The cable guy won’t report me smokin’!
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/10/operation.tips.ap/index.html
We’ll find out in September, when Congress gets a chance to kill it. Nice to know i can take a shower without the Phone Guy asking me to spread my cheeks…
The federal government already encourages every citizen to report fraud against the government by offering rewards, and especially encourages people to report their employers by offering special protection for “whistleblowers.”
http://www.fraudhotline.com/index.html
http://www.whistleblowers.org/hmbdy.htm
The federal government encourages every citizen to report tax fraud with similar measures:
http://www.usataxrelief.com/tax_site_irs_rewards.html
Where child abuse is concerned, people are not only encouraged to report, they are frequently required to report:
““In every state, the following people are required by law to report suspected abuse: Doctors; nurses; dentists; mental health professionals; social workers; teachers; day care workers; law enforcement personnel. In some states, clergy, foster parents, attorneys, and camp counselors also are required to report abuse.”
“In about 18 states, any person who suspects abuse is required to report it.”
“Many states require film developers to report.”
http://www.smith-lawfirm.com/mandatory_reporting.htm
Now I consider terrorist acts to be a lot more serious than fraud and at least on a par with child abuse. So I would ask……do those who oppose TIPS also oppose these other programs and, if they don’t, what aspects of TIPS cause them to single this program out for censure?
The big difference between TIPS and mandatory reporting for things like child abuse is that TIPS contains no definition of what constitutes a reasonable suspicion. Doctors, social workers, etc. are required to report when they have proof of child abuse. What constitutes evidence of possible terrorist activity to people reporting under this program? Having brown skin? It really disturbed me when the government asked people to report any suspicious people after 9/11. Essentially they were asking everyone to act on their own personal prejudices as to what a terrorist looks like.
Re: child abuse
“Extent of the knowledge triggering the duty to report varies. Some statutes call for reporting upon a mere “reasonable cause to believe” or a “reasonable suspicion.” Other statutes require the reporter to “know or suspect,” which is a higher degree of knowledge.”
Freaking librarians spying on your reading and internet surfing. This is ridiculous. This is nothing like reporting a child with bruises on his face to the proper authorities.
The last sentence contains good news. “Balking” sounds like the American way to me. The court order at least maintins some level of due process. I am not ready to invoke Godwin’s Law yet.
If anyone sees what looks to be terrorist activity they should report it. We do not need a huge network of unprofessional TIPSter spies to do this. A few PSAs should to the trick.
I don’t see where librarians are being asked to “spy”. Not even to the extent that the programs I listed encourage (or require) people to “spy”.
Librarians are only being asked to turn over library records when they are presented with a court order, as you noted and as is indicated in your quote from the American Library Association.
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But librarians have, I believe, always been required to comply with court orders. In fact, the following documents from 1999 and 1994 seem to indicate that the American Library Association has not always had such a problem with cooperating with law enforcement:
“The American Library Association recognizes that law enforcement agencies and officers may occasionally believe that library records contain information which may be helpful to the investigation of criminal activity. If there is a reasonable basis to believe such records are necessary to the progress of an investigation or prosecution, the American judicial system provides mechanism for seeking release of such confidential records: the issuance of a court order, following a showing of good cause based on specific facts, by a court of competent jurisdiction.”
(July, 1999)
http://www.ala.org/aasl/positions/ps_libraryrecords.html
“In addition, the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee has issued guidelines in 1990 for library administrators titled Confidentiality and Coping with Law Enforcement Inquiries. This document specifies that:
Confidential records should not be made available to any agency of state, federal or local government or any other person (outside the minimum necessary access by library staff), unless a court order requiring disclosure has been entered by a court of competent jurisdiction, after a showing of good cause by the person or agency requesting the records.”
(1994)
http://spot.colorado.edu/~seaman/Confidentiality.html
In fact, your own site suggests that even now the ALA doesn’t have any major problems with the Patriot Act:
“The American Library Association Council adopted Privacy: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights on June 19, 2002, at the ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
At its 2001 spring meeting, the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) decided that fully dealing with the issues raised by the ALA Council called for developing an Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights on privacy. Initial work began on a draft Interpretation at that time and continued through the 2001 Annual Conference and the Committee’s 2001 fall meeting.
In its deliberations, the IFC thought carefully about the implications of 9/11 on privacy issues and sought to develop the Interpretation for lasting impact, knowing that this issue was of importance to libraries prior to those events and that it has enduring importance for those who rely on us in our libraries.
The committee also thought carefully about the USA Patriot Act. The committee believes that no conflict exists between the Interpretation on privacy and the USA Patriot Act. The Patriot Act does not impose any duty on libraries to collect or retain confidential information about its patrons for law enforcement purposes. In addition, only FBI agents can use the Patriot Act to request information. An FBI agent who wishes to obtain confidential patron information is still required to present a search warrant or other court order before he or she can legally obtain those records.”
It looks to me as though, as far as librarians are concerned, nothing has really changed.
Do you feel that there has been some major change or do you object to the FBI having access to library records in general?
What is a PSA?
Indeed.
So why waste time, money, bandwidth and pages in the law books doing it again? Spend those resources chasing those child molesters. 
carnivorousplant
No time, money, bandwidth, etc. is being wasted doing anything again. Nothing is being done again.
Librarians have “always” been asked to spy on your children in order to find out if you’re abusing them and they still are.
Librarians have “never” been asked to spy on your reading habits and they still aren’t.
Librarians have “always” been required to turn over library records when faced with a court order and they still are.
There’s no again in there.
Bush proposed some new legislation which would involve some, but not all, citizens. Some librarians immediately assumed that they were going to be turned into some sort of spies and launched protest upon protest. The fact, though, appears to be that nothing has actually changed for librarians. No time wasted, no money wasted, etc.
Rauchen ist verbotten.
Und die Bibliothekare beruhigen Spion auf Ihnen, um zu sehen, wenn Sie rauchen!
Ron (Zeigen meines zigarettenstummel)
zig: *In fact, your own site suggests that even now the ALA doesn’t have any major problems with the Patriot Act […] The fact, though, appears to be that nothing has actually changed for librarians. *
That may be kind of an overstatement; at the very least, there are some things in the Act that the ALA views with definite concern. I first learned about this while hanging out with some attendees of a librarians’ conference that shared a building with a conference I was attending, a couple of weeks ago (those librarians are much wilder partiers than you might suspect! :)), but it is more, er, soberly confirmed by the ALA report “The PATRIOT Act in the Library”:
And it goes on to spell out exactly which amendments make which differences in constraints on library procedures. What I gather the librarians are most concerned about is that under the new law, certain search warrants are automatically accompanied by a “gag order”: they may not disclose that a warrant has been served or that records have been produced in response to it. Many federal document depository librarians are also apparently pretty pissed about the FBI confiscating thousands of documents, deemed potentially sensitive, that their readers need.
So I would ask……do those who oppose TIPS also oppose these other [reporting] programs and, if they don’t, what aspects of TIPS cause them to single this program out for censure?
For one thing, fraud or child abuse is a pretty clearly defined legal crime, even if the reporter’s evidence or suspicions about a particular occurrence of it may be rather nebulous. What TIPS participants were expected to report, on the other hand, was evidence of “suspicious or unusual […] and potentially terrorist-related, activity”. What’s that supposed to mean?
Asking people to report evidence or suspicion of actual terrorism crimes or conspiracy to commit such crimes is one thing, and I hope that most citizens would have the sense to do that anyway even without a new federal program to encourage it. But recruiting people to watch out for something vaguely called “suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity” or even just something “unusual” is IMHO far too broad and indefinite a mandate for volunteer crime-fighting.
public service announcement