Title tracking
New technology will help the library find its books, but privacy advocates fear devices that could 'identify any object anywhere, automatically'

By Matthew Hirsch

When city librarian Susan Hildreth wrote a widely published critique of the USA PATRIOT Act in May, titled "Big Brother Out of Our Libraries," in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Public Library was in the midst of developing a plan to introduce radio frequency identification devices to help track its books and other materials.

If implemented, these devices would replace the bar codes on books with an embedded microchip that transmits information over radio signal to a central database via an RFID reader. The technology has been controversial in recent trial applications in the consumer market. Last month a consumer group launched a boycott against Gillette for tagging its razor blades in Wal-Mart stores, and state senator Debra Bowen opened public hearings Aug. 18 on the potential privacy invasions that come with RFID.

RFID has drawn a lot of attention for the truly fantastic notion that its tags may soon come embedded in everything from cars to candy bars. One well-known group working on RFID, the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, actually publicizes its lofty goal to "identify any object anywhere, automatically" (see Techsploitation, 5/7/03). For now, the technology is still mostly confined to applications like FasTrak on the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, which allows commuters to automatically deduct highway toll fees from their credit cards. Some owners also use RFID to microchip their pets.

The San Francisco Public Library is interested in RFID because of its potential to speed up checkout and to virtually eliminate the risk of having materials lost or stolen. If properly tagged, each item could be identified remotely by an RFID reader within a limited range, allowing staff to find misplaced books.

But do the privacy concerns about using RFID in retail stores apply to the SFPL? Will the technology become more invasive as its capabilities improve and it becomes more widely adopted? Could it be used to identify people outside the library by the books they borrow?

Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told us the library model for RFID seems less of a concern than other consumer uses, but there should be a way for patrons to know they are not being tracked outside the library. "What makes the most sense is to temporarily disable the chip when the borrower borrows a book," Tien said, adding that the SFPL should also identify RFID tags on their materials so people know the one-eighth-inch device is there.

The biggest problem with the library using RFID, according to Tien, is that it builds a critical mass of the technology so that the public becomes more willing to accept the tracking device once more large corporations begin using it. It would be similar to how the public sector helped generate acceptance of video surveillance, which is now a widespread practice and largely unchallenged, he said. The SFPL may intend to address only its own needs, but its investment in RFID will stimulate more work on the technology and could accelerate its wider introduction to the consumer market.

Library Commission president Charles Higueras told the Bay Guardian RFID would be valuable for the SFPL, because it could save some of the $500,000 the library loses each year on materials that are checked out and never returned. Two years ago the SFPL proposed hiring a collection agency to solve that problem.

"I don't know that having a more sophisticated tracking system for collections materials is necessarily going to become a slippery slope toward erosion of privacy rights," Higueras told us in an interview last month.

For those concerns about the library's own intelligence gathering, Hildreth said the SFPL – which forgoes federal telecommunications funds for refusing to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (an invasive Ashcroft policy) – has no interest in spying on its patrons.

"We have decided that we want to go with this technology, [but] we would not implement this system to physically track materials individually, go out and get these materials from people's homes," she said.

And what about the Bush administration gaining easier access to library records to carry out the PATRIOT Act? Howard Besser, a professor of library and information sciences at UCLA, said it's all a matter of coding.

If the library codes its books using the International Standard Book Numbering system with no form of encryption, Besser said the Transportation Security Administration could set up readers at airports and know who's carrying subversive books onto airplanes, for example.

So long as the SFPL knows to use a unique, secretive code, however, Besser said safeguarding patron records would be relatively easy to do. "I am far more worried about RFID in the commercial sector than in the library," he said.

The SFPL's three-year strategic plan, with a recommendation to implement RFID and fund it in the 2004-05 budget, goes for Library Commission approval Sept. 4. The plan would have to pass the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and then a special library staff task force would convene to analyze RFID.

E-mail Matthew Hirsch