New survey confirms librarians’ commitment to protecting privacy rights

For Immediate Release
Tue, 05/01/2012 – 15:55

Contact: Jennifer Petersen
Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF)

CHICAGO – In conjunction with Choose Privacy Week, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) released preliminary findings from a new survey measuring librarians’ views on privacy rights and protecting library users’ privacy.

The survey, which builds on an earlier 2008 survey assessing librarians’ attitudes about privacy, provides important data that will help ALA evaluate the state of privacy in the United States and libraries’ role in protecting library users’ privacy. The data will help guide ongoing planning for Choose Privacy Week and similar initiatives aimed at engaging librarians in public education and advocacy to advance privacy rights.

Some of the highlights from the 2012 survey include:

• Librarians remain concerned about privacy and individuals’ desire to control access and use of personal information. Ninety-five percent agree or strongly agree that individuals should be able to control who sees their personal information, and more than 95 percent of respondents feel government agencies and businesses shouldn’t share personal information with third parties without authorization and should only be used for a specific purpose.
• Librarians affirmed their commitment to the profession’s long-standing ethic of protecting library users’ privacy. Nearly 100 percent of respondents agreed that “Libraries should never share personal information, circulation records or Internet use records with third parties unless it has been authorized by the individual or by a court of law,” and 76 percent feel libraries are doing all they can to prevent unauthorized access to individual’s personal information and circulation records.  Overall, nearly 80 percent feel libraries should play a role in educating the general public about privacy issues.
• When compared to the 2008 survey, the results showed that the responses given by the 2012 respondents generally mirrored those of the 2008 respondents, with data showing a slight decline in the level of concern over privacy. For example, in both surveys, the vast majority (95 percent in 2008, 90 percent in 2012) of respondents expressed concern that “companies are collecting too much personal information about me and other individuals.”  However those who “strongly” agreed dropped from 70 percent in 2008 to only 54 percent in 2012.

The 2012 survey also revealed some limitations in libraries’ handling of privacy issues.  While nearly 80 percent of the responding librarians said libraries should play a role in educating the general public about privacy, only 13 percent said their library had hosted a privacy information session, lecture, seminar or other event addressing privacy and surveillance. Similarly, while 100 percent agree that libraries should not release library records without a court order, only 51 percent indicate that their libraries offer training on handling requests for user records and only 57 percent indicate that their libraries effectively communicate the library’s privacy policies to their patrons.

The 2012 study is funded by a generous grant from the Open Society Foundations and is managed by Dr. Michael Zimmer, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies, and co-director of its Center for Information Policy Research.

The survey is part of ALA’s Choose Privacy Week and “Privacy for All” initiative, which conducted with the generous support of the Open Society Foundations.  Its website, www.privacyrevolution.org, provides access to privacy-related news, information and programming resources.

The American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom established Choose Privacy Week in 2010 to help libraries work with their communities in navigating these complicated but vital issues.  It is a national public awareness campaign that aims to educate the public about their privacy rights and to deepen public awareness about the serious issue of government surveillance. The theme for Choose Privacy Week 2012 is “Freedom from Surveillance.”

For more information on Choose Privacy Week, visit www.privacyrevolution.org or contact Jennifer Petersen, ALA PR coordinator at (312) 280-5043, jpetersen@ala.org.

Zimmer, M. (2012). The ethical (re)design of the Google Books project. In iConference ’12 Proceedings of the 2012 iConference, 363-369. DOI: 10.1145/2132176.2132223

Today, the Google Books project is at a relative standstill — lawsuits against the project remain outstanding as the courts rejected a proposed settlement agreement. The failure of the original vision for the Google Books project to become fully realized presents us with a unique opportunity to ensure that whatever final form Google Books will take in the future, it is designed to support the values respected within the domain of information ethics. This paper will proposed an ethical re-design of the Google Books project, focusing on three core ethical values of primary interest to librarian and information professionals: privacy, intellectual freedom, and public access to information. Advocating for these values in the next iteration of the mass digitization service can help ensure that the informational norms of the library are embraced and upheld.

Registration for this event is requested, but not required. To register or to request further information, please call 262-782-4140. Download the flier here, and please join us for this important discussion.

Section 3.7(e) Google’s Exclusion of Books

Google may, at its discretion, exclude particular Books from one or more Display Uses for editorial or non-editorial reasons. However, Google’s right to exclude Books for editorial reasons (i.e., not for quality, user experience, legal or other non-editorial reasons) is an issue of great sensitivity to Plaintiffs and Google.  Accordingly, because Plaintiffs, Google and the libraries all value the principle of freedom of expression, and agree that this principle is an important part of GBS and other Google Products and Services, Google agrees to notify the Registry of any such exclusion of a Book for editorial reasons and of any information Google has that is pertinent to the Registry’s use of such Book other than Confidential Information of Google and other than information that Google received from a third party under an obligation of confidentiality.

Google Book Search is a massive undertaking.  Its goal is to provide unprecedented access to digital copies of all kinds of literature – a vast library of material the likes of which has never before been assembled in a single resource.  However, the project has been criticized, not for what it is including, but for what it isn’t.  Because Google Book Search has the potential to be such a widely used resource, it has the responsibility to reflect an equally diverse range of opinions and perspectives in its collection.  The editorial decision to not include a book in this project could be considered censorship and sufficient justification for such exclusion should be required of Google.  Censorship of this kind could come in two forms – first in the decision to withhold a digitized book from display in the database or, second, by choosing not to digitize a book in the first place.  The first form has already been discussed in Michael Zimmer’s blog, so the second will be the focus of this piece.

The Google Book Search Amended Settlement Agreement carves out space allowing Google to exclude certain books from “Display Uses” for both editorial and non-editorial reasons.  Alexander Macgillivray, former Google employee and head of the legal team spearheading the settlement, has gone on record assuring the public that this exception merely reserves Google’s right to exclude, but that Google has “ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS to remove any books for editorial reasons” (emphasis in original).  Despite this assurance, Section 3.7(e) implies that if, for any reason, Google does exercise this right then notice will be provided to a registry maintained by the Publisher’s Guild.  What Mr. Macgillivray and Section 3.7 do not address is the ability of Google and participating libraries to editorially exclude books from the digitization process in the first place.  Specifically, Section 3.7 discusses the exclusion of books from “Display Uses” which are defined within the Amended Settlement Agreement as “Snippet Display, Front Matter Display, Access Uses and Preview Uses” (Article 1, Section 1.52 at p. 8).  Each of these terms is further defined as display and use of material after it has already been digitized.  Again, there is no mention of the possibility that either Google or participating libraries may withhold certain books from the initial scanning process for editorial reasons.  Additionally, no requirement exists for the provision of notice to the registry for such exclusion of books from digitization.

It is conceivable that books may be excluded from the scanning process for completely legitimate reasons.  Perhaps a book is too fragile or irreplaceable to risk scanning it.  Perhaps the print is too faint or pages are missing.  These are all reasonable, non-editorial justifications for omitting a book from the digitization process.  However, it is equally conceivable that a book may not be scanned because it is too controversial, too outdated, or simply too unpopular to merit digitization.  One could easily imagine a librarian or Google scanning technician setting aside a copy of Little Black Sambo or The Anarchist’s Cookbook in order to preemptively avoid controversy.  To date there is no evidence that these books have been omitted from the scanning process, the point is that such exclusion based on the mere anticipation of ruffled feathers amounts to a priori censorship.  Without a reporting requirement similar to that included in Section 3.7, there is no transparency in the process.

Although this possibility may seem somewhat alarmist and is certainly hypothetical, a close reading of the Settlement Agreement should give one pause.  For instance, the Agreement clearly allows Google to pick and choose books from a library’s collection.  Even the definition of “Collection” within the agreement implies a certain amount of cherry-picking: “’Collection’ means the Books held by a Fully Participating Library or a Cooperating Library that have been Digitized or are targeted for Digitization pursuant to a Digitization Agreement between Google and such Fully Participating Library or such Cooperating Library, which Books may be some or all of such Fully Participating Library’s or such Cooperating Library’s holdings” (Article 1, Section 1.30 at p. 6, emphasis added).  Because these Digitization Agreements are not part of the public record, it remains unclear why only “some” of a participating library’s collection is being scanned and how such decisions are made.

More insidiously, in the final analysis Google Book Search is primarily a commercial enterprise.  Therefore, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that controversial, outdated, or unpopular material may be preemptively excluded from the scanning process because the potential market for such works is small or nonexistent.  Such exclusion may also shield Google from potentially costly litigation.  The alternative argument could certainly be made that Google has historically been inclusive of unpopular speech in its search index and that, “Nearly all known instances of the removal of content from Google’s index were, in one way or another, legally required” (see Zimmer blog post).  Mr. Macgillivray’s public statements also seem to indicate that this policy will extend to Google Book Search and that “Google does not plan to omit any books from the service, just as we have not omitted any books from our scanning based on their content or copyright status”.  While this promise and general policy of inclusion are reassuring, past practice is in no way a guarantee of future behavior.  Additionally, the inclusion of a website in Google’s search index costs almost nothing.  Google’s massive expenditure to refine the scanning process and the considerable per unit expense of digitizing a book may affect the calculus of inclusion.  Again, without some sort of public reporting requirements, we have no way of knowing if books are being excluded, why they’re being excluded, and how those decisions are being made.

If Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and if Google Book Search aspires to that goal, then the threshold for not digitizing a book should be quite high indeed.  Google and the Amended Settlement Agreement have created what amounts to a de facto monopoly – they are the sole online provider of these books.  No one else has the resources, technology, or access to material that Google does. Therefore, the threshold for exclusion should certainly be higher than commercial considerations of a book’s potential value in the marketplace or fear of controversy.  If, for some reason, a user is not able to access the totality of material at Google’s disposal then some justification should be required.  Public notification of these justifications should also be a necessary component for transparency – anything less is simply censorship.

The faculty voted overwhelmingly to give this year’s award to the West Bend Library for its steadfast advocacy on behalf of intellectual freedom in the face of a library challenge that garnered national attention. The efforts of the library board, Library Director Michael Tyree, the library staff, and many supportive community members are to be commended.

…

“The West Bend librarians, library board, and library supporters demonstrated the strong and steadfast advocacy on behalf of intellectual freedom that is the focus of the Downs Award. Despite the enormous media attention that the controversy received, they were unwavering in their support of the public library’s responsibility to provide a diverse collection to serve *all* community members,” said Christine Jenkins, GSLIS associate professor and director of the Center for Children’s Books.

This is the second major award bestowed on the West Bend library and its supporters: in August, the Intellectual Freedom Round Table of the Wisconsin Library Association named them as winners of the 2009 Wisconsin ProQuest Intellectual Freedom Award.

Hundreds of books are challenged in schools and libraries in the United States each year. Here’s a great map of challenges from 2007-2009, although I’m sure it under-represents the nature of the problem, as most challenges are never reported. (Note the West Bend library controversy is marked on the map.)

According to the American Library Association, there were 513 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008. Here are the ten most challenged titles:

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence

TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence

Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence

The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group

Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

The National Coalition Against Censorship has published a fantastic manifesto against the censoring of ideas. The text is pasted below the fold, and you can download the the full manifesto here.

To you zealots and bigots and false
patriots who live in fear of discourse.
You screamers and banners and burners
who would force books
off shelves in your brand name
of greater good.

You say you’re afraid for children,
innocents ripe for corruption
by perversion or sorcery on the page.
But sticks and stones do break
bones, and ignorance is no armor.
You do not speak for me,
and will not deny my kids magic
in favor of miracles.

You say you’re afraid for America,
the red, white and blue corroded
by terrorists, socialists, the sexually
confused. But we are a vast quilt
of patchwork cultures and multi-gendered
identities. You cannot speak for those
whose ancestors braved
different seas.

You say you’re afraid for God,
the living word eroded by Muhammed
and Darwin and Magdalene.
But the omnipotent sculptor of heaven
and earth designed intelligence.
Surely you dare not speak
for the father, who opens
his arms to all.

A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.

Ignorance is no armor.

The announcement can be found in the latest WLA newsletter (p. 11, authored by Elizabeth Buchanan and myself), and includes the following praise:

Our colleagues at West Bend Public Library were indeed tested. Going through any challenge requires commitment, professional integrity—and guts. It is a long mental and physical process and, with each day, a new commitment to the core values of intellectual freedom in our profession is required. Our colleagues met this challenge and, while this case may not be over, it is our hope that they can be proud of their actions and their firm standing in the face of strong controversy.

Congratulations!

I speak last on a panel of esteemed experts, including Angela Maycock, Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association; Tom Leonard, University Librarian, UC Berkeley; and Jason Schultz, Associate Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law; fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

They will certainly cover all the important terrain, so my remarks will focus on my desire to trust Google when they say they’re “thinking hard” about these issues and promise to “protect readers’ privacy rights”, while noting their track record is reason enough to cause us some pause, and is why we’re pushing so hard as advocates on these vital concerns.

I will also suggest a few tactics they can take to engage in the ethical-design of the proposed service, and will close with a call for coders to help develop a version of TrackMeNot for Book Search, thereby giving some power back to the users to obfuscate their book search activities.

A rough draft of my remarks are here, and a pdf of my slides are here.

You can follow the tweet stream for the conference at #gbsfia.

UPDATE: PCWorld has some coverage of our panel discussion: “Privacy Missing From Google Books Settlement”, which was also picked up by the New York Times.

YouTube video of the panel presentation is here.

Joris van Hoboken recently brought this section of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement to my attention:

Section 3.7(e) Google’s Exclusion of Books

Google may, at its discretion, exclude particular Books from one or more Display Uses for editorial or non-editorial reasons. However, Google’s right to exclude Books for editorial reasons (i.e., not for quality, user experience, legal or other non-editorial reasons) is an issue of great sensitivity to Plaintiffs and Google.  Accordingly, because Plaintiffs, Google and the libraries all value the principle of freedom of expression, and agree that this principle is an important part of GBS and other Google Products and Services, Google agrees to notify the Registry of any such exclusion of a Book for editorial reasons and of any information Google has that is pertinent to the Registry’s use of such Book other than Confidential Information of Google and other than information that Google received from a third party under an obligation of confidentiality.

In short, Google can refuse to provide access to a particular book in its Book Search service for “editorial reasons.” In such a case, Google will notify the Registry and provide the a digital copy of the book which could be made available outside of Google’s services (this provision is outlined in a subsection I haven’t reproduced here).

The Settlement Agreement is silent on what these “editorial reasons” might be. While it differentiates them from “non-editorial reasons”, which might include legal restrictions (the copyright holder hasn’t granted the necessary permissions, the book is child pornography and illegal in certain jurisdictions, etc) or technical limitations (the pages simply aren’t scannable, etc), there are no definitions, guidelines, or limitations on what kind of editorial discretion Google could perform in restricting access to certain texts.

Google’s approach to censoring content is a bit scattered, but clearly controversial. In its Web index, Google famously includes everything that is legal (including hate speech), and typically only excludes pages such as child pornography or those subject to a DMCA takedown notice. While you can filter your results to exclude some objectionable material, Google performs only minor censoring of its Web search product (notable exceptions include regional censorship in China or Germany, etc). Nearly all known instances of the removal of content from Google’s index were, in one way or another, legally required. Thus, framed in the language of Section 3.7(e) above, these were “non-editorial” exclusions. To date, I know of no purely “editorial” exclusions from Google’s index: even if they don’t like the site, they still include it.

On YouTube, Google takes a more aggressive stance towards censoring objectionable material, exerting editorial discretion in removing content that violates “community guidelines, which includes restrictions on pornography, sexually explicit content, graphic or gratuitous violence, or “videos showing bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making”.

Now, I’m not sure how much input the YouTube “community” really has in crafting these guidelines, but Google appears to respect that YouTube started as, and continues to be, a user/community-driven space for sharing videos. As YouTube grew, certain norms of appropriate content emerged, and Google appears to be trying to respect and maintain those norms. By couching them as “community standards,” and giving individual users the ability to report problematic videos, Google has, at least in appearance, handed some of its editorial discretion to the YouTube community. But, at the end of the day, it remains Google who gives the thumbs up or thumbs down to a particular video, carrying with it potentially dangerous consequences.

If Google appears to be following the norms of appropriateness and access within the historical context of YouTube, will it do the same for books within Book Search? While an amateur-based online video sharing website might create certain community standards for appropriate material, the American Library Association has long held the position of ensuring and protecting patrons’ intellectual freedom and full access to information, recognizing the essential value of the freedom to read any and all materials that are legal for the library to possess.

[While librarians do exert discretion over books acquired, these decisions most commonly are made based on budget/space considerations (your local library branch can't buy and shelve all books), as well as regional considerations (there simply won't be too much demand for How to Build an Igloo at the San Antonio Public Library). But these kinds of constraints are just what the Google Book Search project are supposed to help overcome.]

So what kind of editorial discretion does Google contemplate given the inclusion of Section 3.7(e)? Will it respect the existing norms of access for books in public libraries, and include all materials that the law allows (essentially making Section 3.7(e) irrelevant)? Or will it create a YouTube-like policy that might exclude books deemed (by who?) to be offensive or otherwise filled with “bad stuff”?

This is a critical issue that the Settlement Agreement fails to adequately address. I will pose these questions at the Public Index, and hope that they might be further addressed at upcoming conferences discussing the Settlement. I welcome any further thoughts or reactions.

For thousands of users, a book they thought they had properly purchased suddenly disappeared. This, unsurprisingly, caused considerable grief and consternation, arguing that “it‘s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.”

As reasonable as this user reaction sounds, a perusal of the Kindle’s terms of service reveals that users aren’t actually buying a book, but merely a license to utilize digital content on their device. While the TOS doesn’t directly state the license is revocable, it does indicate that the license is conditional on Amazon’s authorization, likely giving them the legal authority to remove books from a Kindle whenever they de-authorize its use.

So, yes, while it feels as if Barnes & Noble broke into your house to take back the book you purchased last week, the reality of licensing digital content is different than with brick and mortar. Clearly, we all need to do a better job educating consumers about content licenses, DRMs, and the nature of our digital tools.

But there is a much larger issue here that is being overlooked by many commentators: how simple it is for Amazon to simply take back what they sold you.

More than just an eBook reader, the Kindle is Amazon’s latest cog in its large-scale infrastructure of intellectual surveillance. Moving beyond its (now famous) ability to track one’s book purchases, wish lists, and clickstream activities on Amazon.com, Kindle gives Amazon the power to monitor and collect what you actually do with the books you buy license.

Ted Striphas describes this well in his discussion on “Kindle & the Labor of Reading” (emphasis added):

Much has been made about Kindle’s downstream capabilities—the fact that you can acquire the complete contents of any Kindle-formatted book in under a minute, provided you’re within range of a cell tower. But what about the data it transmits upstream, back to Amazon.com? The Kindle license agreement and terms of use are instructive in this regard. In the subsection entitled “Information Received,” the agreement states: “The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device).” Here’s the especially intriguing part: “Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make on your Device are backed up through the service and subject to the Amazon.com privacy notice.” And there, it’s worth mentioning, all of the data you generate while reading on your Kindle falls within the purview of “the information we [Amazon.com] collect and analyze” for marketing and related purposes.

This “snoop-friendly” nature of the Kindle is what made it effortless for Amazon to be able to reach in and take back Orwell’s words. The fact that Kindles users went to bed reading Orwell, and woke up the next morning with it suddenly stripped from their Kindles’ memory should be reminder to us all of the power Amazon maintains over readers. The ability to read freely and anonymously continues to be eroded before our (digital) eyes.

UPDATE: Please also read Jack Balkin’s post, where he comes to similar conclusions:

For centuries, we have understood, or rather believed, that owning books came with certain rights, including the right to keep what we purchase and to use it, mark it up, and sell it in any way we like. We were free to purchase books and keep them in our homes, without telling anybody what we were reading, or indeed, what page we had last looked at. Amazon’s Kindle system upends all of these expectations. Amazon knows what books you have on your Kindle, and, in theory, it can even know the book you are currently reading, and even the last page you’ve read on each of the books you own. It can delete books, add books, or modify books, all without your permission. It can change features of the Kindle at will. In upending our assumptions about our freedoms to read books in private and use them as we see fit, Amazon threatens many of the basic freedoms to read we have come to expect in a physical world. If we want to preserve these freedoms, we will have to reform copyright law and privacy law to control the new intermediaries who can control us at a distance.