Digital Totalitarianism

Algorithms and Society

Michael Filimowicz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032002415
• eBook ISBN: 9781000572940
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Digital Totalitarianism: Algorithms and Society focuses on important challenges to democratic values posed by our computational regimes: policing the freedom of inquiry, risks to the personal autonomy of thought, NeoLiberal management of human creativity, and the collapse of critical thinking with the social media fueled rise of conspiranoia.

Digital networks allow for a granularity and pervasiveness of surveillance by government and corporate entities. This creates power asymmetries where each citizen's daily 'data exhaust' can be used for manipulative and controlling ends by powerful institutional actors. This volume explores key erosions in our fundamental human values associated with free societies by covering government surveillance of library-based activities, cognitive enhancement debates, the increasing business orientation of art schools, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories in network media.

Scholars and students from many backgrounds, as well as policy makers, journalists and the general reading public will find a multidisciplinary approach to questions of totalitarian tendencies encompassing research from Communication, Rhetoric, Library Sciences, Art and New Media.

1 Radical Resistance Libraries, Defiance, and Data Surveillance

Amanda C. Roth Clark and Sophia E. Du Val

DOI: 10.4324/9781003173304-1

Radical, Militant Librarians

In the year 2001, shortly after the destruction of the Twin Towers, an FBI agent wrote in a series of emails about his exasperation with the “radical, militant librarians” who refused to comply with demands to turn over patron records to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The criticism then was related to the FBI’s use of secret warrants authorized under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to retrieve library user data. The efforts of these so-called “radical militant librarians” were on behalf of their patrons and their right to read what they wished safe from state surveillance or scrutiny. Such actions on the part of a significant contingent of library staff-persons nationwide subsequently “helped to influence the Congress in its vote to extend its debate on the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act” (www.ala.org, January 17, 2006).

The moniker “radical, militant librarians” swept through the internet and remains anchored in online parlance to this day. Librarians were proud to wear badges, carry coffee mugs, and tote bags emblazoned with this title. What the “radical, militant librarians” were fighting against was possible and probable data profiling (Gellman & Dixman, 2011, p. 10), where searches, checkouts, and curiosity about outré topics could lead to state suspicion and inquiry, possibly implicating involvement in illegal activity. In short, the agent had identified something that the library community has held as a priority for decades, that patron privacy and the right to read whatever one wishes without observation or repercussions is indeed central to the ethos and work of the profession. The librarians perceived themselves as trendsetters for other disciplines in the safeguarding of rights regarding privacy, copyright, surveillance, data mining, and freedom—matters that are as relevant in today’s digital age as they were decades ago, if not more so. This chapter addresses these and other important and contentious issues.

The Stacks (Don’t) Have Eyes: The USA PATRIOT Act and Government Surveillance in the Library

Perhaps the most infamous threat to library patron privacy in recent memory has been the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). Enacted in 2001 shortly after 9/11, the PATRIOT Act, specifically Section 215 and Section 505, gave enhanced powers to federal agents to request and collect library patrons’ personal information, browsing habits, borrowing records, and more. This extended reach by the US government was immediately alarming to librarians due to its violations against the ethical standards of librarianship, standards that include but are not limited to intellectual freedom, information literacy, access, the universal right to free expression, and a broad host of other topics central to the American Library Association (ALA) Code of Ethics (1994) and the Library Bill of Rights (adopted in 1939 and last updated in 2019) (www.ala.org, August 19, 2021).

Furthermore, the PATRIOT Act included a nondisclosure provision that prohibited library workers from discussing if or when the FBI had requested information from them. Despite the reality that nearly every state had previously enacted laws protecting the confidentiality of library patrons, the state laws “are overridden or trumped by federal laws that allow federal agencies to seek library records. No federal or case law protects the privacy of library records” (Lambert et al., 2015, p. 3). Under the PATRIOT Act, a subpoena was no longer required for federal agents to obtain library patron records. Instead, a Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) court order would suffice, and any record could be obtained for any reason, even without direct connection to open terrorism investigations. For the sake of dialectic, we should note that the PATRIOT Act was—from a centralized perspective—spurred to protect and defend the American public against terrorist threats, though this narrative has remained under continued debate within the academic community (Whitehead et al., 2002).

By turning the library into a location of suspicion where any patron’s research could be collected and used against them, the PATRIOT Act eroded the ethical framework of privacy and intellectual freedom upon which libraries are built. The ALA was firmly entrenched by the twentieth century, but already by the nineteenth century, the association’s work of librarianship was situated as a science in the eyes of the public (Lugya, 2014). By the twentieth century, librarians were adopting social science methods to determine what to collect, how to analyze user communities, and how to assess the information needs of those patron groups, all of which continues today and informs how librarians relate to and serve their patrons as well as what they choose to defend and support. The library studies landscape today is anchored in the social science tradition with additional ties to the utility and promotion of technology. Libraries today are focused on data sets, statistics, analyses, and arguments supported by quantifiable results. The posture of librarians to technology is one of freedom and openness rather than suspicion. “Librarians and book collectors are custodians of the transcript, the ‘keepers of the Word’ …,” writes Jesse Shera; rather than gatekeepers, they are defenders of open access to material, transcript, and the printed and digital word. Shera defines “the library as ‘the memory of society,’ the social cortex” (Shera, 1973, p. 91). Defense of access to this social cortex is paramount in the self-perception of the librarian. The library preserves and promotes information access; libraries can thus be viewed as containers of and promoters of human information and free access to that information. Without surveilled access to and use of these repositories of stored knowledge, the social risks are vast. With this hallowed worldview in mind, it is evident why librarians were alarmed by the aggressive and invasive arm of the PATRIOT Act. In hindsight, this seems to pale in comparison with present-day US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, which we will turn to shortly.

Defending Anonymity: Computers, Books, and Free Expression

Nancy Kranich, past president of the ALA, details the guild’s concerns with the USA PATRIOT Act, particularly regarding how libraries play a unique role in the US in providing citizens a safe and free place to explore ideas, to, as she writes, “express opinions and to seek and receive information, the essence of a thriving democracy” (Burns, 2007, p. 158). It was with this conviction that many librarians tirelessly threw themselves into battle against the PATRIOT Act. Seeking to mitigate (or defy) government threats to patrons, these librarians reevaluated how personally identifying patron information was collected and then how it was stored and accessed in libraries. Some librarians on the website librarian.net took measures to circumnavigate the PATRIOT Act’s nondisclosure provision by creating library signage that informs patrons about personal data collection. “The FBI has not been here. (Watch very closely for the removal of this sign),” one read (Foerstel, 2004, p. 79). Another announced: “We’re sorry! Due to National Security concerns, we’re unable to tell you if your Internet surfing habits are being monitored by federal agents; please act appropriately” (Foerstel, 2004, p. 79). These examples highlight both the wit and humor when librarians who value patron anonymity confront threats to that anonymity. In a field often divided between “professional librarians” and “paraprofessionals,” the library community has rallied under a unified banner of concern over this issue of state infringement.

Concerns did not arise only in the year 2001; they had emerged already in the 1980s when the FBI’s Library Awareness Program became public (Rosen, 2000, p. 167). The Library Awareness Program, originating as early as the 1960s, involved tasking federal agents with asking librarians to keep tabs on patron records that seemed “suspicious,” particularly in arenas of possible terrorist activity. Across the country, librarians refused to take part in the arbitrary surveillance of patrons. Paula Kaufman, librarian at Columbia University’s Mathematics and Science Library, gave this statement in July 1988 to the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights:

They asked us to report on who was reading what, and I refused to cooperate with them…. They explained that libraries such as ours were often used by the KGB and other intelligence agents for recruiting activities.…I continued to refuse to spy on our readers.

(Foerstel, 2004, p. 13)

Righteous defiance has long been embedded in the DNA of librarians, the so-called “apostles of culture” (Garrison, 1979).

A textbook discussing the recent state-by-state laws protecting libraries from having to give over patron information and the ethical challenges within computing writ large offers this statement, “Librarians have a very strong belief in protecting the privacy of readers” (Baase, 1997, p. 44). Even as early as 1993—prior to the boom of the internet—librarians orchestrated conferences with themes such as “Computers, Freedom, and Privacy” (Baase, 1997, p. 80). The field of librarianship has long held that the hybrid culture of information and computers should be of paramount concern to the stewards of the profession, paramount because the computerized interface manipulates user experience (Emerson, 2014, pp. 32–33). Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic adage, the “medium is the message,” reminds us that while the physical book is a persistent and complex communication experience, the computer and digital interface likewise re-inform how humans access and internalize data (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). Both computer and book are communicators of information; the experience of the digital and the analog go beyond content, beyond merely words or information. The digital book impacts the reception and interpretation of content; librarians have long been attuned to digital developments, both their pros and their cons. And even while libraries today may extol, rather than restrict or control, general terminal use in their facilities due to, for example, the surfing of pornographic content, libraries continue to uphold the need for patrons to view and research any topic area without governmental or institutional surveillance. Libraries also strive to move beyond proprietary designations of copyright and control even while negotiating with vendors over data privacy and excessive profit-driven proprietary access and sharing restrictions.

Privacy: Security and (Perceived) Rights

Persuasive author and friend of libraries Nicholas Carr insists that “as the older generations die, they take with them their knowledge of what was lost” (Carr, 2008, p. 233); we are wise to ask what is lost when we lose our...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Series Preface: Algorithms and Society
• Volume Introduction
• Acknowledgment
• 1 Radical Resistance: Libraries, Defiance, and Data Surveillance
• 2 Urgent Ethical Issues in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate: Autonomy, Mental Privacy, and Freedom of Thought
• 3 Impersonal Computing: From Art School to Business Hub in Four Decades
• 4 The Plandemic and Its Apostles: Conspiracy Theories in Pandemic Mode
• Index