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First Amendment should protect confidential information exchange. Here
are a few short excerpts from the American Library Association's
"Statement Concerning Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable
Information About Library Users":


'The First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and of the press
requires that the corresponding rights to hear what is spoken and read
what is written be preserved, free from fear of government intrusion,
intimidation or reprisal.  Confidentiality is essential to protect the
exercise of these rights from governmental invasions of privacy.
...
The American Library Association has received several reports of
visits by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to libraries,
where agents allegedly have asked for personally identifiable
information about library patrons.  These visits, whether within the
so-called "Library Awareness Program" or not, reflect an insensitivity
to the role confidentiality plays in the preservation of First
Amendment rights, rights which extend also to foreign nationals while
in the United States.  The Bureau's interest in library records
reflects a dangerous and fallacious equation of what a person reads
with what that person believes or how that person is likely to behave.
This presumption is a threat to the freedom to read.  It is also a
threat to a crucial aspect of First Amendment rights: that freedom of
speech and of the press include the freedom to hold, disseminate and
receive unpopular, minority, "extreme" or even "dangerous" ideas.'

ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
library/confidentiality.2.ala
=================
* Confidentiality -- 2 (ALA)

The American Library Association's "Statement Concerning
Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information about Library
Users"

=================
library/README
=================
* Library Policy Statements

Library Policy Archive
  [part of the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive
     [part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Archive]]

This is an on-line collection of library policy statements. It
includes the American Library Association's Freedom To Read statement
and the ALA Library Bill of Rights. (The ALA material is made
available by permission of the American Library Association.)

If you have gopher, the archive is browsable with the command:
  gopher -p academic/library gopher.eff.org

The archive is also accessible via anonymous ftp and email. Ftp to
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4). It is in directory "pub/academic/library".
For email access, send email to archive-server@eff.org. Include the
line:

send acad-freedom/library <filenames>

where <filenames> is a list of the files that you want. File README is
a detailed description of the items in the directory.

For more information, to make contributions, or to report typos
contact J.S. Greenfield (greeny@eff.org).

=================
README
=================
* Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive

The CAF Archive is an electronic library of information about
computers and academic freedom.

If you have gopher, the archive is browsable with the command:
  gopher -p academic/law gopher.eff.org

It is available via anonymous ftp to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in
directory "pub/academic". It is also available via email. For
information on email access send email to archive-server@eff.org. In
the body of your note include the lines "help" and "index".

For more information, to make contributions, or to report typos
contact J.S. Greenfield (greeny@eff.org).

=================
=================

If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command
   gopher gopher.eff.org

These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4), and get file(s):

  pub/academic/library/confidentiality.2.ala
  pub/academic/library/README
  pub/academic/README

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/library confidentiality.2.ala
send acad-freedom/library README
send acad-freedom README


-- 
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign