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Fister on Privacy: “Ordinary Americans”

Barbara Fister writes about privacy and government secrecy in the wake of the exposure of the government’s “Prism” program and other surveillance activities.

The effects of government secrecy on the privacy of Americans and its overlap with libraries and the Right to Read has a long history. In recent decades we have had the FBI’s “Library Awareness Program” (See Surveillance in the Stacks The FBI’s Library Awareness Program By Herbert N. Foerstel, Greenwood Press. Westport, Conn. 1991), the “PATRIOT” Act with its library-records clause, the “Total Information Awareness” program, the “Terrorist Surveillance Act,” and more.

Fister quotes from the Church committee hearings of the 1970s. Her article is worth a read.

See more about privacy here on FGI:

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