And look at this—libraries actively thwart child pornography investigations:
3. In July 2007 a Colorado Internet crimes against children investigator reported that Denver Public Libraries destroy data after each patron logs off of the libraries computers. Investigators are unable to obtain any information about library computer users. In the past year, three child pornography cases have been unresolved due to lack of information. Arizona investigators report the same situation at Phoenix Public Libraries. Child pornography incidents that have been traced to public libraries are often unresolved because libraries do not enable simple logging features that retain basic information about computer users.
Source: "Ongoing Survey of Law Enforcement re: ISP's Responses to Subpoena and Search Warrant Requests," by Frank Kardasz, Ed.D., Dr. Frank Kardasz (Ed.D.), 12 February 2008.
Did you get that? "Child pornography incidents that have been traced to public libraries are often unresolved because libraries do not enable simple logging features that retain basic information about computer users."
What might be the reason libraries do that?
Here's how the American Library Association [ALA] guides libraries—basically telling them to avoid creating or to destroy the very records Dr. Kardasz described above:
Avoid creating unnecessary records. Only record a user’s personally identifiable information when necessary for the efficient operation of the library.
Avoid retaining records that are not needed for efficient operation of the library. Check with your local governing body to learn if there are laws or policies addressing record retention and in conformity with these laws or policies, develop policies on the length of time necessary to retain a record. Ensure that all kinds and types of records are covered by the policy, including data-related logs, digital records, and system backups.
Once record retention policies are in place, ensure that records are destroyed or archived on schedule. A library cannot destroy records after it receives notice from law enforcement agents that the records may be subject to judicial process.
Be aware of library practices and procedures that place information on public view; for example, the use of postcards for overdue notices or requested materials, staff terminals placed so that the screens can be read by the public, sign-in sheets to use computers or other devices, and the provision of titles of reserve requests or interlibrary loans provided over the telephone to users’ family members or answering machines.
Remember that there is no affirmative duty to collect or retain information about library patrons on behalf of law enforcement.
Source: "Confidentiality and Coping with Law Enforcement Inquiries: Guidelines for the Library and its Staff," by ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association, April 2004.
Given the above, it seems unavoidable to conclude that libraries actively thwart child porn investigations.
And it seems this is motivated by the ALA's negative reaction to Bush Administration initiatives to keep Americans safe from terrorists!
Increased visits to libraries by law enforcement agents, including FBI agents and officers of state, county, and municipal police departments, are raising considerable concern among the public and the library community. These visits are not only a result of the increased surveillance and investigation prompted by the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent passage of the USA Patriot Act, but also as a result of law enforcement officers investigating computer crimes, including e-mail threats and possible violations of the laws addressing online obscenity and child pornography.
Don't communities want officers investigating online obscenity and child pornography? Or terrorism? Who is the ALA that it decides to oppose that, then guide local libraries on how to oppose it? Exactly why do people think ALA policy should control local libraries?
One more for good measure: "Ten Year Sentence for Phoenix Library Child Pornography Trafficker," by Frank Kardasz, Ed.D., Dr. Frank Kardasz (Ed.D.), 3 February 2008.
Apparently, we have the ALA to thank for this: "The library did not require users to provide any proof of identity in order to use the computers and investigators later learned that the computers have software set to eliminate evidence shortly after a patron departs."
I wonder who set the software like that and why? Shouldn't the ALA be at least partly responsible for the consequences? For the child victims? Is there no one willing to sue the ALA for the consequences of the radical policies it forces into local communities? I think thwarting law enforcement to spite the Bush administration and in a manner that endangers children and citizens generally is radical, don't you? See my other blog posts about libraries and child pornography.
Does your local community public library have a similar policy, and is that what the community really wants?
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you don't know what the fuck you're talking about
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thank you for commenting. I'll admit the way I presented the subject may not have been clear. Let me try to summarize.
ReplyDeleteThe USA was attacked by terrorists in such a major way that the USA finally reacted significantly. Part of that reaction included the USA PATRIOT Act. Part of that Act required libraries to reveal certain information about certain library patrons in furtherance of anti-terrorism efforts.
The ALA had a leader who regretted that an actual 9/11 terrorist was reported to the police by a Florida librarian. See "A Nation Challenged: Questions of Confidentiality; Competing Principles Leave Some Professionals Debating Responsibility to Government," by David E. Rosenbaum, The New York Times, 23 November 2001.
That same leader, with her three years of experience as an Illinois ACLU board member, decided the ALA will oppose the USA PATRIOT Act. But the ALA cannot disobey the law.
So a workaround was found. The workaround was to destroy all the computer records that the USA PATRIOT Act made legal to obtain.
That ALA policy, made largely by that ALA/ACLU leader, became the standard for local public libraries. Local public libraries, not all of them, now routinely destroy the very records legal to obtain under the USA PATRIOT Act and more.
This happens by the libraries themselves, in furtherance of ALA policy created as it was, and local citizens have absolutely no say in the matter. Indeed, they likely do not even know that it even happened in the first place. You, Anonymous, likely don't even know about this in your own public library.
I'll venture a guess and suggest that local communities would want law enforcement to have access to records that would prevent criminal activity, particularly involving children. However, thanks to the ALA, many communities have been robbed of that opportunity, and they don't even know it.
Local communities need to become aware of this, then act accordingly.
There, I hope that explains thing better.
Was I right or was I right:
ReplyDelete"Bookworms, Beware; The Local Library System Warns Patrons the Government Secretly Snoops," by Ed Connolly, New Times (SLO), 2 July 2009, vol.23, iss.48.
Bookworms, Beware
The Local Library System Warns Patrons the Government Secretly Snoops
BY ED CONNOLLY
Don’t think what you read is your own private business, because it’s not: The FBI can take your library records and gag librarians from revealing their visit. At least the Black Gold Cooperative Library System—the consortium of public book lenders throughout San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties—gives patrons fair warning.
Black Gold recently added a nifty feature to the consortium website, allowing cardholders to compile personal book lists: books they plan to read or have read. But there’s a catch. Readers are advised before establishing the “Saved Title” lists online: “The feature you have selected is associated with personal data in your patron account. Such data may be accessed by law enforcement personnel without your consent. Do you wish to continue?”
“Normally, we don’t keep a record of what an individual has borrowed,” said Judith Rohr, assistant director of the SLO County Library.
That’s aside from whatever’s currently on loan. The libraries don’t archive borrowing histories precisely in case the feds come knocking.
“Because of privacy concerns, we don’t tell somebody else what you have checked out,” Rohr said. “Most public libraries adhere to a policy of confidentiality.”
But the Save Title lists are an optional exception patrons assume at their own risk; the lists are retained for their convenience.
The Patriot Act authorizes what amount to federal black-bag jobs in broad daylight and jail time for anyone who blows the whistle. Since the act was hurriedly passed by Congress following the 9/11 attacks, it has deeply troubled librarians and others who say provisions blatantly violate Constitutional protections against unwarranted searches and muzzle free speech.
There are two ways the FBI can pry reader records from the libraries. Agents can obtain a warrant (called a FISA warrant, short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) from a judge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, DC, whose proceedings are largely kept secret. That’s the same court from which agents of the National Security Agency during the George W. Bush administration should have obtained warrants when they put in place a massive telephone intercept program.
That court has been a virtual rubber stamp for warrant requests (in 2008, for example, it granted 2,083 applications for surveillance and physical search but denied only one), but at least a judge does rule whether probable cause exists to issue a warrant. Alternatively, under the Patriot Act, the FBI can dispense with that—or any other—judicial formality and write its own demand, a National Security Letter (NSL).
[More in next comment....]
[Continuing now....]
ReplyDeleteUntil December 2008, librarians presented with an NSL had no recourse but to comply and keep their mouths shut. They couldn’t legally divulge even to an attorney or another federal agency that they’d received the letter. Courts commonly apply gag orders to search warrants for a short time—typically 30 days or less—to protect an investigation, but the gag orders coincident with NSLs continue as long as the FBI wants them to, possibly for decades.
“That’s part of the Constitutional problem: It’s a prior restraint on speech that has no limits,” the American Library Association’s Acting Director for Intellectual Freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, pointed out about NSLs and their chilling effect.
In December 2008, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided the FBI must justify to a court why a gag order should be granted with an NSL. The law is being changed to reflect that verdict since the government has declined to appeal.
Last year, the FBI made 24,744 NSL requests for information about 7,225 people in the United States. The year before, the FBI made 16,804 NSL requests for information about 4,327 U.S. individuals. Does the ALA have any idea how many applied to library records? Caldwell-Stone doesn’t: “We have no way of finding out because it’s a secret process,” she said.
One instance that’s been made public concerned the Library Connection, a consortium in Connecticut very much like Black Gold, which received an NSL in 2005 seeking computer records. The organization refused to comply and sought help from the ACLU, which challenged the letter. The only reason even that much is known is because the FBI eventually withdrew the NSL and gag order and Library Connection staffers were therefore free to speak up.
“We’ve never said that library records are sacrosanct, but what we do say is that before they’re turned over, there should be a heightened legal review of the reasons law enforcement believe justify them looking at records, which would have a potential chilling effect on First Amendment activity,” Caldwell-Stone said. “Going into someone’s reading records to determine whether they’re a criminal, have engaged in criminal activity, to judge their character, [it] can lead to bad things, as we’ve all learned from history.” Such intrusions she said smack of the infamous FBI COINTELPRO program of the ‘60s and later, which engineered disruptions to peace, civil rights, and environmental groups including break- ins, wiretaps, provocateurs, character assassinations, and worse. ∆
Contact editor Ed Connolly at econnolly@newtimesslo.com
Copyright © New Times. All rights reserved.
Reprinted under Fair Use Sec. 107.
I am right again. In a story that was published after I wrote this blog post, we learned that a library director refused to disclose a patron viewing child pornography to the police, why? Because of the library's opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act!!!
ReplyDelete"'First thing when I got in, in the morning, I went into her office, and said pretty much the same thing when I called her Friday night. And she gave me the same response that the police are going to want to know a name and she even brought up the Patriot Act saying that as a library, we need to keep patrons names and addresses confidential,' Wessels says.
"Fearing the incident would never be reported, Wessels called police. Holyoke's Cyber Crimes unit seized the computer."
See "Allegations of a Child Porn Cover Up at Local Library," by Matthew Campbell, CBS 3, 2 July 2009 and watch the video.