Confidential information?

I was in my car the other day, listening to NPR as usual, when a news story came on the air concerning the shutdown of a website by a federal judge in San Francisco. My ears perked up – this might be an interesting topic for my blog! I later looked up the news story on the Internet, and found some good articles in the online version of the New York Times and the Guardian (UK). Here are links to the articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/20wiki.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/opinion/21thu3.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/fib/23/internet.usa/print

Basically, what happened was that a Swiss Bank sued a website, Wikileaks.org, for posting stolen documents on its website. A judge ordered the website to be shut down. Wikileaks is a website for whistleblowers that allows secret documents to be posted on the Internet that are untraceable, so the poster can remain anonymous. Wikileaks says it does this to prevent unethical behavior in governments and private organizations. The Swiss bank was accused of providing a way of money laundering and tax evasion, and of hiding rich client’s money in offshore accounts.

The Internet has become an extremely important tool in information dissemination. Librarians and information workers find it indispensable in retrieving and spreading information. Censorship has always been an issue librarians have had to deal with, and the advent of the Internet has posed special problems in this regard. Shutting down Wikileaks was a form of censorship, I think, violating 1st Amendment rights. The judge later rescinded his order and the website is now available to the public again. I highly recommend visiting the site – it’s an interesting concept that does raise questions about the limits of public dissemination of information.

This conversation certainly isn’t new. It was an important issue way back in the 1950’s in the early years of information science. I found an interesting article in an old issue of American Documentation, by Robert Tumbleson (Tumbleson, 1953). He talked about the social implications of restricting dissemination of information. This article was written, of course, long before the Internet became a primary source of information, but he brings up good points that are still valid, and issues that are still being discussed today. Tumbleson reminds us that many types of information are restricted from public circulation, and that this is a good thing, sanctioned by law and custom. Information passed between husband and wife, doctor and patient, priest and confessor, lawyer and client, are all protected by law from becoming public. Government agencies like the Internal Revenue Service won’t give out information on taxpayers. Trade secrets in science and industry are protected by law from becoming public (Tumbleson, 1953). These examples are supported by public opinion.

This secrecy becomes an issue when it is in the public’s interest to have access to the information, or when it violates 1st Amendment rights. In the case of trade secrets, protecting the science behind military weapons has always been accepted, but if restricting the flow of scientific information is too broad it can stunt the growth of knowledge. Scientists depend on the free flow of information to verify results of experiments and learn from each other so new hypotheses can be formulated. Tumbleson warns against the “arbitrary and capricious placing of restrictions upon the flow of basic scientific knowledge” (Tumbleson, 1953).

Bringing this back to libraries and librarians, the addition of PCs to public libraries has opened up a can of worms that has librarians walking a thin line between the wants of patrons and free speech. Some patrons want to access pornographic websites in the library on the PCs, but others are offended by it, and don’t want children within viewing distance or having the capability to access it themselves. Most libraries deal with this by having filters installed on the computers (those who want to see porn sites can have the filters disabled), but this isn’t a perfect solution either, as the filters sometimes filter out innocuous or important information. Some would say the filter is a form of censorship.

This is an issue that is going to be with us for a long time – where do you draw the line when deciding what information to restrict, if any? There are good reasons certain types of information should not be disseminated, but who decides what can be made public?


REFERENCES:

Tumbleson, R. (1953). Restricted dissemination of information
and its social implications. American Documentation, 4(3),
115-22. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Global database.