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Building Anonymous-Friendly Computer Libraries?
Posted by
Cliff
on Sun Aug 11, 2002 11:45 AM
from the protecting-your-privacy dept.
from the protecting-your-privacy dept.
H310iSe writes "Listening to NPR today and caught a story on All Things Considered about how the FBI has demanded information on borrowing and browsing habits, including computer seizures, from 85 libraries since Sept. 11 (utilizing their new-found powers from the PATRIOT act). Similar stories (which don't require RealAudio) are here and here. The American Librarian Association is providing information for librarians to help deal with this, and it seems heavily tilted towards supporting individuals' rights to privacy. It seems like the Slashdot crowd could come up with a great library computer setup that would protect anonymity (I'm thinking about things like creating a RAM disk and loading the OS onto it). How about ways to enable people to borrow books anonymously without opening the door to large-scale theft? I bet if we offered a packaged, free, easy to install Safe Browsing computer or Anonymous Checkout program, libraries across the U.S. would enthusiastically embrace it." According to the articles, these checks can be made for any reason, not just for suspected terrorism. It seems that if the American people are going to protect their rights, they are going to have to do so actively. Is the idea presented above, feasible? How would you improve upon it?
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interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
RAM disk good for keeping the OS clean (Score:2, Insightful)
If the browser history were filled with porn, if the computer were infected with a virus, or if a keystroke logger were installed, everything could be cleaned up with just a reboot. (The keystroke logging thing happens more often than you would think on public machines.)
An OS that boots from read-only media (like some CD-based Linux distros) would accomplish the same thing.
Why? (Score:3, Funny)
Dead Man's Switch? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anonymous Checkout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just purge records (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just purge records (Score:2, Interesting)
if you build it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Patriot Act, indeed. If you want to be a patriot these days, go vote in November and boot these current idiots out of power.
Are you sure it's a computer problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Respect for the anonymity of the library patron (at a minimum) needs to be codified in law. Otherwise, at any point the government can stop funding libraries that don't track patrons (like McCain's initiative that flew through Congress mandating web surfing filters) or worse.
If all these conditions are met, then if the libraries refused to use proxy logs or anything of the sort, and set up network PCs that ghosted themselves from a server (preferably with Linux) every time a patron logs out to fight trojan loaders and such, then things would go pretty well. But I don't think that it's the technology that's at issue.
Our librarian is pretty cool about these things, by the way, and probably would go for setting up something along these lines if she thought it'd be worth the investment. It wouldn't be, however, because there's still a lot of other variables that prevent such a setup from presenting anything other than a false sense of security.
anonymous borrowing (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problem I see with this is that some people might not be able to come up with the deposit -- they could use the old, non-anonymous system.
Re:anonymous borrowing (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, so anonymity is the privilege of the wealthy, and not the right of the people? How equitable.
Re:anonymous borrowing (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple. I suggest we don't loan books to strangers. I wasn't the one advocating anonymous borrowing. Personally I think the solution is for libraries to just destroy borrowing records after the book is returned. I have no problem with libraries keeping historical data on how many times a book was borrowed, but there's no reason they should keep individual borrowing histories. And from other comments, it appears as though many libraries already use that policy. Anonymous borrowing is totally unnecessary.
well (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother has been a librarin for over thirty years at various places of business, including private corporations, public libraries and at colleges and universities and from listening to her, I believe it is the general sentiment of the ALA to protect their reader's privacy. If you all take a moment to recall, it was the librarians who fought the most against COPPA because of they inherent censorship created by the requirements.
What does happen, however, is libraries will outsource their searching services because they don't have enough money or manpower to handle the computer equipment themselves. When that happens, the business they outsource to may not have the same ideas in their head concerning privacy and censorship and will start storing this. Unless libraries get more funding, it's likely that outsourcing will continue and records will be saved.
Re:well (Score:2)
The main system that kept track of circulation for the whole library also kept all requests. And it gets worse. I shouldn't have known that; it was outside my employee privileges, but several reference librarians kept the username and password posted on post-it notes, and being able to look up my own circulation record via telnet (or tnvt3270 or whatever it was) was way too convenient. From that point, looking up someone else's circ records was often way too interesting.... oh, and did I mention that the library used your SSN as a unique ID?
Anyway, the point is, the system saved ALL your information, and it was fairly easy to get to it. If we were counting on practices of libraries to preserve anonyminity, I wouldn't feel all that secure....
As one that works in a Library Systems Office ... (Score:3, Informative)
While not completely secure, we clear the web browser cache and history each time the browser loads (and it closes itself after 10 minutes of inactivity o further help this along).
We also remove the contents of "My Documents" and then the Recycling Bin each morning before the library opens. This is all done via scripts of course.
Granted this isn't the best solution, as the info could still be retrieved, but between not requiring login's (there-fore not knowning where anyone that comes into the library was sitting) and deleting as much as we can, as often as we can it should help.
Re:As one that works in a Library Systems Office . (Score:2, Interesting)
Good crack? (Score:2)
As for running your entire OS in a ramdisk...yea...sure...that's...great. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't pass any mileage that simply wanted to put 3GB of ram in every public computer. All so that the entire OS can run in a RAM disk so that we can have a false sense of anonymity on those machines. If the FBI wants to see where a computer has been, they will find out. Yes, if they turn off the machine, everything is lost. But this will only get them once or twice. They aren't fucking idiots. They will catch on, and start going to the library's isp instead and plugging a nifty little black box between the library and the internet. "Wow, look! I can see every packet going in or out of that building. How nice!"
Three words: Waste of money.
STFU, whiner! (Score:2)
You can run an entire OS from RAM. Miniature Linux installations are available for free download on the WWW. They require under 50Mb of HD space, so what makes you think that it wouldn't fit in RAM? You don't need a power installation - just a GUI, a database, and a network connection to ghost the machine.
"If the FBI wants to see where a computer has been, they will find out. Yes, if they turn off the machine, everything is lost. But this will only get them once or twice. They aren't fucking idiots."
Whether you're an idiot or not, you can't just magically extract all the data from some RAM after it's been turned off. It's physical law. It's math. It's not an issue of IQ points.
"They will catch on, and start going to the library's isp instead and plugging a nifty little black box between the library and the internet."
Libraries do not need an Internet connection to look up databases for books. This can be done across an intranet, with no access to an ISP or the outside world whatsoever. To break into that and run a packet sniffer, the FBI agent would have to be sitting on the premises, where they could easily be seen.
Re:Good crack? (Score:2)
A basic familiarity of forensic ideas is necessary if you are to preserve data in the event of a major break-in that causes a large economic loss. It's not something only for cops.
There have been ongoing discussions about how to preserve the integrity of live data, it seems the consensus is that the best you can do is document every move you make, and use industry standard tools.
In the case of a break-in where a big loss of money is involved and charges might be pressed, it seems it's best for the admin of the server to just take as few steps as necessary to preserve the integrity of the network, and to document everything.
It's tricky business from what I gather of lurking there.
Don't remove the books (Score:2, Informative)
Act on it! (Score:3, Interesting)
Says the article poster:
Of course you have to be active about protecting your rights. If you let someone else "protect" your rights for you, you let that third party decide which right you have (i.e. which rights that someone will defend for you).
Methinks that instead of looking for technological solutions that will take a while to implement, we would be better off making a big deal of this issue. The more the general public knows about how FBI snoops into library records (about other things), the more stringent the public outcry.
I am not saying drop the search for a technical solution, I am saying a lot of policies can be balanced through social means rather than actively fought through some kind of enforcement tool (e.g., technology).
Cash up front (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not an ideal solution, since libraries should be in the practice of lending books for free, but it would work.
Re:Cash up front (Score:4, Insightful)
Scenario: Poor kid doing a term paper. A smart, ambitious kid, and he needs some relatively obscure books. Cash value may be $100/per for academic stuff. So now this kid must come up with $300 cash to write his paper. It doesn't matter if he's going to get it back - he just doesn't have it to give.
And the system can't be "opt-in". That means the well-off get to be anonymous, while the poor get tracked.
Lord knows I think the ACLU is a bunch of busibodies, but they'd have a fit over this one, and rightfully so.
Parent
Libraries in America (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, the new government policies for our libraries seem to have, now, deteriorated our privacy. And the ad is, now, an excellent demonstration of how the current administration has run amok.
PSA's ad, "Library [streamos.com]" is in realmedia format. And, no. America is no longer America.
RAMdisk != privacy (Score:2)
That said, I still think a RAMdisk based system is a good one, the computers could be booted from a boot image on the network or even from a locked CD drive and then run completely from RAM. While it offers no protection from Carnivore, it does protect people's information from other people who come to the computer later and snoop for e-mail addresses, account information, and the like. Lets not forget to try to get libraries to close this door just because the shadow government can still get our private information.
The NPR story made claims that the government could somehow link information between a user's sessions. The reference was to someone who looked up information about atomic energy and then came back later and looked up something about the Koran. Unless they have logs of who used the terminal and when, how can they make such a link? Do they just assume that the person doing the Koran lookup must be the same evil doer as the person who previously committed the heinous deed of reading about atomic energy?
Technological Solutions (Score:2, Interesting)
Legislation is the answer. Not happy with a law? Last I heard America was a Democracy of sorts -- let's get out there and use the classic techniques for creating change. Vote. Write. Talk. Protest. Rage.
Or has the wealth we enjoy in North America made us too complacent?
My Addition To The Pot (Score:3, Insightful)
Anonymous Checkout (Score:2)
Another method would be to give a "library card voucher" to every new resident, and allow them to obtain a card with the voucher, using some sort of random hat draw or something. Have some type of card trading system in the library, where people can trade cards, reliably knowing that each card has no books on it. (Scan cards, it tells you, "No books are checked out." You then randomly decide whether or not to exchange cards.) Of course, if you lose your card, you're screwed. This method would require a bit more honesty than today's libraries. IOW, it's susceptible to many of the same no-return attacks as modern libraries, (Borrow books, and never use the card again. Not much they can do about that either way.) But the fact that it can be traced back to you seems to encourage honesty, regardless of the library enforcing returns with external mechanisms. IOW, being anonymous increases dishonesty.
The best method seems to be to delete the records of a patron's borrowed books as soon as they are returned.
As I read more and more of these (Score:2)
There seems to be two main assumptions when dealing with privacy:
1) X can't be trusted. With X being any group other than the privacy group advocating something.
2) X needs to insure our privacy.
In all honesty, these two beliefs are mutally exclusive. If you can't trust the government or the corporations or anyone else (and I'll agree that you probably can't), then stop looking for a method for them to insure your privacy.
The only solution to insure your privacy is to insure than no external entity is capable of tracking you. In the case of libraries, this means NOT checking books out. It means paying with cash everywhere. It means no phone service, credit cards, charge cards, discount cards, banking accounts, driver's license, car, or anything else that involves filling out an application or showing any form of identification.
And even that isn't a safe bet. You have to also not allow your face to be seen in public, where a camera can record you in a specific location at a specific time.
It's simply too easy to track data. Giving outside agencies method to quit tracking your data only works if you trust those agencies.
Maybe a better solution is to make all, or at least as much of the data as possible, public. After all, the problem is the ability of someone to use data about you in a method you don't approve of. Another solution to that is to level the playing field. When spammers and telemarketers can't hide behind a wall of anonymity any more than you, when goverment officials have all their dirty little secrets made public, then perhaps we'll see a change in behavior.
But as long as some groups have access to information that everyone else doesn't have, you'll have the same problem over and over. Either you need to insure your privacy yourself of you need to insure that they have no pricacy either.
To make a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Libraries are not run or operated by the Federal Government, at least in the United States. They are run by local government, paid for my the local library district's taxpayers.
Show up to the library board meetings, bring your friends with you. Ask them what they think about these issues, and what they are doing to keep a balance between needed record keeping and just letting Project TIPS or the Homeland Security department grep through records for "nuclear weapon" or "anthrax."
You can make a difference! Most people it seems lately take no interested in local / town / area governments, but that is where the normal citizen can make the MOST difference!
Preventing finding out who the terrorist ........ (Score:2)
Information and who's accessing it....
So as many may be trying to rationalize invasion of privacy by thinking only of terrorism excuses, perhaps there is the other side of the coin as to what the feds may be looking for......like those assessing information in order to see the truth:
take a look at this: World Meters [osearth.com]
Take a good look at the different meters! Then look at this: What the World Wants [osearth.com]
We have the technology and we have the funds to make good things happen.
So why is it not happening? You want to fight about it?
Assuming you don't want to fight about it, that fighting is not the goal or main desire of people, then there must be something else, something bigger that is the problem. You know, considering annual world military spending is $780 billion dollars (US) and to solve the major world humanitarian problems only needs 1/3 of that....
The problem has to be more than something under a trillion dollars.
A CIA Fact Sheet on Indonesia -- see the religion percentages (88% muslim). [cia.gov]
OK, (given the above muslim population of indonesia): from the pbs trillion dollar bet article: [pbs.org]
"In the summer of 1997, across Thailand, property prices plummeted. This sparked a panic that swept through Asia. As banks went bust from Japan to Indonesia, people took to the streets - events so improbable they had never been included in anyone's models."
and in Indonesia May 1998: [go.com]
"Sources all over Asia tell Uscher that Asians know about local corruption but believe America is taking advantage of the situation to grab Asian markets and Asian wealth."
and (read the article!!!) another article from CNN: [cnn.com]
"The austerity measures were a condition of the International Monetary Fund's $43 billion aid package to bail out the southeast Asian nation. "
World Bank wanted to help Indonesia out but charge interest (usery) entrapment???? Funny how China is the only country who did not participate in this stock game and are better off then the rest of us for not doing so.....
Where the US bailout was only (pbs article):
"We expect that they're going to explain to the members of this Committee why the Federal Reserve has organized the $3.5 billion bail-out for billionaires, why Americans should be worried about the gambling practices of the Wall Street elite"
And there is Something Else [neo-tech.com] I have run across for that timeline as well (making the "trillion dollar bet" just icing on this cake?):
(note: overall I find information from this resource to be integratingly correct enough to be both useful and insightful, though with a touch of blind bias towards capitalism, though it does try not to be blindly biased, it is to subjective to capitalism to completely avoid it.)
"During the 1993-1999 bubble era of false economic progress, many CEOs, executives, employers, employees, even customers adopted the scams of clintonian-era politicians, lawyers, journalists, academics to become increasingly dishonest, corrupt, even criminal. The bubble-building, stock-market fraud began when Chairman Alan Greenspan clintonized the
Federal Reserve. He signaled that politicization by blatantly breaking a time-honored apolitical precedent when he sat as a special guest in the president's box during Clinton s first State-of-the-Union address. Greenspan, the former acolyte of capitalism-champion Ayn Rand, then married a socialist/clintonian journalist. His drive to create a Clinton-boosting, economic boom -- a high-tech bubble economy -- escalated from that point. He with Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton artificially increased the value of the dollar, relentlessly increased the M-3 money supply, recklessly created sloshing liquidity, and pied pipered consumers and corporations into bankrupting debt. He engineered those cancerous long-term policies to continually fuel the equity markets for baleful political ends and unearned glory.
The bubble burst in early 2000 causing losses of four-trillion dollars. After several sharp bear-market rallies, those equity losses launched a long-term economic decline -- the feared L-shaped recession or worse."
Oh yeah and this 5 year stock market link comparing the DOW with the S&P and most important the NASDAQ. [yahoo.com] Where you can tell where the money went and also know what the dot coms were all about.
Given the above
From theCBS article on the NSA (National Security Agency) total system failure: [cbs.com]
"In January 2000, Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of the NSA, received a call from the agency's watch officer alerting him that all of its computers had crashed."
In that same article (in fact in the previous paragraph):
"A phone call intercepted by the NSA is often the first warning that a terrorist such as Osama bin Laden is planning an attack against Americans. To find that threatening phone call, email or radio transmission among the billions made daily, the NSA relies on rooms of supercomputers."
The date of this CBS article is Aug 29, 2001.
Do you really think maybe Y2K brought the systems all down? For what is supposed to be the top spy agency in the US? (they don't say what caused the three and a half day crash.)
Or do you perhaps see a simpler Truth to the matter, such as:
Stock market gamblers and Gov. screwed up the world economy so bad and especially for muslims that the NSA had damn good reason to KNOW what was going to happen and that they needed an excuse for their total inability to deal with it.
*And then there is this, how might Afghanistan participate in global* *humanitarian issues:* [doe.gov]
And the Bill of Rights [cornell.edu]
How about now? Do you want to fight now? And if you were an Afghan Muslim, instead of a US citizen?
Targets....White House for it's political control over Pentagon military backed control over World Trade Center
We taught them how to do it, How to fight smart, how to learn what they need to know and where they can get supplies (anthrax, planes, etc..) from us to use against us....... then we lite a bon fire under their ass to motivate them into action while we turned our backs to intelligence....played ignorant......so they could more easily do it.
And Ted Turner (CNN) said something about the attack being an act of desparation. Which he later apologized for.....because of why?
Anonymising library loan records (Score:3, Interesting)
The other type of ticket was the 'Fiction Token'. This was a simple, mass-produced plastic card, identical to every other plastic card, which was simply exchanged for fiction titles. You take a book, you give 'em a token. You return the book, they give you a token back, but not the same one. There's no way to track who has what.
This was all removed in the name of efficiency some years back. The current system uses barcodes in books, and barcoded member cards, tying all books to borrowers present and past. Any librarian can browse through your borrowing history, or the history of a book, almost instantaneously.
So, take a backward step for privacy. Replace your lendng libraries computer system with cardboard wallets. When a book is loaned, you do have the borrowers details, but ONLY while the borrower has the item. This allows you to chase borrowers who have not returned items. Once the item is returned, you lose the association. Simple, private, and virtually idiot-proof too. The system doesn't even need electricity. For low value items, such as paperback books, issue 'fiction tokens'. Borrowers get, say, four tokens, and if they want more, they pay the average cost of a paperback for one. Keep a log of who has how many tokens, but nothing more than that. This will catch abuses, but not provide any tracking. Librarians: You're in the library business, not the espionage business! Do your community a favour, and take a step backwards.
The crypto for anon checkout is already done... (Score:4, Informative)
This system handles the daily mechanics of such a digital library, but it needs an external hook to get a user into the system called an "isa-person" certificate (a cert that you could only get one of, probably biometric, that is a hard link to your meatspace identity) which is used as the stick to prevent people from walking away with your books. If someone checks out books and does not return them they get a negative mark on their isa-person cert that will follow them to around until it is cleared. A deposit of cash, as others have suggested, would probably serve an equivalent purpose.
If you really want a secure, anonymous digital system it is probably going to end up working something like NetFlix. You apply for an anonymous id and put down a cash deposit, the anon id lets you borrow titles with certain restrictions, when you are finished with the account you cancel your subscription and get your deposit back.
Jim
[Chaum90] David Chaum: Showing credentials without identification: Transferring signatures between unconditionally unlinkable pseudonyms; Auscrypt '90, LNCS 453, Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1990, 246-264.
Re:I'm sorry.. (Score:5, Interesting)
government has no property it is not given by the people.
(this is true even in non democratic/republican forms of government. see Gandhi's writing on non-violent resistance for an interesting object lesson in this fact).
Parent
Re:I'm sorry.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _people_. The people have a right to peacebly educate themselves, assemble, and petition government for greviences. They have a right to perform these activities anonymously, else they could be subject to harrassment by those individuals who currently control the government.
Remember in the turn of the century when black people had the right to vote, but had to do so publicly so that their owners knew how they voted and what they were up to at all times? This is called opression and we are quicly headed back to this stage... only this time it won't just be along ratial boundaries.
Parent
Re:I'm sorry.. (Score:2)
It's not Flamebait; it's Unintelligent.
My town thinks a library is an important thing to have, so we tax ourselves to fund one. I haven't seen any money filtering its way down from Washington to buy our books. Let Ashcroft search for borrowing records and browsing habits in the Library of Congress. That's the library owned by that government. He can stay out of my library, because my town owns it.
Where are you pulling this radar gun thing from?
_However_, when it comes to the FBI demanding book histories from stores like Borders, they can bugger off until they get a warrant.
You actually have less of a leg to stand on with book stores. They don't need a warrant, or even a subpoena. They could just ask. They could just walk in and seize it, claiming it's a terrorist related investigation. You don't own the bookstore, and if you signed up for their card club, you're asking them to collect information on you. It's their data, and they can sell it to anyone they want or give it to the FBI. They could sell it to the FBI. I hope you didn't buy a felafel cookbook, because then you're going to get detained. At least with your local library you can get the town to resist handing the info over to them. Borders probably made money selling you out.
Re:I'm sorry.. (Score:2)
How ironic, bookstores such as Borders are more likely to keep exactly the type of records, the FBI thinks it needs. Libraries, by way of contrast, really have no need to keep copious customer data profiles, and might even consider it unethical to do so.
The FBI can piss off. They don't need warrants to view reading records. They don't need to prosecute individuals based on their choice of reading material.
I'm even sorrier (Score:4, Insightful)
- While this is often true, so what? The rest areas in national parks are also owned by the government, but that doesn't mean they have the right to put webcams in the latrines.
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Further, it isn't always true. Lots of private universities have libraries; there are a number of privately-owned museums with libraries attatched.
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Finally, while it is true your bog-standard municipal library is owned by `the government', it isn't owned by the federal government; it's generally a service of the municipal government, paid for by municpal ratepayers. Why exactly, again, does the FBI have the right to get any information at all from the library just because both the FBI and the municipal library are owned by `the' government?
The Cato Institute [cato.org], a libertarian think-tank and about as right-wing an organization as you can imagine, a group I seldom have occasion to agree with, published a report [cato.org] on these sorts of issues entitled ``Preserving our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism'', which, in discussing exactly the sort of new powers like being able to search library records with no probable cause, says:Parent
Re:Privacy So Important? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I'm sorry; yes, Mr. Anonymous Coward. I cherish my freedom, as you apparently cherish your anonymity. The price of having freedom is allowing other people to have it, too. You apparently believe that freedom is really just the freedom for all of us to be exactly like you. If we don't want to do anything that you don't like, we'll do fine. Because so many people are fucking morons, that means letting them have the freedom to saturate the airwaves with the Backstreet Boys, or the freedom to learn about explosives. We have to accept these dangers as simply the cost of doing business.
Just as my right to privacy is important enough to justify the fact that that privacy WILL be used by someone somewhere to take lives, my right to due process and a fair trial is important enough to justify the fact that due process and fair trials will end up allowing dome "detainees" to go free.
Parent
Re:Privacy So Important? (Score:2)
That's exactly the point. As someone posting anonymously, you should understand the value people place on freedoms. I'm anonymous here, too- just try to email me- you can't.
I want to be able to act freely, to do as I please without cops looking over my shoulder all day, without every store I go to collecting data on me to be used against me by marketers, cops or people who just don't like me. Wanting to live and let live involves accepting the risk that some peoples' actions will be perfectly legal up until they unload a gun in a subway car or a fast food joint.
I'll live with that. The only way you can live a life of perfect safety is pretty damn boring. Government spying and "detaining" doesn't allow any of us much of a life.
Re:Privacy So Important? (Score:2)
Given the general interest among US citizens about Islam, terrorism, and methods of terroism that has been shown through the packed classes on all three at colleges and the huge amount of hits that such websites are getting, I seriously doubt that we can say that that privacy WILL be used to take lives. What the Justice Department is doing here is policing the freedom of information and stifling an interest in the unknown and relevant. If there's a piece of evidence that will prove that someone is a terrorist, it won't be found in what books they checked out or what website they went to in the local library. And if such evidence were admissable in court, then a whole lot of curious, middle class white Americans would be heading for the slammer.
Re:It's really in our powers (Score:2)
Problem. If all parties who have a reasonable chance of winning are willing to invade our privacy, then no matter who you vote for, you're going to wind up in the shit. This is especially true if you have a system which effectively consists of 2 parties.
[OT] Why I don't vote (Score:2)
I don't know enough about the issues or the candidates.
I try to be informed, but I don't subscribe to a newspaper...I did once, but the newspaper's went unread because I really didn't have the time to read them (yet, I have time to post to slashdot, go figure).
I've picked up books from my college library, one about israel and palestine. It seemed like a good book introducing some of the issues that are happening over there. But I honestly never got beyond the first chapter. The book was kind of dense for someone with the typical American knowledge on foreign affairs.
And I've heard arguments such as yours, that democracy requires a lot more people voting. But it almost seems to me that having uninformed people vote doesn't make the system more democratic. It just makes the system more arbitrary and more whimsical.
And the politics really gets in the way. For instance, trying to find political information online is difficult, since you can never really trust the source of information. Especially as we got closer to voting time, everyone starts putting up articles supporting their own personal political agendas, and people like me are the worse off, since the uninformed are not going to know much difference between truth and outright lie anyway.
The solution, of course, is to get information from a variety of sources. But then we are back to the same problem of lack of time. Especially with the vast number of candidates and issues we have to decide upon come voting time.
Another thing I've finally figured out. I've tried watching CNN or FoxNews for a while, so that hopefully I would get some insight into what is happening. It took me a while to figure out that I'm not just dumb, but the television station doesn't actually tell you enough of what is happening, and certainly provide almost no context of the issue. And the biggest waste of time are them talk shows where they have a number of "analysts" debating a certain topic. Usually the person hosting the show (who usually gets the most time speaking), either (a) doesn't under the issues anymore than I do or (b) has some political agenda of their own. And given that these shows are on most of the time, television is practically useless for getting information.
So it seems to me that voting isn't just something you do once every two years. Its almost a part time job to keep up with the issues, and then research your candidates. Maybe I'm exagerating. But without spending a good amount of time on this, many of us couldn't tell the difference between one candidate and the other.
It would be great if someone could post where they get thier information from. Is there an unbiased MiddleEast for Dummies book somewhere? Where do we get information about the various political candidates that doesn't come from the candidates themselves?
So I may not be voting this November either. Maybe the best way would be for me to get information on the local politics, and then vote for the local candidates. But I'll have to see.
Re:It's really in our powers (Score:2)
You make some good points, but you are naive if you think the people have power to vote in who they want. I'm not a Republican or a Democrat nor do I believe in any of the other parties. Yet under the current system, I am forced to choose between them because of how the electoral college is run.
Originally, the electoral college meant that everyone voted for a person they thought was honorable, and that person would represent everyone by voting for who he/she thought was a good candidate for the office. Now they make it so everyone votes for a party in the college, and that party gets elected. The party chooses who to offer for the primaries. The politicians are just as answerable to their party as they are to the voters. Not to mention the fact that only the top two parties even have a decent chance at being elected.
The electoral college was meant to be a system which filters out extremists from entering office. Now it's being used to filter out non-Biparty members.
Yes, go out and vote, however realize that you aren't given many choices of who to vote for.
I wasn't talking about "wasted" votes (Score:2)
I wasn't bringing up the "wasted vote argument". I was saying that the voting process needs to be restored to the proper electoral college. The forced Biparty system only works for corrupt politicians and factional groups.
Re:It's really in our powers (Score:2)
You know, the surrealist film movement that took place in the early part of the 20th century in France spent a good deal of time focusing on the idea of revolutionary failure. One of their premises was that in any power struggle situation, the weaker side (practically, not ideologically) would have its strongest arguments assimilated by their oppposition. The effect was one where the side with more might could lay claim (and thus control)to the most persuasive arguments levied against them.
Yes, the "wasted votes" point is tired - but who tired it out? Who robbed the claim "the votes of the citizens *doesn't matter*, and somebody other than the public pulls the strings in a public election" of its impact?
I'll vote for who I believe in when a man I believe in can be voted for.
Re:My 2 cents (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how long it will be before it will be illegal to lend or sell books without ID and records kept!
Re:Not so much for hardcopy books... (Score:2)
They're innocuous right now. Wait until your favorite author publicly supports something unpopular. Wait until these records become even more public; you'll be looking for a job and the interviewer won't like your taste in books. You could get turned down for a mortgage because the bank sees you return books late sometimes.
I don't go to the library- I buy a lot of used books. My borrowing habits are about as innocuous as you can get, not being on their records. I've still got outrage enough to spare. Wake up and muster some yourself.
Re:Bottom Line (Score:5, Insightful)
It's our responsibility as citizens to remain informed, that's the point of the whole "Informed Democracy" thing. Nowadays, we have the govt regularly telling us "You don't need to know these things, we'll know them for you."
Lets take the current anti-terrorism campaigns. If you oppose the way the detainments and trials (or lack thereof) are going on, then it behooves you to do research to be sure you know all the facts. But wait, our own presidents press secretary has been more than hinting that asking those kinds of questions is unamerican "in this time of war". So the feds raid your library and add you to the list. Next thing you know a friendly FBI team comes by your house, or place of employement because "they have concerns about your reading habits."
As another example, there are plenty of reasons to read up on bomb making, other then planning on actually making one. I'll ignore completely the concept that you might actually be hoping to get into a job involving pyrotechnics, or might be taking a class in it. But I've heard some extraordinary things come out of the mouths of officials about what a particular device built by someone could have done or not done. If I had no idea what the facts were, I'd have to take their word for it, and allow my opinion to be shaped by my own lack of knowledge.
Also, who says the Feds will protect that information right? What if a loved one is HIV positive, and you're researching it for them. Now the FBI has that you've been reading on that topic, and eventually that slips out, and eventually your insurance company gets hold of a 4th hand database, that implies you're hiding that you're hiv positive, and finds an excuse to cancel *your* insurance... Then just the concept that you might be dieing gets to the credit agencies, and all your creditors cancel your credit. Just because you read a book in the library.
Read John Varley's "Press Enter" for a view of a world taking to the logical end of this nibbling away by the "well, if you don't have anything to hide, why do you care?" folks...
Parent
Re:Be Courageous (Score:2, Interesting)
If enough people do this then it would be impossible for TPTB to know whether you really borrowed (and read) that book or just selected it randomly.
Similar techniques are used for making survey responses anonymous.
80N