Chicago Library System: Privacy

National Do Not Call Registry

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 19:52:13 GMT

"The Federal Trade Commission's nationwide registry for residents who want to block unsolicited advertising via their home and cellular telephones is now available. Read the Washington Post article on the new Do-Not-Call Registry." [from the Suburban Library System]

Privacy and political candidates

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 18:46:33 GMT

Privacy and political candidates:

The Mercury News ran a op-ed piece, entitled “Internet can level the political playing field”. But this opinion piece is really about how it is okay for political candidates to spam potential voters. The Privacy Digest has commented on it at length.

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 17:53:24 GMT

Privacy:

Statewatch: monitoring civil liberties in the EU. [Privacy Digest]

Also, Privacy.org which is a joint project of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Washington, DC) and Privacy International (London, England and Washington, DC) are informative resources.

Why is watching these developments important? Many states have privacy laws that pertain to libraries and library records. But some recently proposed federal legislation may impact those laws, like the USA Patriot Act. For more on how privacy laws may impact libraries, see the ALA Washington Office site and Robert Hughes' article, "Free Libraries, Free Society," in American Libraries.

But some libraries also provide Internet service like an ISP. For example, Bensenville Public Library in Illinois is the home of CleaRNET, the community network for Bensenville. Libraries that provide community networks (email accounts, etc.) might have to negotiate their way through these possible conflicts between the state laws that protect patrons' rights to privacy and other laws, like the proposed EU one that would require keeping of communication records by communication providers for up to a year.