Month: September 2021

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Is Library Scholarship a Privacy Information Hazard?

A white hazard sign with an image of a human stick figure being sapped by a electric blob. Image is sandwiched between red and black text - "Warning, this area is dangerous"
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andymag/9349743409/ (CC BY 2.0)

Library ethics, privacy, and technology collided again last week, this time with the publication of issue 52 of the Code4Lib Journal. In this issue, the editorial committee published an article describing an assessment process with serious data privacy and ethical issues and then explained their rationale for publishing the article in the issue editorial. The specifics of these data privacy and ethical issues will not be covered in-depth in this week’s newsletter – you can read about said issues in the comment section of the Code4Lib Journal article in question.

You might have noticed that we said “again” in the last paragraph. This isn’t the first time library technology publications and patron privacy collided. The Code4Lib Journal published a similarly problematic article last year, but the journal is one of many library scholarship venues that have published scholarly and practical literature that are ethically problematic with regard to patron privacy. Technology and assessment are the usual offenders, ranging from case studies of implementing privacy-invasive technologies to research extolling the benefits of surveilling students in the name of learning analytics without discussing the implications of violating student patron privacy. These publications are not set up as a point-counterpoint exploration of these technologies and assessment methods in terms of privacy and ethics. Instead, these publications are entered into the scholarly record as is, with an occasional contextual note or superficial sentence or two about privacy. Retraction is almost unheard of in library scholarship, and retraction is not very effective in addressing problematic research.

Library scholarship is not consistently aligned with the profession’s ethical standards to uphold patron privacy and confidentiality. Whether or not an article is judged on its potential impact on library privacy is currently up to the individual peer reviewer (or in the case of editor-reviewed journals such as Code4Lib, the editor). In addition, library scholarship is not set up to assess the potential privacy risks and harms of the publication in question to specific patron groups, particularly patrons from minoritized populations. Currently, there is no suitable mechanism to do such an assessment that can be included in the original publication so that it would be both meaningful and informative to the reader. We are left with publications in the library scholarship record that promote the uncritical adoption of high-risk practices that go against professional ethics and harm patrons. This becomes more perilous when these publications come across those in the field who do not have the knowledge or experience in assessing these publications with patron privacy and ethics in mind.

What we end up with, therefore, is a scholarly record full of information hazards. An information hazard is a particular piece of information that can potentially cause harm to the knower or create the potential to harm others. This differs from misinformation where the information being spread is false, whereas the truthfulness of the information hazard is intact. Nick Bostrom’s seminal work on information hazards breaks down the specific risks and harms of different types of hazards. Library scholarship has (at least) two information hazards in particular when it comes to library privacy and ethics:

Idea hazard – Ideas hold power. They also come with risks. Even if the dissemination of an idea is kept at a high level without specific details, it can become an idea hazard. The idea that a library can use a particular system or process to assess library use can risk patron privacy. There are ways to mitigate an idea risk of this nature, including evaluating the assessment idea through the Five Whys method or other methods to determine the root need for such an assessment.

Development hazard – A development hazard is when advancement in a field of knowledge leads to technological or organizational capabilities that create negative consequences. Like other fields of technology, library technology falls into this hazard category, particularly when combined with the evolution of library assessment practices and norms. Sharing code and processes (which is a data hazard) can lead to community or commercial development of more privacy-invasive library practices if no care is taken to mitigate patron privacy risks.

How, then, can library scholarship become less of a privacy information hazard? First and foremost, the responsibility falls on the publishers, editors, peer reviewers, and conference program organizers who control what is and is not added to the library scholarly record. This includes creating a code of ethics for submission authors to follow and guidelines for reviewers and editors to follow to assess the privacy and ethical implications of the submission. However, these codes and guidelines are not effective if they are not acted upon. As Dorothea Salo says, “Research on library patrons that contravenes library-specific ethics is unethical; it should not be published in the LIS literature, and when published there, should be retracted.” Regardless of the novelty or other technical merits of the submission, if the submission violates or goes against library ethics or privacy standards, the editors, reviewers, and publishers have the responsibility as shapers of the scholarly record to not publish the submission lest they add yet another information hazard to the record.

Library privacy and ethics must also be a part of every stage of the submission and publication process. This takes a page from Privacy by Design, taking a proactive approach to privacy instead of rushing to include privacy at the last minute, making any privacy effort ineffective at best. Ethical codes and guidelines are one way to embed privacy into a process; another is to include checkpoints in the process to bring in external subject matter experts to review submissions well in advance to identify or comment on specific privacy or ethical risks. If done early in the submission process, the information received can then be used to revise the submission to address these issues or to change the focus of the submission to one that is more appropriate to address the privacy and ethical implications of the topic at hand. The submission itself doesn’t have to be abandoned, but it must be constructed so that the privacy and ethical risks are front and center, describing why this method, idea, process, or code goes against library ethics and privacy. This option doesn’t eliminate the idea/data hazard, but shifting the focus on privacy and ethical repercussions can mitigate the risks that come with such hazards.

Whether intentional (as in the case of the latest Code4Lib Journal issue) or unintentional, library scholarship places patron privacy at risk through the unrestricted flow of information hazards. Many in the profession face pressure to create a constant stream of scholarship, but at what cost to our patrons’ privacy and professional ethics? A scholarly record full of privacy information hazards has and will continue to have long-lasting implications for the profession’s ability to protect patron privacy as well as how well we can serve everyone in the community (and not just those who have a higher tolerance for privacy risks or won’t be as negatively impacted by poor privacy practices). As the discussion about the Code4Lib Journal’s decision to publish the latest information hazard into the scholarly record continues, perhaps the community can use this time to push for more privacy and ethically-aligned submission and review processes in library scholarship.

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Mid-September Readings, Viewings, and Doings

A light brown rabbit sits on top of a keyboard looking up at two computer screens, reading email.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/toms/127809435/ (CC BY 2.0)

September has proven itself to be a busy month for all of us! This week we’re taking a breather from our usual (longer) posts by highlighting a few resources that you might find of interest, and some homework, to boot.

What to Read

For years there has been a concerted effort in getting libraries to secure their websites through HTTPS, but have those efforts paid off? A recently published article by librarian Gabriel Gardner describes how much further we have to go with HTTPS on library websites, but it doesn’t stop there. The article also describes how libraries are complicit in third-party tracking with various web trackers found on library websites, including (unsurprisingly) Google Analytics. Give this article a read, then hop on over to your library website. How is your library website contributing to surveillance by allowing third parties to vacuum up all the data exhaust your patrons are leaving behind while using the library website? We’ve written about alternatives to Google Analytics and other forms of tracking if you need a place to start in reducing the third-party tracker footprint at your library.

What to Watch/Read

At LDH, we talk a lot about ethics and technology. You might be wondering where you can learn more about the ethics of technology without diving headfirst into a full-time college course. If you have some time to watch a few TikTok videos and read a couple of articles during the week, you’re in luck – Professor Casey Fiesler’s Tech Ethics and Policy class is in session! You can follow along by watching Dr. Fiesler’s TikTok videos and doing the readings posted on Google Docs. But you can do much more than following along – join the office hours or the discussions in the videos!

What to Do

Perhaps you’re looking for something else to do other than website or ethics classwork. We won’t hold that against you (though we really, really recommend reviewing what trackers your library website has). So, here’s a suggestion for your consideration. It’s been a while since we did our #DataSpringCleaning. Do you dread cleaning because there’s always so much stuff to deal with by the time we get around to doing it? Taking five to ten minutes now to dispose of patron data securely can go a long way to reducing the amount of data you have to deal with during the annual #DataSpringCleaning. It’s also an excellent privacy and security hygiene habit to adopt. Spending a few minutes to secure sensitive data can fill in the gaps in your schedule between meetings or projects, or it can be part of your routine for starting or ending your workday. And it does give you some feeling of accomplishment on particularly frustrating days where nothing seems to have gotten done.

If you come across any library privacy-related resources that you would like highlighted in the newsletter, let us know by emailing newsletter@ldhconsultingservices.com. In the meantime, best of luck with the workweek, and we’ll catch you next week.

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The Lasting Impact of The Patriot Act on Libraries

A man wearing sunglasses holds a white sign as he walks through a street protest. The sign has two human eyes looking up and to the right. The sign message - 'The "Patriot" Act is watching you"
Image source – https://flickr.com/photos/crazbabe21/2303197115/ (CC BY 2.0)

This weekend marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in the US. Life changed in the US after the attacks. One of the many aspects of our lives that changed was the sudden erosion of privacy for everyone living in the States. One of the earliest visible examples of this rapid erosion of privacy was the Patriot Act. Let’s take a moment and revisit this turning point in library privacy history and what has happened since.

A Quick Refresher

The Patriot Act was signed in October 2001 after the attacks of September 11th. The law introduced or vastly expanded government surveillance programs and rights. US libraries are most likely familiar with Section 215. While in the past the government was limited in what information they could obtain through secret FISA orders, Section 215’s “tangible things” expanded the use of these secret orders to “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.” Given the examples included in the Section’s text, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that “tangible things” included library records.

The good news – for now – is that Section 215 is not here to mark the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Patriot Act. The Section was sunsetted in 2020 after years of renewal and a second life through the USA Freedom Act. The Section did not die quietly, though – while support for renewal spanned across both parties in the Senate and the House, different versions of the renewal bill stalled the renewal process. The possibility of a renewal of Section 215 or a similar version of the Section is still present. However, it is unclear as to when talks of renewal will restart.

The Act’s Impact on Libraries

Libraries acted quickly after the passage of the Act. Right after the passage of the Patriot Act, those of us in the library profession might remember taking stacks of borrowing histories and other physical records containing patron data and sending them through the shredder. Other libraries adjusted privacy settings in their ILSes and other systems to not collect borrowing history by default. ALA promptly sent out guidance for libraries around updating privacy and law enforcement request policies and procedures. And it would be safe to assume that several people got into librarianship because of the profession’s efforts in protecting privacy and pushing back against the Patriot Act.

Even with the flurry of activity in the profession early on, questions about the use of Section 215 to obtain patron data persist today. Even though the Justice Department testified in 2011 that Section 215 was not used to obtain circulation records, the secrecy imposed on searches in Section 215 makes it difficult to determine precisely the extent of the Section’s library record collection activities.

While we cannot say for sure if Section 215 was used to obtain patron data, we know that other parts of the Act were used in an attempt to get patron data. Most notably was the use of National Security Letters (NSL) and gag orders by the government to obtain patron data. The Connecticut Four successfully challenged the gag order on an NSL served to the Connecticut library consortium Library Connection. While the Connecticut Four took their fight to court, other libraries proactively tried to work around the gag order by posting warrant canaries in the building to notify patrons if they had been served an NSL.

Lessons Learned or Business as Usual?

The Patriot Act reminded libraries of the threat governments pose to patron privacy. Libraries responded with considerable energy and focus to these threats, and these responses defined library privacy work in the 21st century library. Still, the lessons learned from the early days of the Act didn’t entirely transfer to other threats that pose as much of a threat to patron privacy as governments and law enforcement. While libraries could quickly dispose of risky patron data on paper after the Act’s passage, a substantial amount of today’s patron data lives on third-party databases and systems. The removal of control over patron data in third-party systems limits the ability to adjust to new privacy threats quickly. Technology has evolved to provide some possible protections, including encryption and other ways to restrict access to data. Legal regulations around privacy give both libraries and patrons some level of control over data privacy in third-party systems. Despite these progressions in technology and law, data privacy in the age of surveillance capitalism in the library brings new challenges that many libraries struggle to manage.

Some could argue that libraries sub-optimized data privacy protections in response to the Act’s threats, hyper-focusing on government and law enforcement at the expense of addressing other patron privacy risks. At the same time, the standards and practices developed to mitigate governmental threats to patron privacy can be (and to certain extents have been) adapted to minimize these other risks, particularly with third parties. One of the first lessons learned in the initial days of the Act came from the massive efforts of shredding and disposing of patron data in bulk in libraries throughout the country. Libraries realized at that moment that data collected is data at risk of being seized by the government. Data can’t be seized if it doesn’t exist in the first place. As libraries continue to minimize risks around law enforcement requests, we must remember to extend those privacy protections to the third parties that make up critical library operations and services.