Reader Privacy Petition and website

In an effort to change section 215 of the Patriot Act, the Readers Privacy website is collecting signatures on a petition to present to Congress once they have a million signers. ALA, publishers, distributors, etc. have already signed.

January 21, 2004 by Uncategorized 3

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3 Responses

  1. nbruce says:
    January 22, 2004 at 7:03 am

    Privacy
    Forget the Homeland Security Act. I’d just like to get my Social Security number off my library record as a control number! Let’s do what we can do using some common sense and something simple like non-governmental numbers. Identity theft is a huge problem–and terrorists can steal identities too!

    Reply
  2. shoe says:
    January 22, 2004 at 7:12 pm

    Re:Privacy-SSN as library card number?

    Your social security number as your library card number? That’s disturbing… Of course, we have more people calling up that don’t have their library cards handy that want to give us their social security numbers to look them up in the system (we don’t keep that information).

    My philosophy on library records is less is more. A record of outstanding overdue fines, sure. I’m not even sure how I feel about our “history” record of past overdue fines. But taking more information than could be found in a public directory is quite disturbing.

    As far as the PATACT goes, our library purges any records of what was taken out (once again, providing no overdue fees) two days or so after an item is returned to the library. This seems a happy medium for me. It’s nice to be able to backtrack if damage isn’t caught immediately, or reported by the patron. It’s nicer to know that the government can’t come in next week and find out I checked out –insert book name here–.

    Reply
  3. tomeboy says:
    January 23, 2004 at 10:10 am

    Where to sign for ALA privacy petition??
    Anyone else find it ironic that ALA sells private membership information to mass marketers??

    Perhaps Aschroft should just buy the private information of all 37,000 ALA member for a paltry $5.2 million? (on Chesire paper to boot)


    (From ALA web site)

    Market Your Publications
    And Services with ALA Mailing Lists

    Available Lists
    ALA offers Membership Lists that include
    Personal and Organizational Members
    active in special interest Divisions, Sections
    and Round Tables. ALA Membership Lists
    also include foreign and Canadian
    addresses….

    Reply

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