Week 14 Reading Notes

No Place to Hide

• To be honest, this kind of reminds me of the awful Martin Luther King, Jr. website. I can’t tell whether this site is presenting the facts or heavily slanting the facts. I mean, when you click on “Center for Investigative Reporting,” it takes you to a blog about muckrakers, and it looks very much like one individual runs the blog.
• I don’t doubt that the United States government collects our personal information (after all, it’s become easier and easier with the Internet and social media), and I do find it troubling. However, I’m more interested in focused issues that can be more easily combatted and may help to solve roots of other problems. For example, combatting literacy and helping children and teens learn to think for themselves rather than blindly following others and regurgitating what’s being told to them would help in the long run. And there are plenty of resources that address these issues (and other issues) that are a lot more legitimate than this website.

EPIC Terrorism (Total) Information Awareness

• While this website doesn’t initially scream muckraking, the formatting of this website is not at all user-friendly, and it’s important to note that this page hasn’t been updated since 2005! And the organization hasn’t posted an annual report since 2007-2008. What happened? Why does it seem to now be defunct? Caused by a government cover-up or something else?
• I’d be more interested to see hard facts about how the government uses social media sites to collect information. After all, that’s becoming easier and easier due to the privacy myth people seem to have (though the issue of social media privacy does seem to come up from time to time, or at least in some circles).

MyTurn: Protecting Privacy Rights in Libraries (Hamer, J.)

• It’s so important to advocate for teen’s rights when it comes to using the library. They’re in a tricky spot because they often have some level of independence, but minors still have parents or guardians. But I wonder how many parents know if their library has a teen user privacy policy, and if they did, how would they feel and react? Also, Vermont has one law, but how do these library patron policies differ from state to state?
• Librarians aren’t the only ones who have to deal with legal and ethical privacy issues—doctors and lawyers and therapists have to do the same. What makes us different? Because we aren’t seen as being in a “serious” profession?
• Are there ways that libraries can collect useful information about their users (such as circulation statistics) while keeping it anonymous and/or periodically wiping their records clean? Definitely something to consider if we want to fully protect the privacy of our patrons.