Be fingerprinted @ your library™
A few years ago, the American Library Association had a trademarked slogan called @ your library™. I bought some posters for my school library with various celebrities on them reading their favorite books. Read @ your library™!, the posters would say. The celebrities were always posed holding the book open at about chest height so you could see the cover of the book they had probably never read themselves: Nicholas Cage holding The Old man and the Sea, for instance.
Now not only can you read @ your library™!, but you can be fingerprinted, too, making it all the easier for the FBI to track you down when you commit the unconscionable act of using the library’s computer resources for suspicious activity. The Free Range Librarian points out an article on the ALA website, Naperville to Launch Fingerprint ID System for Internet Access, which states that one public library system in Naperville, Illinois, has indeed implemented a system for fingerprinting patrons as a way of tracking computer usage.
The reasons for a public library introducing biometric identification for computer access seems a bit muddled, to say the least. On the one hand, the library says it wants to prevent people from using a friend’s or relative’s library card number to log on to the library’s computers. Also stated is that using biometrics will allow a parental filter to be loaded at logon for children accessing the computer. Filtering in libraries is a whole other smelly kettle of fish, so I won’t go into that subject. School libraries, at least, lost that battle long ago.
However, if you read the article carefully, you discover that the idea of fingerprinting patrons first occurred to library staff when police subpoenaed patron records to prosecute a man charged with viewing pornography. It’s unclear whether the police used the Patriot Act to demand these records, but that would be a good question to know the answer to. Presumably the man the police were investigating was also masturbating, because as far as I know, it isn’t necessarily a violation of the law to simply look at pornography in a library, unless it’s child pornography. You might be asked to leave the library, but you won’t be arrested for looking at porn. You might not even be asked to leave. The issue of how to handle open Internet access is a persistant, prickly matter for librarians.
What the police investigation revealed is that patrons were using other people’s ID’s to log on to the library computers, thus inhibiting the police from prosecuting their man.
It’s unclear then how fingerprinting would prevent the viewing of pornography and/or masturbation in a library. Would the Reference Staff be equipped with portable fingerprint identification kits so they could lift a print from suspicious genitalia? Aha, you’ve been fondling yourself, Sir or Madam!
No, I don’t think so. Thus what we have here is a public library helping police “police” people’s on-line activity, simple as that. It might seem innocuous, especially since it is only one public library system, but in my opinion it violates just about every tenet of good librarianship, chiefly the right to privacy of library patrons. Librarians do not censor, they do not “police” anything or anyone. They certainly should not be in the business of helping the State police anyone. I admit I am no law and order type, however. I reserve all my mistrust for the State and its appendages. What’s your opinion about this?
Fingerprinting children. What a nasty concept. Of course, that could just be paranoia. And back in my day, we didn’t have fancy computers at the public library. But my entire childhood was spent in my favorite building downtown, reading, checking things out, avoiding strange people who propositioned me… but that’s another subject altogether.
It seems a bit extreme to me. The only example I can think of where fingerprints are routinely used are with banks and/or at the grocery store to cash checks. Protecting one’s funds seems like a good cause for which to be fingerprinted. (or perhaps I’ve been socialized. But the stakes seem much higher.) Monitoring Internet usage doesn’t seem to rise quite to that level. Especially if looking at porn, if you’re of legal age and it’s not illegal porn, isn’t illegal in and of itself.
Not that I’m saying we all should rush out right now to the local library and view porn. I’m saying that in my experience, the library is where a lot of pervs hang out, with all of its young and ripe, developing children and teens doing research and reading for pleasure and whatnot. They’ve always been there. They haven’t been fingerprinted before. Nor have the patrons–both young and old. I don’t understand why masterbating in the library in and of itself isn’t enough reason to eject somebody.
I understood what you meant. Masturbating in the library is reason enough to be ejected and arrested. The issue of viewing porn is another matter because porn can be difficult to define. My public library has a copy of “The Joy of Sex” on the shelf where anyone can take a look at it. Some would consider this pornography. So as you say, looking at porn on a public computer, if it’s not illegal porn, is not actionable in and of itself. Thus ALA policy is not to filter Internet usage at all, a policy which public and school libraries violate all the time because they’d rather not deal with complaints. When we dealt with this issue in my Library Science classes (I think it was in the Reference class), the teacher took the ALA line and basically told us that in public and college libraries, librarians could not act as censors. The most advice she would give was that if someone is viewing porn, and another patron complains, then the Librarian can suggest the porn-viewer consider the effect on other patrons. There are other techniques for cutting down on porn-viewing in public, such as making sure there is no privacy whatsoever at the public computer terminals.
Lower school libraries are another matter. At the school where I worked for three years, there was no question about filtering. We had to filter, no ifs, ands, or buts, because the school board was not going to deal with parental complaints. The problem with filters is that they are too general, picking out quality sites as well as porn. I always felt like James Dobson must have written the filtering code for our software, because the filter would eliminate sites linked to “breast cancer” or “abortion” as well as genuine porn. At the same time, students could visit the NRA website and look at pictures of pin-up girls with shotguns. Maybe filters are more reliable today, however.
James Dobson writing the software. Funny line. Yet probably true.
I mention the masturbation arrest thing, slightly sarcastically, because it really shines a light on how flimsy this whole line of reasoning is for the fingerprinting. And what I find really amusing is that, if this does go on a larger scale, that governments would throw all sorts of money into this kind of thing. We’re quick to fund policing, slow to fund anything that might enrich the mind.
Yeah, God forbid the government increase funding to libraries for books and materials, but fingerprinting–now that’s something our legislators can get behind!
I think any move to fingerprint me or otherwise identify me in the notion of safety is one step closer to Big Brother.
Aside: This week I came across the nonUS English version of Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men. Wonder if you know about the story surrounding that book, which was first to be published after 9/11. The publishers gave him a big stink, holding the printed books hostage. When a librarian found out about this censorship, she rallied together other library sciences folks and succeeded to get those books out to the public. I was quite inspired to hear about librarians challenging the powers-that-be (and, more recently, dumb ass legislation like the PATRIOT Act).