Repatriating Canadian Information

Although this is not a banned book issue, censorship and the threat of the US Patriot Act were in the news. The Ontario Library Association (OLA) highlights a CBC story that reports that dozens of university and college libraries in Canada are rethinking how students and faculty do their research. Universities are abandoning US-based servers to protect researchers who may be doing work on sensitive issues. RefWorks is a popular research tool based in the US which is subscribed to by many Canadian universities. The US Patriot Act, allows the US government to routinely sweep through databases like RefWorks. In theory, students or faculty members who are doing legitimate research on sensitive issues could be flagged in the US. The universities which are now switching to databases kept on Canadian servers believe that their Canadian users should have fall under the Patriot Act.

Conerns about information on Canadians ending up in the hands of US investigators has been a concern, according to a past story by the CBC. In a report on privacy implications of the Patriot Act, B.C. Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis pointed out that the USA Patriot Act violates British Columbia's privacy laws because it can order American companies to hand over information on British Columbians in secret. Once information is sent over the border, it is difficult to control. The U.S. government has access to a wide range of personal and confidential information about Canadians from U.S. financial institutions, phone companies and internet providers. If information is stored in US computers, it can be accessed under the Patriot Act.

Recommendations made in the BC report is to "prohibit personal information from being stored or sent outside Canada" and to make it illegal for Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. firms to turn over information to a U.S. agency without a Canadian court order.

On a related topic, the CBC reports on concerns about privacy.
Canada's privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, reported that much more could be done to keep foreign governments, Washington in particular, from collecting personal information about Canadians. Stoddart hopes that the Canadian government will respond to Canadians' concerns about privacy by introducing a new Privacy Act.

According to a poll commissioned by her office,

...a whopping 94 per cent of Canadians surveyed have expressed some concern about Canadian companies transferring customers' personal information to companies in other countries.

As well, her office has had concerns about our own Anti-terrorism Act. She hopes that a new privacy act can respond to "the reality of huge government systems that are capable of a surveillance we could not have dreamed of in 1982."

---

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know. "

—Feb. 12, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing

More from Down Under

In a previous post Fahrenheit 451: Banned Books: A Strange Protest? you heard about a number of Melbourne University student who had staged a book burning as a protest to the banning of two books from the country.

An article by Christopher Bantick in the Courier-Mail is critical of how the Federal Government has restricted what people can read. The University of Melbourne library was forced to remove the books after they were reclassified otherwise they would have been breaking the law and would run the risk of being prosecuted.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock defends the government's actions, stating,

The Government is keen to ensure that inflammatory material is not used to encourage the naive and impressionable to engage in acts of terrorism.

According to Bantick,

It is hard to imagine a more blatant attack on freedom of speech. Even so, the ban shows something more. This is the Government's fear of opinions contrary to its own narrow social conservatism.

He goes on to challenge the idea that the government has the public good in mind and reminds his readers that Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, has forseen the consequence of allowing a government to decide what is good for society. "Because you don't have to burn books, do you, if the world starts to fill up with non-readers, non-learners and non-knowers?"

The vice-chancellor of the University pointed out that by banning the books, the Australian government was limiting the legitimate research of staff and students.

The Council of Australian University Librarians, Australian Library and Information Association, Australian Society of Authors and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, in a joint statement on September 25, noted pithily: "Banning books takes away not only our right to read the opinions of others but also our right to disagree with what they say. We can't refute what we can't read."

While Australians may not be able to obtain a paper copy of these books, ironically they are available online for would-be terrorists.


Defense of Muslim Lands
Join the Caravan

Biography of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam

What would your reaction be to a similar banning in Canada? I'm not sure that anything except pornography is actually banned in Canada besides anything that has been deemed "hate" literature. Are you fearful of would-be terrorists making use of these books in Canada? Since Adbullah Yusuf Azzam was an advisor to Osama Bin Laden, it is likely that the terrorist have already read his writings and we would do well to understand what terrorism is about from this leader's point of view.

A Strange Protest?

Last week students at a Melbourne University, in an attempt to bring attention to a book banning, gathered for a book burning ceremony outside of the library. The small group of students were protesting the federal government sedition laws and the banning of two titles -- Join the Caravan and Defense of Muslim Lands -- by Abdullah Azzam. Pages from a handful of books were burned symbolically.

As reported in one news article, the Classification Review Board found that the books justified Jihad and promoted and incited terrorism.

Student Union president Jessie Giles stated, "These books are relevant to our studies and we have a right to access them ... we're all mature adults here and can make up our own minds." The students are making the materials available online.

What do you think about burning books to make a point?
Do you see any difference between the banning of books that incite terrorism and the banning of hate literature?
What do you think about Canada's stand on hate literature?

Books are Dangerous

Well, airport security has confirmed what librarians all over the world have known. Books have been labeled as dangerous. Due to information about what could be a terrorist plot, a number of security measures have been put in place at airports. Newpapers around the globe such as New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Seattle Times, and others report that books or other reading materials including newspapers have been banned from carry-on luggage.

I'm not sure what danger they pose, other than perhaps dangerous ideas, which is the usual reason for banning books.