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Privacy: “I have nothing to hide”
We often hear the argument that it is okay for the government to gather or analyze personal information because only those who have something to hide need worry. As the British government slogan says, "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."
Libraries take a different approach to privacy. As the American Library Association says, "Privacy is essential to the exercise of free speech, free thought, and free association."
Yet we continue to hear the "nothing to hide" argument. Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University, examines the argument in detail and exposes its flaws in an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security:
- Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide', by Daniel J. Solove, Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chronicle Review" (May 15, 2011) [subscription required] Commentators often attempt to refute the nothing-to-hide argument by pointing to things people want to hide. But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist [Bruce] Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty "premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong." Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.
Chapter 1 of the book is also freely available:
- Nothing To Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy And Security, Chapter 1, by Solove, Daniel J., Yale University Press, 2011. SSRN.
Solove argues that, in many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests. Bruce Schneier, the security expert Solove quotes above and the author of the excellent monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram, makes a similar argument in a recent presentation on security issues:
- The security mirage, Bruce Schneier. TEDxPSU. (Oct 2010), video, 21 min.
As we have mentioned here before, (see, for example, Will GPO guarantee user privacy? Can it? and PRIVACY: Key Challenges Facing Federal Agencies and "Policy neutral" does not mean "neutral policies"), privacy has important policy implications for individual FDLP libraries and their approaches to access to government information. What is your library policy? Will your library choose to retain its role as a protector of privacy, or will it abandon that role to government agencies?
Continue readingLunchtime listen: Eli Pariser on filter bubbles
Eli Pariser, founder of MoveOn.org and author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, gave a very interesting and smart -- and somewhat disconcerting -- talk at TED in Long Beach, CA in February, 2011. Pariser points out the unintended consequences embedded in search personalization where users get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden their worldview.
Lessig: “The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up”
Lunchtime Listen: Lawrence Lessig, speaking at CERN, talks about how hard, expensive, and limited our access is to scholarly information and how we have created this system.
- The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up, Lawrence Lessig CERN Colloquium and Library Science Talk, Streaming video (18 April 2011)
Lunchtime listen: Rummaging in the government’s attic (2010 next HOPE conference talk)
[w:Phil Lapsley] and Michael Ravnitzky gave an intriguing talk on [w:Freedom of Information Act (United States)] or FOIA at the Next HOPE Conference, New York City, July 2010. The talk was entitled "Rummaging in the Government's Attic: Lessons Learned from More Than 1,000 Freedom of Information Act Requests." You can access both the audio file (23 MB mp3 file) and the slides (2.7 MB pdf file). And don't forget to surf on over to the Government Attic for access to all of the FOIA'd documents. Thanks Phil and Michael for the informative talk and for and for your studies of FOIA! [originally posted on Govdoc-l listserv] Continue reading
Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”*
Today the US celebrates the life of Dr [w:Martin Luther King, Jr.] one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and one of the greatest orators in US history. King was a champion for civil rights for African Americans as well as economic justice for all poor people and organized the [w:Poor People’s Campaign]. He spoke out against all injustice including against the Vietnam War. King received the [w:Nobel Peace Prize] on December 10, 1964 for his work for civil rights and economic justice. He was assassinated at the age of 39 on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN. Martin Luther King Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. *The quote in the title of this post is from "Letter from Birmingham Jail" an open letter written on April 16, 1963 in response to a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen on April 12, 1963, titled "A Call For Unity."
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