Imagine this: you are a citizen of a Democracy where individual rights and privacy are supposedly its most sacred principle, and yet 24/7 you may be tracked by the government, corporations and even the city in which you live. You constantly wear or use devices that send out signals and information transmitted to millions of different data-gathering entities. A future such as this, predicted by the likes of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, may have seemed very frightening little more than 20 years ago. Such a future, however, is in the here and now.
Libraries are one of the bulwarks of democracy, and they remain one of the few places in the modern world where your privacy is strictly maintained. Choose Privacy Week is a culmination of all that we do as librarians — providing an incredibly wide variety of information and computing resources while at the same time protecting your utmost privacy. In its eighth year and hosted by the American Library Association, Choose Privacy Week is cosponsored by the ACLU, the Society of American Archivists, the Freedom to Read Foundation and many other nonprofit agencies.
After the Snowden affair in 2013, a veritable explosion of books about the topic of privacy hit the shelves, and we have many here at the library. Julia Angwin, in “Dragnet Nation,” abandoned many of the social media outlets that we trust and love, such as Facebook, all for the sake of privacy. However, cleansing her name from online information brokers was far more difficult: “Removing my information from commercial data brokers was a different kind of trust exercise: the kind of trust you place in a mob enforcer.” Angwin goes further than most, installing encryption programs on her phones and other devices. In conclusion she argues that “We didn’t shut down the industrial economy to stop pollution. We simply asked polluters to be more accountable to their actions. We just need to make the data handlers let us see what they have about us and be accountable for any hardships caused by their use of our data.”
“Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions” is an excellent anthology that is rare: the book looks for solutions and answers to many of the tricky issues surrounding an online presence, as opposed to indulging in some of the rising hysteria. In his chapter “The Surveillance Society and Transparent You,” IBM computer scientist Jeff Jonas writes: “A surveillance society is inevitable and irreversible. More interestingly, I believe a surveillance society will prove to be irresistible.” Jonas argues that this is because the convenience of a robust online life is far more acceptable to people when weighed against the limitations of privacy rights.
“Privacy in The Age of Big Data” by Theresa M. Payton and Theodore Claypoole offers this caveat: “You may not realize it, but you are connected to the Internet all day, and the cyberazzi are with you every digital step of the way.” The book delves into some of the ways that we can erase some of our digital footprints, by following some basic checklists and tools for ensuring privacy. (For instance, did you know that disabling Java on your computer and only using it when necessary keeps one much safer? Java is often hit hard by hackers.)
Edward Snowden’s revelations were a game changer. Whether you agree with him or not (and some experts found many of his revelations very damaging to American security), all United States citizens are now aware that they may be monitored by the government at any time. Another anthology with numerous authors, “After Snowden: Privacy, Secrecy, and Security in the Information Age,” examines the aftermath. As Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive, points out in his chapter near the end of the book: “The fallout from the Snowden leaks revealed that top officials had lied not only to Congress but also to the wiretap court, to the Supreme Court, and to each other” about the data intrusions.
Finally, please see the Choose Privacy Week website for lots of great multimedia content and even a short documentary entitled: “Vanishing Liberties: The Rise of State Surveillance in the Digital Age.”
