[Web4lib] Fwd: [CIRCPLUS] Student admits he lied about Mao bo ok

[Patricia F Anderson]

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Knuth, Pat MS IMA-Europe wrote:

> Maybe I missed seeing it, but I kept wondering why no one was attempting to
> contact the library (or any library) to ask about this supposed watch list
> of books.

How would the library know? That is what made the story so plausible. The 
backbone of the Internet was ARPANET, owned by US military. It does not 
seem improbable that there might be ways for various units of the US 
government to observe aspects of Internet traffic that attract their 
attention. With ILL processes so dependent on the Internet these days, 
what was described may be possible, whether or not it has actually ever 
happened.

Asking a library about how their internal processes were observed by an 
outside agency would be like asking a celebrity (or anyone) how they 
allowed a stalker to follow them. How do you know you are being observed, 
until contact is made?

What seemed unlikely to me would be that the FBI would place a 
(hypothetical) methodology like this at risk by contact, and then reveal 
their source. I am sure that if the FBI was watching ILL traffic via the 
Internet, they would find some other plausible reason to give for 
contacting an individual of interest, or simple decline to provide a 
reason.

A very interesting story and unveiling. Thought provoking, in any case.

-- Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich.edu