My Local Library Requires Patron’s SSNs
michaelzimmer.org:
Blogging has been extremely light as I’m in the process of relocating to Milwaukee. To that end, I recently visited my local community’s public library to sign up for a card, and was shocked to see that they required me to divulge my social security number in order to obtain a library account. I’ve sent the following letter to the library director as well as the library board.
(Please let me know if your public library also requires an SSN to get a card).
July 2, 2008
Elizabeth Carey
Director of Library Services
Shorewood Public Library
Shorewood, Wisconsin
Dear Ms. Carey:
I am a new resident of the village of Shorewood and recently visited the Shorewood Public Library. While I was very impressed with the facilities provided to the residents of our community, I was taken aback when, upon signing up for a library card, I was required to divulge my social security number.
I am a scholar who studies ethics and technology, and much of my research has focused on how new information systems impact personal privacy. For example, my doctoral dissertation, “The Quest for the Perfect Search Engine: Values, Technical Design, and the Flow of Personal Information in Spheres of Mobility,” investigated of how Google’s drive to create the “perfect search engine” empowers the widespread capture of personal information flows across the Internet, threatening the ability to engage in online social, cultural, and intellectual activities free from answerability and oversight, thereby bearing on the values of privacy, autonomy, and liberty. One of the key components in this thesis is that the rise of Web search providers has supplanted the public library as a primary source of information, yet search engines do not have the same historical commitment to protecting intellectual privacy that libraries have shown over the past 100 years.
Certainly, the Shorewood Public Library is committed…