Hello everyone,
Black Lives Matter.
If your library or archive is thinking about collecting photographs, videos, or other materials from the protests around George Floyd’s death caused by Minneapolis police, what are you doing to protect the privacy of the protesters? Black Lives Matter protestors and organizers, as well as many protesters and organizers in other activist circles, face ongoing harassment due to their involvement. Some have died. Recently Vice reported on a website created by white supremacists to dox interracial couples, illustrating how easy it is to identify and publish personal information with the intent to harm people. This isn’t the first website to do so, and it won’t be the last.
Going back to our question – if your response to the protests this weekend is to archive photos, videos, and other materials that personally identifiable information about living persons, what are you doing to protect the privacy and security of those people? There was a call made this weekend on social media to archive everything into the Internet Archive, but this call ignores the reality that these materials will be used to harass protesters and organizers. Here is what you should be considering:
- Scrubbing metadata and blurring faces of protesters – a recently created tool is available to do this work for you: https://twitter.com/everestpipkin/status/1266936398055170048
- Reading and incorporating the resources at https://library.witness.org/product-tag/protests/ into your processes and workflows
- Working with organizations and groups such as Documenting The Now
A tweet that summarizes some of the risks that you bring onto protestors if you collect protest materials: https://twitter.com/documentnow/status/1266765585024552960
You should also consider if archiving is the most appropriate action to take right now. Dr. Rachel Mattson lists how archives and libraries can do to contribute right now – https://twitter.com/captain_maybe/status/1267182535584419842
Archives, like libraries, are not neutral institutions. The materials archivists collect can put people at risk if the archives do not adopt a duty of care in their work in acquiring and curating their collections. This includes protecting the privacy of any living person included in these materials. Again, if your archive’s response is to archive materials that identify living people at these protests, how are you going to ensure that these materials are not used to harm these people?
Black Lives Matter.