Libraries and the balance of liberty and security

The USA Patriot Act has presented librarians with the dilemma of balancing national security against the freedom of access to information and the protection of confidentiality of library records. The paper examines forms of argumentation put forth by the American Library Association in its defense of access and confidentiality rights. It finds that utilitarianism and rights discourse are the most dominant forms of ethical reasoning in the ALA and suggests that these might be replaced or supplemented by other forms of reasoning. Modernist notions as well as postmodernist views are explored and a synthesis of the two positions is offered. Confidentiality/privacy and access to information are necessary for a public dialogue that seeks not only consensus truths but is itself constitutive of the types of autonomous selves Americans are and value.

[1]  Don Fallis,et al.  The Ethical Presuppositions behind the Library Bill of Rights , 2000, The Library Quarterly.

[2]  Rafael Capurro,et al.  AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE , 2008 .

[3]  Charles Taylor.  Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity , 1990 .

[4]  M. Tunick.  Does Privacy Undermine Community , 2001 .

[5]  G. Mead,et al.  Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. , 1935 .

[6]  Tony Doyle,et al.  A Critical Discussion of "The Ethical Presuppositions behind the Library Bill of Rights" , 2002, The Library Quarterly.

[7]  R. Morrison.  Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist , 1936 .

[8]  Rafael Capurro,et al.  Privacy. An Intercultural Perspective , 2005, Ethics and Information Technology.

[9]  F. Schoeman.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An Anthology , 1984 .

[10]  Paul T. Jaeger,et al.  The impact of the USA Patriot Act on collection and analysis of personal information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act , 2003, Gov. Inf. Q..

[11]  Edward J. Bloustein,et al.  Privacy as an Aspect of Human Dignity : An Answer to Dean Prosser , 1984 .

[12]  J. Reiman,et al.  Privacy, Intimacy, and Personhood , 1984 .

[13]  R. Rorty.  Contingency, irony, and solidarity: Contents , 1989 .

[14]  Lü Yao-Huai,et al.  Privacy and Data Privacy Issues in Contemporary China , 2005, Ethics and Information Technology.

[15]  Louise S. Robbins,et al.  Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association's Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939-1969 , 1996 .

[16]  J. Fitzmaurice.  Economy and Society , 1998 .

[17]  E. Voegelin.  The Origins of Totalitarianism , 2020, On Violence.

[18]  Evelyn Geller,et al.  Forbidden Books in American Public Libraries, 1876-1939: A Study in Cultural Change , 1984 .

[19]  Kwame Anthony Appiah,et al.  Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers , 2006 .

[20]  R. Devigne.  Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism , 1994 .

[21]  Georgina Martorella.  Libraries in the Aftermath of 9/11 , 2006 .

[22]  Shirely A. Wiegand.  Reality Bites: The Collision of Rhetoric, Rights, and Reality and the Library Bill of Rights , 1996, Libr. Trends.

[23]  F. Schoeman,et al.  Privacy and Social Freedom , 1992 .

[24]  Michael Oakeshott,et al.  Rationalism in politics and other essays , 1963 .

[25]  S. Hampshire,et al.  Morality and pessimism , 1972 .

[26]  Ted V. McAllister,et al.  Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Search for a Postliberal Order , 1996 .

[27]  M. Nakada,et al.  Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective , 2005, Ethics and Information Technology.

[28]  Jin H. Im,et al.  Privacy , 2002, Encyclopedia of Information Systems.

[29]  R. F. Murphy,et al.  Social Distance and the Veil1 , 1964 .

[30]  Donald J. Pierce,et al.  Democracy in America , 2018, Princeton Readings in Political Thought.

[31]  G. B. Baldwin,et al.  The Library Bill of Rights--A Critique , 1996, Libr. Trends.

[32]  K. Gergen.  The saturated self : dilemmas of identity in contemporary life , 1991 .

[33]  Charles Fried.  Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: Privacy [a moral analysis] , 1984 .

[34]  John T. Snead,et al.  The USA PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Information Policy Research in Libraries: Issues, Impacts, and Questions for Libraries and Researchers , 2004, The Library Quarterly.

[35]  Kwame Anthony Appiah,et al.  The Ethics of Identity , 2005 .