Recognizing Partners, Looking to the Future
As we near the close of the first-ever Choose Privacy Week, we are tremendously grateful to the many individuals and organizations that have contributed to its success. Please allow us this blog post to recognize those on the front lines of key privacy issues today. We are honored to call many of these folks our partners, allies, colleagues, and friends.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a first line of defense when digital rights are threatened, and has been since 1990.
- The Center for Democracy and Technology works vigilantly to keep the Internet open, innovative, and free.
- The American Civil Liberties Union promotes uses of technology to enhance privacy and opposes those that undermine our freedoms.
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse empowers consumers with tips to control their own personal information and advocates for consumer privacy rights.
- The Electronic Privacy Information Center consistently focuses public attention on vital privacy issues today.
We have also had opportunities to discuss privacy issues with thinkers like Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Hal Niedzviecki, Geoffrey Stone, and others. It has been a pleasure to work with them and others in the worlds of technology, academia, civil liberties, consumer rights, and libraries to advance our thinking and advocacy on today’s most complex privacy issues. As Choose Privacy Week 2010 draws to a close, we look forward to our future work with these groups and individuals as the struggle for greater privacy rights and awareness continues.
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Privacy Programming and Public Libraries
We wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the public libraries that have told us about their fantastic Choose Privacy Week programs and activities! Here are some examples chosen from our Events page, and we hope you’ll share even more events with us soon!
The Pulaski County Public Library (IN) is celebrating Choose Privacy Week by handing out “Privacy Toolkits,” including information on digital privacy, bookmarks, and buttons. Patrons can sign a large poster board proclaiming that they “Choose Privacy” and encourage others to do the same. Everyone who participates will be entered into a drawing for 2 tickets for a local theatre performance.
The Stark County District Library (OH) is hosting, “You Told the World What? Privacy in the Age of Social Networking.” This round table event will focus on social networking and privacy and will take place at two branches during Choose Privacy Week. High school and middle school panelists will discuss questions from moderators and the audience, to help raise awareness of internet safety and the security risks of social networking. SCDL is also working to take this event beyond the walls of the library and into the schools as part of its outreach programming.
The Sherburne Memorial Library (VT) is featuring videos on their website and in the library this week. They hosted a book discussion of Lois Lowry’s “The Giver,” discussions about videos featuring security expert Bruce Schneier. They are also offering a free “I Choose Privacy Kit” for users, full of valuable resources on privacy.
The Virginia Beach Public Library (VA) hosted a deliberative forum on privacy on Monday, May 3. See this blog post for more information on how the forum went!
We were also thrilled to be featured on the Programming Librarian blog, which is a great resource for all things related to presenting cultural programs for all types and sizes of libraries.
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Location Sharing Technology and Privacy
Guest blog post by Lorrie Faith Cranor, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering & Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
Location-based services use a variety of technologies to acquire a user’s location based on the current position of her cell phone, computer, or other device. These technologies typically use triangulation to locate the device based on signals from GPS satellites, cell towers, or WiFi access points – often within a few hundred feet. Cellular providers can obtain location information of mobile phones in this manner even when the phones are not being used to place a call. The Internet address of a user’s computer can also be used to determine an approximate geographic location, typically at a city level.
In April 2009 my students in the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory conducted a survey to understand consumer perceptions of location-sharing services. We asked participants about the degree of harm or benefit they associated with each of 24 scenarios. Participants rated finding people in an emergency as the scenario with the most significant benefit. Other highly beneficial scenarios included being able to track one’s children and relatives, finding information based on one’s location, and checking to see if people are ok. On the risks side, participants had significant privacy concerns. They saw great harm in scenarios involving stalking or revealing one’s home address. They were also concerned about being found by people one wants to avoid or when one wants to be alone, having others intrude on one’s personal space, being tracked by the government, and receiving location-based ads.
We also evaluated 89 location-sharing applications and systems to determine the types of privacy protections each offered. We found that most of these applications provided fairly limited privacy controls and about a third of them did not provide readily accessible privacy policies on their websites. Some location-sharing applications have generic privacy policies that don’t explicitly mention location information. Others mention that they provide privacy controls, but in order to see what controls are provided a consumer has to actually use the service.
Some of the privacy controls that allow users to specify that their location information should be shared only with their friends rather than with the general public turn out to have exceptions. For example, many services have a simple privacy switch that can be set to “on” or “off.” But in one service we examined, text positioned four paragraphs below the switch mentions “two exceptions” in which location information will be shared publicly even when the privacy switch is not set to share this information.
Our research at Carnegie Mellon has explored offering fine-grained and expressive privacy controls. The Locaccino system we developed allows users to specify location-sharing rules based on time, location, and the person making a location request. For example, I have setup a rule that allows students to find my location when I am on campus so that they can determine whether I am in my office or teaching in another building. Another rule allows my family members to locate me at all times and locations. And another rule allows people I work with to locate me between 8 am and 6 pm on weekdays. Locaccino is not being used for advertising, but a similar approach could be used to control when and where location information is used for location-based advertising.
Our research suggests that Internet users are concerned about their location privacy, but that most currently available location-sharing services do not do a good job informing them about how their location information will be used or provide users with expressive location privacy controls and privacy-protective default settings.
See http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/LBSprivacy/ to read more about our work on location sharing and privacy.
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Students and Choose Privacy Week
When thinking and talking about privacy issues today, we find that young people are among the most important participants in these conversations. Why? Children and teenagers have unique perspectives to share on the meanings of privacy in their lives. Their attitudes and opinions may surprise some who assume that young people simply don’t care about privacy.
For example, a recent study found that a majority of young people in fact agreed with older adults in their desire for more privacy, not less. Yet, despite growing up as “digital natives,“ young people tend to have many large gaps in knowledge about their rights and responsibilities related to online privacy.
This desire for privacy, combined with a clear need for education around the issues, makes school and other libraries serving young people especially critical components of ALA’s Choose Privacy Week initiative. We were thrilled to have this highlighted in a School Library Journal article and we look forward to learning about all the innovative ways that librarians and teachers are introducing their students to privacy issues and concerns.
For those looking to engage students on privacy, consider the following ideas and resources:
- Lesson Plans: Four sample school library lessons from the Choose Privacy Week Resource Guide are freely available for download. The PDF contains sample lesson plans for grades K-2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12.
- Video and Trailer: School libraries can host viewings of this 20 minute video (or its short trailer) and link or embed it on library websites or social networking sites.
- Word Search: Hand out this free downloadable PDF word search, focusing on “Computers and Privacy.“
- Celebrate CPW Throughout the Year: We know that the first week of May won’t be ideal for all libraries, including school libraries, to celebrate Choose Privacy Week. Find the day, week, or month during the year that works best for you to highlight these vital issues for your students.
- Student PSAs: Students in Rhode Island created these audio public service announcements to celebrate Choose Privacy Week. Consider including them in your morning announcements, as part of a library lesson, or ask your students to create their own!
What other great ideas will you have? We are eager to hear how your community’s libraries are helping students Choose Privacy. Contact us at so we can add your activities to our Events page and share your success with school librarians across the country.
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