[WEB4LIB] RE: FBI to monitor libraries

[Mark Wright]

>To answer the previous question...if I had a map of the water resevoirs in 
>my community and 3 Middle Eastern men asked me for it, I would give it to 
>them
>and think no more of it.  To do what was suggested, is to profile.  I don't 
>believe in it for the police, I don't believe in it for me.
>I will follow the law. But, I will fight against those laws.  And, I
>definitely won't help our country become the kind of place where we inform 
>against each other out of fear.

Profiling is ugly, no two ways about it, but there's a big difference 
between profiling for drug dealers and profiling for terrorists who'd like 
nothing better than to nuke American cities. There's a valid argument about 
the former, but no thinking individual could argue against the latter. For 
those of you who would still argue that profiling is wrong in such cases, 
see if you can dispute these facts:

1. All of the 9/11 terrorists were young men of Middle Eastern/Arabic 
ethnicity.

2. There are more of them out there who would like to attack us again.

3. They would love to get their hands of weapons of mass destruction, so 
they could use them against our cites.

4. Some of the 9/11 terrorists used public computers in libraries to 
communicate with each other.

I say that every library that makes computers available to the public MUST 
profile to some degree, because the potential consequences of not doing so 
are just too horrible. This doesn't mean we shouldn't serve Arabic 
individuals to the best of our ability. We have them in my library nearly 
every day and aside from simply observing them a little more carefully than 
I did before, I try not to treat them any differently. But it does mean that 
we should quietly be on the lookout for red flags, and if we see one, err on 
the side of caution and contact the authorities. You owe it to the millions 
of Americans who could die if you don't.

>This is a very serious professional question that warrants continual
>examination and discussion. Just what is the librarians professional
>obligation to answer a question? When can a librarian ethically refuse to 
>answer a question?

Agreed, which is why I'm writing. I hate to see librarians with knee-jerk 
reactions against profiling simply because it is distasteful. In wartime we 
often have to do distasteful things. This whole issue deserves lots of 
discussion, and there are no easy answers when it comes to where we draw the 
line. But if I could choose between informing on an innocent man and causing 
him hardship, and not informing on a man who later went on to nuke a city, 
I'd chose the former in a heartbeat.

Mark Wright
Andover, MA




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