When one knows the way library computers have limited/no access to the software running them - one knows that all the websites one visits are not only visible to the library - but to anyone else using the computer later. A simple check of the History folder on the IE web browser can reveal where the former users have traveled.

Look, SDAI, I work in a little rinky-dink library, and even we have security on our computers. Do you think we don't have separate log-ins for the public and the general staff, personal logins for managers, and a sys admin login on every computer on our LAN? Only the sys admin password can disable the security to even get to the settings menu, or anything beyond the desktop, and that's only held by the managers. (It's tough on the days when I'm the manager on duty and I have a preschool program. I make the grown-ups wait. :) ) The only thing the public can get to if they use the pull-down menu for the URL window is the home page. They can't get to History at all. We have disabled cookies on the computers we leave logged on all the time, and the others get logged off each time they're used. (This is because some users, especially our older people, sometimes forget to log out of personal accounts.) We'll be going to a system soon in which people can only log on using their personal library card number.

If the library you visit hasn't done these simple things, maybe you would like to suggest it.

By correlating these with times of access, the librarians could easily decipher which patron accessed which sites.

This is one tool we can use to enforce our own TOS agreement with the public. And we wipe the history. Patrons sign off on that agreement, voluntarily, and they know precisely what's in it. They don't sign off on having every one of their transactions minutely detailed, and recorded for posterity, maybe, by some unknown law enforcement official who they don't know and who doesn't know them, except through that record, and who is looking for God-knows-what God-knows-why, because the faceless official doesn't have to tell.

I'm happy for you, that you have such confidence in your personal history that no one could ever find anything about it to suggest you have ever been guilty of anything. I'm sure that some of the people who have been pulled over by state troopers in New Jersey for Driving While Black felt the same way, based on their records, until a police practice using broad, imprecise criteria proved to them that their confidence was misplaced.

My privacy or my life?? What is that sound? Why, it's Ben Franklin spinning wildly in his grave! No, Tech, I don't buy into that exchange of pieces. I'm not playing chess; I'm playing poker. I'll gamble a little, and I don't always have to show my hand if I don't want to. It's an American game.

I'm not giving up my identity so lightly. And why? Because I, like others who share my beliefs, understand that to give up our liberties because we are scared of the threats of these particular terrorists is to let them change us into people more like them. No, thanks. Too many people have died for my right to mouth off and to be let alone. I won't give up what they bought so dearly because I want to pretend life is safe.

Regards--
Mary Anne