Odin Halvorson* "When the Patriot Act was passed, libraries got requests for patrons' borrowing history. We were prohibited from disclosing those requests.
* We deleted and shredded those records and stopped tracking reading history for that reason."
* "We figured, what's the fun in just telling them there's nothing? What the feds always forget is that librarians LOVE weaponizing bureaucracy for a good cause.
* We developed a compliance policy just for the Patriot Act."
2/6
"We added a Patriot Act compliance officer to our org chart. This person was a real employee."
3/6
"Well, WAS. The office of Patriot Act compliance would be assigned to whichever employee had just left our library. And gosh, it's just such a mess around here, you know."
4/6
4/6
Unfortunately nobody can remember the password to the system that has those records. So we have to get IT involved, which means running through more detailed security resets to make sure other systems aren't compromised. It should take a couple weeks.
5/6
5/6
"The library where I worked at the time did not successfully fulfill a single Patriot Act request.
Not that this is relevant to the current situation. I assure you this is a random memory that popped into my head with zero prompting. "
6/6
Logan@indubitablyodin this is why I’m proud to be a librarian.
Acmeworks@Logan @indubitablyodin Librarians are my heroes. Incidentally and interestingly, German hacker club and NGO Chaos Computer Club recently became the publisher of a novella on just that topic. It's here:
https://42.ccc.de/de/2042-die-verbotene-bibliothek/
Only in German, unfortunately. But isn't it thrilling how literature channels ideas floating around and making them tangible like nothing else?
@acmeworks @Logan It absolutely is! The power of fiction to make ideas tangible is beautiful. This looks awesome, too - time to get back to my Duolingo German lessosn, lol.