Privacy and Pornography...
...and Rex Murphy:
Here's the Cross Country Checkup session during which Rex talks to Canadians about the Scandal de Jour.
I've been thinking about the whole privacy thing. There was a time, and it's not that long ago, that everybody knew everybody else's business. The idea of privacy in the small rural community that I knew growing up, for example, was unheard of. And I think that goes way back in time throughout all cultures. It used to be that fear of gossip and shame about unacceptable behavior was a strong incentive to behave and was universally used as a mechanism of social control. And it worked.
Then along came the Internet.
Having worked in libraries for years and years, privacy concerning peoples' reading habits and what books they borrowed was a well established principle that librarians and library associations had stood by for years. It was standard practice for libraries to refuse police requests for information about what books someone had borrowed, unless they presented a warrant. It was a principle even extended to parents inquiring about what books their teenagers had "out". The first one I had no problem with. The second, I had some qualms about. But that's not the point of this blog entry.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s public libraries become places where the public could go to access the internet and there was a big concern by many people about pornography on the internet. In one library I worked in, in the first few months after we got our first "Public Internet Access Computer", we had sleazy men, who otherwise would never have set foot in a library, coming to use the computer, and of course, accessing porn sites was exactly what they wanted to do.
Sooo, out come the policy wonks and by the time the decade was out, most public libraries had policies governing public access to the internet. Many a heated argument was heard at library board meetings and many a librarian was torn by the issue.
But the Internet is NOT the same thing as a carefully crafted library collection. There are layers and layers of "filtering" that goes on before a book lands on a library shelf, beginning with the writers of manuscripts.
Filter #1, someone who puts together a booklet of kiddy porn is not going to submit his work to a reputable publisher. To do so would call attention to his criminal behavior. Filter #2, no reputable publisher is going to publish it, for the same reason. Filter #3, no one is going to write a review about the book extolling the virtues of a work of kiddy porn.
Reviewing journals (magazines filled with book reviews) are a librarian's most indispensable tool for selecting material for a library collection. The Internet, on the other hand, was a wild frontier where anybody and his dog could put up a website on anything they wanted. There was no filtering and endless hours were spent debating the merits of blocking websites that certain keywords might lead to.
In most cases, public library policy statements included, in one way or another, a prohibition regarding the viewing of porn on the libraries' computers. It worked to clean up a public space that had for a long time been a hub of the community, and long-time library patrons, who, for a short time had become reluctant to come into the library for fear of what they or their children might see on the public computers, were once again happy to spend time at their library. All was well.
Now, that's certainly not the same thing as giving police access to the logs of computers in private homes used by people on their own time away from public view. That's a whole different animal, and where children are being exploited in a most grotesque manner, it is a problem from hell. I think there has been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to this scandal de jour. I think we need to have a discussion about it. Maybe it's time to resurrect the old ways, and question whether or not all this privacy business is really necessary - and perhaps, whether elevating privacy to such a pillar, is conducive to criminal, socially harmful consequences.
And I hate it that the Cons have shot themselves in the foot.
Here's the Cross Country Checkup session during which Rex talks to Canadians about the Scandal de Jour.
I've been thinking about the whole privacy thing. There was a time, and it's not that long ago, that everybody knew everybody else's business. The idea of privacy in the small rural community that I knew growing up, for example, was unheard of. And I think that goes way back in time throughout all cultures. It used to be that fear of gossip and shame about unacceptable behavior was a strong incentive to behave and was universally used as a mechanism of social control. And it worked.
Then along came the Internet.
Having worked in libraries for years and years, privacy concerning peoples' reading habits and what books they borrowed was a well established principle that librarians and library associations had stood by for years. It was standard practice for libraries to refuse police requests for information about what books someone had borrowed, unless they presented a warrant. It was a principle even extended to parents inquiring about what books their teenagers had "out". The first one I had no problem with. The second, I had some qualms about. But that's not the point of this blog entry.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s public libraries become places where the public could go to access the internet and there was a big concern by many people about pornography on the internet. In one library I worked in, in the first few months after we got our first "Public Internet Access Computer", we had sleazy men, who otherwise would never have set foot in a library, coming to use the computer, and of course, accessing porn sites was exactly what they wanted to do.
Sooo, out come the policy wonks and by the time the decade was out, most public libraries had policies governing public access to the internet. Many a heated argument was heard at library board meetings and many a librarian was torn by the issue.
But the Internet is NOT the same thing as a carefully crafted library collection. There are layers and layers of "filtering" that goes on before a book lands on a library shelf, beginning with the writers of manuscripts.
Filter #1, someone who puts together a booklet of kiddy porn is not going to submit his work to a reputable publisher. To do so would call attention to his criminal behavior. Filter #2, no reputable publisher is going to publish it, for the same reason. Filter #3, no one is going to write a review about the book extolling the virtues of a work of kiddy porn.
Reviewing journals (magazines filled with book reviews) are a librarian's most indispensable tool for selecting material for a library collection. The Internet, on the other hand, was a wild frontier where anybody and his dog could put up a website on anything they wanted. There was no filtering and endless hours were spent debating the merits of blocking websites that certain keywords might lead to.
In most cases, public library policy statements included, in one way or another, a prohibition regarding the viewing of porn on the libraries' computers. It worked to clean up a public space that had for a long time been a hub of the community, and long-time library patrons, who, for a short time had become reluctant to come into the library for fear of what they or their children might see on the public computers, were once again happy to spend time at their library. All was well.
Now, that's certainly not the same thing as giving police access to the logs of computers in private homes used by people on their own time away from public view. That's a whole different animal, and where children are being exploited in a most grotesque manner, it is a problem from hell. I think there has been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to this scandal de jour. I think we need to have a discussion about it. Maybe it's time to resurrect the old ways, and question whether or not all this privacy business is really necessary - and perhaps, whether elevating privacy to such a pillar, is conducive to criminal, socially harmful consequences.
And I hate it that the Cons have shot themselves in the foot.
Labels: child abuse, children, Conservative Party, libraries, pornography, privacy
posted by Louise at 12:34 am
6 Comments:
Brava, Louise!
Well, I've been posting along your thought line at some very blue blogs lately,highly critical of this "law". I as a conservative have been vilified to the point of banning from posting on one blog. I have "anger management" issues, because like all those lefties out there I seem to think that Vic needed to read the law his department wrote, before presenting it to Parliament because it was a hot button issue. Duh!
Some Conservatives drink too much koolaid. They can't conceive that any so-called conservative would be so - critical. Legislation like this will get you outta office faster than you got in.Vic seems to have found a way that the 62% can come together and gosh, kick your sorry butt out of the Big Chair.
Yes, I was surprised to learn that he knew nothing about what was in the proposed legislation that he, himself, had table, especially given the topic of the proposal included police surveillance of private individual behavior. Or at least he himself claims to have not seen it.
But...restricting the police is one thing. Shutting down child pornographers is quite another. So here we are on the horns of a dilemma.
BTW, I lived in Manitoba once. I like Vic Toews. (And for all you folks worshiping at the feet of Annonymous, it's pronouced Taves, not Toe-ez.)
I think a law crafted specifically to deal with the kiddy porn issue would be more in line with dealing with the problem, than this one which says absolutely nothing about it. I read the whole thing.
I suspect in their hurry (they still can't seem to believe they have a majority)the CPC wanted to be seen to be doing something, but forgot that they didn't need to do trial runs with legislation with their majority.
The guts of the deal revolve more with forcing ISP's to fork out a bunch of dough to upgrade their snooping abilities to CSIS standards so that designated snoopers can snoop at will, at least in the case where Mr Policeman-in-a-hurry doesn't need a warrant to do his assigned job.
Some designated snoopers are the Competition Bureau and even Industry Canada, so I'm wondering what those departments have to do with child pornography. Probably even posting that word on a blog will get me data mined into a police cell now, for all my troubles with this legislation, never mind what the CHRC could beat the bushes for.
I see that Section 13.1 is due for the high jump soon, so is Bill C-30 a replacement?.
"I suspect in their hurry (they still can't seem to believe they have a majority)the CPC wanted to be seen to be doing something, but forgot that they didn't need to do trial runs with legislation with their majority."
I've had a hard time believing that we may be entering a new era in Canada where a more conservative mindset prevails. We've had conservative leaning (Canadian style, that is) governments before, but they have only been brief blips that served to keep the Liberals down to size.
There are many things that concern me about this proposed law, but, on the other hand, I'm very concerned about the abuse of young children and I think we need to use every tool we have to try to circumvent it.
At least this fiasco has us talking about the subject of policing the Internet and the consequences (good or bad) of that for society.
At least this fiasco has us talking about the subject of policing the Internet and the consequences (good or bad) of that for society.
I agree.
However, Vic in his good hearted way went to his department with a request to craft a way to deal with online child predators et al, so bureaucrats being bureaucrats and believing in the infallibility of government, crafted something else.
Solving a problem isn't in their genes, creating a new business model for government is. This law will collect a few child molesters, but more likely it will be only as collateral damage.
The potential for abuse of a significant change in the infrastructure of the digital age (our ability to track & record our traffic flow through our digital media devices at our ISP's "at the pleasure of Her Majessty") and the digital data mining that can be used to do so, without our knowledge is what's really scaring the hell out of Canadiand.
Being told "if you've got nothing to hide....", "we license cars....", then prosecute us for defending ourselves from criminals in the time it takes the police to respond, just isn't acceptable.
The one thing I take away from this discussion is that Canadians do not trust their institutions to defend their interests anymore. Their institutions are something to aid government in ruling us, not serving us.
Anger is fear, Canadians fear their governments and those poor kids have been lost in the din. They are po'ed that this attempt to solve the problem has created more and the real purpose of this law has been pushed aside.
That's all I have to say on this. Thank you for allowing me to express myself on your blog.
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