The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom's Conference on Privacy and Youth, currently meeting March 24–25 in downtown Chicago, is bringing together some 50 librarians, privacy advocates, educators, authors, artists, and policy experts to discuss the work they are doing to engage and educate young people in privacy protection so that they can make informed choices about the information they make publicly available. Supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute, the conference will generate ideas that libraries can use to create privacy programming for a young audience. Some of those ideas will be posted on the Privacy and Youth blog, which was developed especially for the meeting, and will be available for ALA's second Choose Privacy Week, May 1–7, an initiative that invites library users into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age.
One effective way to communicate the importance of privacy protection is to tell stories of personal encounters that vividly illustrate what happens when that protection is removed. Tayyaba Syed, a contributing writer for the Chicago Crescent, told the story of how she was recently targeted by Transportation Security Administration agents at O’Hare Airport to go through a body scanner because she was wearing a headscarf. She declined, thinking the device was too intrusive, and was told that she had to submit to a “private screening.” Syed soon found out that this was much more than a mere patdown and involved a gloved female TSA agent examining her intimately—not once but twice, and taking well over half an hour. Her family, which only had to go through the standard metal detector, did not know what had happened to her. Afterwards, when nothing suspicious was found, they let her go, with no apologies.
Syed remarked that in Muslim society, modesty and privacy are spiritual values. “With privacy,” she said, “comes the idea that you are a person and have value.” That is why women voluntarily wear headscarves and why it is considered impolite to barge into a friend’s house without being invited inside.
Syed’s story prompted a comment from Gail Weymouth, chair of the Privacy Subcommittee of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, who noted that victims of sexual violence may well have a legitimate fear of going through one of these intrusive searches because it could provoke a serious post-traumatic stress response. “Being sexually molested for the safety of this country,” she added, “is tyranny.”
Also in the audience was Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has led a three-year fight against TSA body scanning in administrative courts , using Freedom of Information Act requests to show, for example, that the agency’s scanners can actually alter images for public presentation to make them look as if they are much less intrusive than they really are. “We need to believe that we have the ability to change things,” she said, “and FOIA is one of the most important tools in the hands of the American public.”
The second event of the day was a slideshow presentation by Nathan T. Wright, founder of the Des Moines social media consulting firm Lava Row. Wright made some thoughtful observations about the future of technology, which he calls “Web 3.0” and will be all about our personal data and how companies will attempt to monetize it. “When you sign up for a social app,” he said, “you are licensing your personal information to the company. The question is, what will they do with it?”
Wright said that most teens don't understand the word “privacy,” but they do value it when explained in terms of feeling safe, being in control of situations, trusting people and groups, and having a shared sense of intimacy. Since many teens do not use email (“it’s too slow, adult, and formal”), Facebook is their primary contact with the outside world. Some of them actually enforce their control over Facebook by deactivating their account each time they log out, a technique called “super logoff,” making it impossible for anyone to communicate with them or access their information until they reactivate and log on later.
The final event of the evening was a screening of the Choose Privacy Week video, produced in 2010 by Laura Zinger of 20K Films.
