[Web4lib] CALEA policies?

[Bob Duncan]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Cary Gordon" <listuser at chillco.com>
> To: "Sigrid Kelsey" <sigridkelsey at gmail.com>
> Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Sent: Friday, November 4, 2011 3:29:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] CALEA policies?
> Hi Sigrid,
> 
> This makes me furious. It is a case of bureaucrats taking the path of
> least resistance. It is a huge leap to infer that CALEA, which
> preserves law enforcement's ability to contact specific court-ordered
> monitoring, has anything to do with widely tracking internet users in
> libraries. By that logic, Starbucks should fingerprint every wifi
> user.
> 
> I hope that you will contact the EFF and the ALA, because this is
> truly terrible and, IMHO, un-American.

This is kind of really old news -- CALEA's extension to Internet access came about in 2005, and in the year or two after, it was generally agreed that libraries, as well as most (if not all) academic institutions, are exempt from CALEA (in the sense of having to track or otherwise restrict users).  A good starting point for information on the topic is here: <http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/CALEA/30781>, particularly the link to the ACE document "The Application of CALEA to Higher Education Networks."

Note that some of the info gleaned from the Educause site is out of date, presumably because most institutions that started paying attention in 2005 now consider it a dead issue.

Bob Duncan

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~ 
Robert E. Duncan
Integrated Technologies Librarian
David Bishop Skillman Library
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042
http://library.lafayette.edu/
duncanr at lafayette.edu