Browse Free
or Die? New Hampshire Library Is at Privacy Fore
A
small library in New Hampshire sits at the forefront of global efforts to
promote privacy and fight government surveillance -- to the consternation of
law enforcement.
The Kilton Public Library in
Lebanon, a city of 13,000, last year became the nation's first library to use
Tor, software that masks the location and identity of internet users, in a
pilot project initiated by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Library Freedom
Project. Users the world over can -- and do -- have their searches randomly
routed through the library.
Computers that have Tor
loaded on them bounce internet searches through a random pathway, or series of
relays, of other computers equipped with Tor. This network of virtual tunnels
masks the location and internet protocol address of the person doing the
search.
In a feature that makes
Kilton unique among U.S. libraries, it also has a computer with a Tor exit
relay, which delivers the internet query to the destination site and becomes
identified as the last-known source of the query.
Alison Macrina, founder and
director of the Library Freedom Project, said her organization chose Kilton for
its pilot project because it had embraced other privacy-enhancing software the
project recommended and because she knew the library had the know-how take it
to the complicated exit-relay stage.
Tor can protect shoppers,
victims of domestic violence, whistleblowers, dissidents, undercover agents --
and criminals -- alike. A recent routine internet search using Tor on one of
Kilton's computers was routed through Ukraine, Germany and the Netherlands.
"Libraries are bastions
of freedom," said Shari Steele, executive director of the Tor Project, a
nonprofit started in 2004 to promote the use of Tor worldwide. "They are a
great natural ally."
There are about 7,200 relays
and 1,000 exit relays worldwide, with more being added steadily, Steele said.
The Tor Project is funded
largely by the U.S. State Department and other federal agencies, yet the
Department of Homeland Security bristles at its use by civilians because it can
be used to mask criminal activity.
Local police, at the behest
of Homeland Security's Boston bureau, asked the Kilton library last July to
stop using Tor. Its use was suspended until the library board voted unanimously
at a standing-room-only meeting in September to maintain the Tor relay.
"Kilton's really
committed as a library to the values of intellectual privacy," Macrina
said. "In New Hampshire, there's a lot of activism fighting surveillance.
It's the 'Live Free or Die' place, and they really mean it."
Homeland Security agent
Gregory Squire, who initiated the crackdown at the Kilton library, said he was
not able to comment on Tor or last year's investigation.
Since 1938, the American
Library Association has had an ethics code about protecting patrons'
confidentiality. During the Cold War, librarians fought efforts by federal
officials in 1953 to track and regulate patrons' reading habits by drafting the
Freedom To Read statement.
They opposed efforts by
federal investigators in the 1970s to obtain records of patrons seeking
information about explosives, and the ALA was targeted by Attorney General John
Ashcroft for its "baseless hysteria" over the Patriot Act.
In 2005, a group of
Connecticut librarians successfully fought an FBI demand to know who was using
a computer at the Library Connection in Windsor on a particular date and time.
A federal judge ruled the librarians' free speech rights were violated, and
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg ordered release of all records
in the case.
And in the wake of Edward
Snowden's revelations about government surveillance, librarians have
increasingly spoken out about government incursion and offered themselves as
havens.
"I think it's lost on
most people how much of their activity online is tracked and cataloged and can
be made available on a day-to-day basis," said Mark Rumold, senior staff
attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Information disclosed to Google can be as diverse as the thoughts that
are in your mind."
At Kilton, Tor is installed
on four computers in the center of the library. The computers' home pages
feature the Tor icon, and users can opt to engage it or not. The library has
run Tor workshops.
Lebanon Police Chief Richard
Mello said last month he still has concerns. "Once you institute the Tor
network, you essentially take those computers off the radar screen, so to
speak," Mello said.
For Kilton library user
Robert Olcott, Tor gives him peace of mind that law enforcement and
corporations won't track him when he researches topics such as predatory
lending or global warming. It's nobody's business why he wants to do perfectly
legal reading, he argued.
"If I'm looking at how
many drones are currently approved to be flying in public airspace, somebody at
Homeland Security might want to know why I want to know that," said
Olcott, 65, a laborer by trade. "As a private citizen, I should be
entitled to privacy in that inquiry."
As to the number of users of
Tor at Kilton, the library doesn't even know -- because they are anonymous.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Best
Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on
Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23,
2016. The title of the paper is “Removing
Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”
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