[Web4lib] CALEA policies?

[Sigrid Kelsey]

Cary,
My understanding is that we are doing this to remain exempt, but I'm not
sure why, or who advised us.  However, I have had one person contact me off
list stating that his university's legal department advised his library
that they did fall under the category of a privately run network, and were
therefore expected to abide by CALEA.  The law seems to be open to
interpretation, and that is one reason I asked whether others had had legal
advice.

I suppose that computers are very different library resources than books,
because they facilitate communication, which is what the law is about.

Thank you for your input-
Sigrid

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Cary Gordon <listuser at chillco.com> wrote:

> Do you know where they are getting that information? It sounds like
> urban legend, but these days, I guess that anything, no matter how
> egregious, is possible.
>
> CALEA is an act that sets rules and guidelines for telecommunications
> carriers concerning digital telephone networks. While I can imagine
> that a very zealous agent could come to interpret telecommunications
> carriers as including libraries, and digital telephone networks as
> including public workstations, I think that we would be hearing about
> this. First and foremost, I would expect to hear about it from the EFF
> <http://eff.org>, one of CALEA's most vocal critics.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cary
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Sigrid Kelsey <sigridkelsey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Our IT department has informed us that CALEA requires us to ask to see
> (and
> > presumably record names from) our patrons' IDs in order to use our
> publicly
> > accessible computers.
> >
> > I would like to know what other libraries are doing in order to comply
> > with, or remain exempt from complying with CALEA.  I'm especially
> > interested in any library who has had legal advice from an attorney
> > regarding this, and any official policies.  We've not been doing this
> since
> > CALEA was passed, but now IT wants to enforce it.
> >
> > We are a tax-funded state university library.  IT owns the approximately
> 15
> > "public" computers, but the only reason they provide the public computers
> > in the library is because we ask them to as a publicly funded and
> > depository library.  The rest of our more than 250 computers (also owned
> by
> > IT and not the library) require the students to log in with their own
> > school id number and so the users are logged that way.
> >
> > thank you,
> > Sigrid Kelsey
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> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Cary Gordon
> The Cherry Hill Company
> http://chillco.com
>