Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
For librarians, new identification chips in books make life easier. But civil libertarians say the smart books are a scary invasion of privacy
Jul 26, 2004 | This week, staffers at the Berkeley Public Library will begin putting radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in half of the 500,000 items in their collection.
When the tags embedded in copies of "Gone With the Wind" and "Mein Kampf" pass within 18 inches of the library's RFID readers, they'll come to life, revealing a unique identification number specific to each individual copy. The tags will allow readers to do their own checkouts and will liberate librarians from the monotonous -- and sometimes painful -- task of endlessly scanning books.
By implementing the system this fall, the Berkeley Public Library will join more than 300 libraries around the world that have already outfitted their books with RFID tags, including the Santa Clara City Library, the Maricopa County Library in Arizona, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries, the Independence Township library in Michigan and the National University of Singapore Libraries. Even the Vatican Library's vast collection is getting chipped.
But by embracing RFID, librarians have raised the ire of civil libertarians who have long looked askance at the technology. They find it alarming that librarians, who are normally among society's staunchest defenders of intellectual freedom and First Amendment values, are contributing to the electronic erosion of privacy.
"Libraries are not Wal-Mart. Libraries have traditionally been very concerned about patron privacy," says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has testified against the implementation of the tags at the San Francisco Public Library, which is in the early stages of adopting RFID.
The Berkeley Public Library sees compelling practical reasons for adopting RFID. Since the library expanded into a larger main building in April 2002, it has seen an increase in circulation without an increase in budget for more staff. The librarians think the new system will allow more patrons to check out items themselves without having to struggle with the library's clunky self-check bar code machines, freeing up staffers to help patrons better navigate the stacks. The librarians also hope that letting patrons check out their own books will cut down on the repetitive stress injuries, like carpal tunnel and shoulder pains, that plague many staffers.
"We had to get out of the checkout, check-in business," says Jackie Griffin, director of library services at Berkeley. "That's the place that staff was getting injured. And it's not helping people find materials in the library. We have really good, really well-trained people, and that's not using them in the best way." Facing almost $2 million in worker's comp costs every five years because of employees' repetitive stress injuries, the Checkpoint RFID system sounded like a relative bargain to Berkeley: $650,000 to tag the whole library, including the 500,000 tags, which go for 40 to 60 cents each. The main recurring cost is buying more tags as the collection grows.
But the specter of millions of books being tagged with unique identification numbers has raised a cloud of privacy concerns, sparking outcry from groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. Are libraries putting at risk one of their most cherished values: protecting the rights of readers to peruse whatever they want without scrutiny?
Will anyone who happens to be carrying an RFID reader be able to figure out that you're toting around a copy of "Personal Bankruptcy for Dummies" in your $700 handbag? Or, even worse, will that RFID-chipped book in your backpack become a way to track your movements? Will a library book with its unique number in your bag suddenly become a way to track you? The librarians who are installing these systems say that they are taking precautions that make the first scenario highly unlikely. And they argue that the privacy gained through the ability to self-check out books without showing them to a library employee far outweighs the risks of the latter.
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