Netscape & Users Privacy

[King County Library System]

Yes, I agree and find it particularly surprising since I have seen a number of library policies that require a subpoena to reveal circulation records.  Somehow some places apparently are viewing electronic information differently.  There have been several posts in the last few days on this list and Publib that imply a changed perception to electronic materials.  For instance, several posters seem to conclude freely that "pornography" is a term that can be applied to whatever someone is viewing (definition seems to rest with the librarian) regardless of little things like legal determinations of "obscene" materials or prior restraint or that small matter of First Amendment rights.

Very interesting  . . 

Charles Anderson
anderson at kcls.org


I wonder how divulging to authorities which websites a library user has
visited (even if he/she later sent harrassing e-mail or threatened one of
our campus computer systems) would be any different from divulging which
books a borrower had checked out (even if he/she then made a home-made
bomb and blew up a building.) If we've always said that borrower
records are confidential, how come a list of viewed sites isn't? 

Since I spend WAY too much time cleaning up after malicious
mischief on our public computers, part of me *loves* that we are able to
see where users have been when they cause problems; nonetheless, the idea
of looking to see what somebody was reading makes me pretty uncomfortable.
Where *do* we draw the line?

................................................................
Kathy McGreevy                     kathy at floyd.santarosa.edu
Ref. Librarian, Electronic         kathy at sonic.net
  Network Services                 http://www.santarosa.edu/~kathy

Santa Rosa Junior College          voice: 1-707-527-4547
Santa Rosa, CA 95401               fax:   1-707-527-4545
................................................................

On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, Pat Anderson wrote:

> Anna Trupiano said:
> >As to why Netscape does this?  Who knows???  As the sole user of
> >my home computers, the information kept in these files could be
> >handy.  As a parent, responsible for children, the information
> >might explain an observed behavior change.
> 
> I hate to bring this up, but there are times as a system
> administrator or lab administrator when the information
> can really be handy. Recently we had a awkward situation
> with a man who was looking at pornography on the web and
> masturbating in front of female patrons. When working
> with security to try to catch him, the police asked to
> see what he had been looking at on the web in order to
> help in developing a psych profile. So we did this, and
> went back and looked for the specific times and machines
> we knew he had used. I don't know how much help it was,
> and we do NOT routinely spy on our patrons this way. In
> this case I felt it was warranted. If you normally don't
> use this, and 99% of the patrons don't know about it,
> are you really putting their privacy at risk? We set
> the link tracking to two days, and keep the cache small,
> but patrons reset these and we don't worry about it.
> Patrons who are concerned about their privacy tend to
> empty the cache at the end of their session. Surely,
> under normal circumstances, this is sufficient?
> 
> Pat Anderson
> 
> 
>  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> P. F. (Pat) Anderson               "Learning, study, reading,
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>