Thinking About Privacy

One of the feeds I subscribe to on bloglines is The Shifted Librarian. It printed a very interesting panel about privacy rights and the idea of library records being tracked. The participants make no attempt to hide their feelings about how easily personal information can be accessed and how much it scares them.

One participant drew parallels with information gathering today and the movie Minority Report. One of the lesser threads throughout the movie is that information gathering was being used to tailor advertisements to a specific person through information gathering. On the surface, it seems harmless and could be quite convenient. Imagine watching TV and only seeing commercials about products or movies that interest you. However, as the authors point out, there is quite a dark undercurrent to this concept.

On a broader spectrum, so many conclusions can be drawn about a person if their personal tastes are easily accessed. If a person subscribes to car magazines and loves to watch the Speed Channel, then one could draw the conclusion that this person is a "motorhead" along with any or all negative stereotypes that could go along with that Yet, this person could also be an ardent environmental engineer with hopes of creating new concepts for clean energy vehicles.

Now that there is the possibility of tracking library records as well, this could lead to many problems and incorrect conclusions about people. I can only imagine the conclusions people would make about me if they consulted my library records over the years. As a student, there were several different topics I researched for my different undergraduate courses. And I freely admit that I was less than reliable when it came to turning my books back in on time. Because of my unreliability at turning books back in, any prospective employer could draw the conclusion that I personally am not reliable for anything and probably could not be trusted to meet deadlines. This could even go one step further and start to affect people's credit scores. What's to stop lenders from treating overdue library books the same way they treat late bill payments?
Perhaps I am being a little paranoid, but this is definitely some food for thought. I personally would rather not have my library records and other personal interests tracked and live with commercials that are not geared towards me than have my personal life exposed to whoever wants to read it.