Watching You Watching Me: Preserving Reader Privacy in the Age of Digital Surveillance

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From No Shelf Required:

The issue of reader privacy has been at the forefront of much debate about Web 2.0 technologies and their ability to monitor reading behavior at a granular level. This includes the reading habits of readers who purchase digital books and other digital content online through such sources as Amazon as well as users of public, academic and school libraries who check out ebooks or use electronic resources for research. While the topic of protecting reader privacy continues to permeate online discussions around the world, the issue reader privacy, particularly in the context of library patron privacy, has been around for as long as library cards have been around. But Web 2.0 technologies and the plethora of media and software companies that have changed the way we share information online have drastically challenged our notions of privacy, which many argue has become a ‘privilege’ rather than a ‘right’ of every user, and it has become a matter of what information about him/herself the user is willing to trade to consume content for free.

In an age when millions of users gladly—and without much regard for the consequences—share their personal information online to be able to benefit from the tools afforded to them by and through social media and various other platforms, librarians and information science (LIS) professionals remain adamant about the dangers of not protecting one’s privacy while reading.

. . . .

Ethical issues have long been an important topic of discussion in the realm of information sciences, and the term information ethics has been thoroughly analyzed by academics in the past few decades. Don Fallis provided an accessible definition when he defined information ethics as that which asks, “who should have access to what information” (Fallis 3). In the same paper, Fallis discussed four core issues (or principles) of information ethics, which have become the cornerstone of the LIS profession: intellectual freedom(librarians must resist all efforts by third parties, including the government, to censor reading materials); equal access (librarians must ensure all library users have equal and free access to information); intellectual property(librarians must honor copyright laws and author rights); and information privacy (librarians must defend the reader’s right to privacy and protect library records from intrusion of external sources).

According to Fallis, if we examine how libraries function today through the prism of four key ethical (or moral) theories in philosophy—consequence-based theory, rights-based theory, virtue-based theory and duty-based theory —we can discern that each of the core issues of information ethics—intellectual freedom, equal access, intellectual property and information privacy—has deep roots in at least one, if not all, of these ethical theories.

. . . .

The rights-based theorists argue that the right thing to do is determined by the rights that human beings have simply for being human. This is a strong argument for equal and free access, and many have, in fact, argued over the years (e.g., Woodward 13) that people have a ‘natural’ right to information and knowledge—that if we can define a man as a ‘rational’ being,’ then that man has a right to that “which he needs to exercise his rationality. In other words, accessing information for the sake of educating oneself is not a matter of privilege but a necessity allows any human to maintain his rationality. The same ethical theory could be applied to the meaning of intellectual property. Philosopher John Locke, for example, also called it a ‘natural right’ to reap the benefits of one’s intellectual labor.

. . . .

Pendergrast asked in 1988: Should libraries put a warning label on an encyclopedia that contains seemingly inaccurate medical information? Nesta and Banke asked in 1991: Should libraries accept a book if it is donated by a racist organization? Wolkoff asked in 1996: Should libraries include Holocaust denial literature in their collections?  (Fallis 1-2) And many others have asked and continue to ask to this day: Should librarians cooperate with the government when asked to disclose a patron’s reading records to help prevent a potentially criminal act?

Link to the rest at No Shelf Required

5 thoughts on “Watching You Watching Me: Preserving Reader Privacy in the Age of Digital Surveillance”

  1. “And many others have asked and continue to ask to this day: Should librarians cooperate with the government when asked to disclose a patron’s reading records to help prevent a potentially criminal act?”

    Knowledge is power, even for a possible victim or researcher. I always thought this along the same claims that violent video games cause violence, if so then we should be seeing a whole lot more of it than we are …

    “Pendergrast asked in 1988: Should libraries put a warning label on an encyclopedia that contains seemingly inaccurate medical information?”

    ‘Seemingly’? Really? So they aren’t sure but want to flag it anyway? Sounds like most people’s definition of porn – I’ll know it when I see it!

    If libraries need warning labels then a like warning label should be running across every one of our so-called news programs as much ‘spin’ they put on their rather questionable news …

  2. I applaud libraries and librarians for being concerned with ethical issues when it comes to the information they provide. But. How many people still go to a library to search for ‘pure’ information?

    I love libraries, but when I need information, I search for it on the internet, not in a physical catalogue. Given the degradation of user privacy online, I probably should go to the library instead, but I won’t because times have changed too much.

    What a pity that the major tech companies and the blood-sucking ad networks don’t concern themselves with ethics at all. If they did, the internet might finally fulfil its early promise of equality for all.

  3. As a source of information, none of the local public libraries are useful for anything other than gardening or baby-care, since that’s the only nonfiction they have, other than cookbooks and travelogues. They have encylopedias, but I have one of my own already, thank you. (that probably won’t make the cut, next time the shelf space situation becomes desperate)

    In the last few years the local public libraries main function seems to be short-term child care and homeless shelters. When the city library moved into their big new building ten years ago, only about half the books came with them, and at this point, it doesn’t look like they will be replacing them…

  4. “How many people still go to a library to search for ‘pure’ information?”

    Lots of us. I’m in the mining/geology field. Most of the earlier publications aren’t on the web. I’ve found lots of useful information from the 1900s to the 1990s that isn’t In digital form and likely never will be.

    • I practice an obscure branch of engineering. I’ve used Inter-Library Loan to obtain primary source material from places like General Motors and Boeing, who have large private libraries which they kindly make available to the general public through the ILL system.

      All those libraries are a) private and b) more than two days’ drive from me, so “go to the library” isn’t on the table to start with.

Comments are closed.