langston
Hughes, who was questioned by the committee.]

Minneapolis Public Library system has
hired a new director — one who insisted on earning
no more than the police chief, and one who doesn’t
have an MLS.

Hadley agrees there is a downside to being in her
position without formal library science training.

“For instance, there are times when I don’t know
what
anyone’s talking about,” she said.

In yet another step towards embracing new technologies at the expense of user freedom, some libraries have started issuing so-called smart cards which allow patrons to access the Internet at varying levels, from \”full access\” [i.e. only mildly filtered] to \”restricted access\” [only safe sites]. Chat and newsgroups are never allowed and the viewing of obscene material may result in the loss of Internet privileges.

In yet another step towards embracing new technologies at the expense of user freedom, some libraries have started issuing so-called smart cards which allow patrons to access the Internet at varying levels, from \”full access\” [i.e. only mildly filtered] to \”restricted access\” [only safe sites]. Chat and newsgroups are never allowed and the viewing of obscene material may result in the loss of Internet privileges.some extra links to see what all the fuss is about:

• Smart Guardian press release
• Englewood library\’s Smart Card internet policy
• Hickory public library\’s Smart Card pages

Dickinson College has set up a site where people can
check for updates on the status of Dickinson College scholar and librarian Yongyi Song who was arrested in China on charges of \”the purchase and illegal provision of intelligence to foreign people.\” on Christmas Eve. They have started an online petition and awareness campaign aimed at securing his release.