Public libraries in the Illinois suburb of Naperville will require a fingerprint scan before a patron may use a computer terminal. The message: No unauthorized users. Who could possibly be forbidden in a public library? Why, people who don’t have Stamps Of Approval emblazoned on their heads, of course.
Library officials said they wanted to tighten computer access because many people borrow library cards and pass codes from friends or family to log on. The technology also will help the library implement a new policy that allows parents to put filters on their children’s’ accounts, officials said.
As predicted, the ACLU jumped into action at the smell of stored fingerprints and the threat of a breach of citizen privacy.
While the library insists the fingerprint data will be kept confidential, [Ed] Yohnka, [IL ACLU spokesperson] warns the technology will create a database of personal information that could be used in unintended ways.
Naperville library spokespeople argue that the fingerprint is more unique a barcode than that of a library card. Also, according to them, “the technology cannot be used to reconstruct a person’s actual fingerprint.”
The furor over fingerprints and privacy aside, why is there no equivalent anger over the barrier to information access? Personally, I don’t understand the necessity of such “clamping down” in a venue as free and sharing-friendly as a public library. So what if people share their library cards with friends and family? Heavens, we simply cannot have unauthorized reading, can we?
This is not akin to loaning an ID card to someone who wishes to make an illegal liquor purchase; the end desire here is to have access to as much information as possible. As for the protection of children, here’s a solution: set aside a special section for kids’ computing, sanitize those machines and maintain the bastion of free access to information that a library should be, fingerprints and authorization be damned. Use the barcodes for books exiting the library.
There is already so much that we can’t do in modern society. Leave the public library alone.
The paranoid in me of course thinks it’s also to track what you look at… But Yes, I agree that the main issue is that unfettered access to information is slowly dissolving… You never used to need the library card to READ a book in the library, just to check it out so they’d get it back. The issue is now restricting access by tracking use and thus deterring inquiry, research, and just plain old fashioned intellectual wandering.
Why not just use this instead?
http://www.whitehouse.org/homeland/tattoo.asp
You know what else bugs me (ok, it’s not on the scale of fingerprints)? When they ask you for your zip code at the grocery store, or those cameras they want to put everywhere. I swear, if they put up cameras near me I will start a theater troop to perform in front of the cameras every day….