I've come away from that very enlightening conference with a rather pessimistic conclusion -- That Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was correct when he said, "You have zero privacy anyway," to a group of reporters in January of 1999, but I stop FAR short of McNealy's suggestion that we should . . . "Get over it." On contrary, I suggest we all consider getting ON it and taking a wild ride to protect what little privacy we have remaining and attempt to regain ground lost since September 11.

The worst thing for privacy from 9/11 beyond innocent deaths was call for a national ID card from our good friend Larry Ellison and echoed by less enlightened members of congress. That concept was discussed in great detail at CFP2002 conference by Andrew Schulman. I highly recommend you visit following site for more information on futility of that idea. Schulman is a software litigation consultant. Click on top link under "recent work" for his paper on so-called border crossing card with direct relevance to a National ID card.

http://www.undoc.com

California State Senator Jackie Speier spoke at conference on her legislation SB773, which seeks dramatic curbs on financial institution's efforts to sell private Californians' financial information to other companies. Californians have a fighting chance at preserving privacy since we have Senator Speier working to pass privacy initiatives in state senate.

But I don't see any serious national privacy advocates within federal government since most listen when money talks before they listen to public opinion. Although there is furious activity, there is no clear leader on issue as discussed in following ComputerWorld article.

http://computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO61707,00.html

The USA Patriot Act had, at it's heart, national security and protection from terrorism as clearly laudable goals, but some unintended consequences leeched on to suck away some freedoms when politicians used emotion above reason to attach some privacy eroding amendments to it.

Would you want government to step in?

This is a very thorny and interesting issue. I don't see a clear cut, obvious solution that magically appearing out of nowhere. It's not a new issue by any means (pornography existed long before internet), but placing of computer systems hooked up to web has increased magnitude of problem many times.

Personally, I don't like my taxes going towards methods for children to look at porn in libraries. Pornography is harmful to people in general, but effect on children can have catastrophic consequences. Intelligent parents exercise great control over what their children view until they become able to discern right from wrong and fantasy from reality.

On other hand, we do have freedom of speech and expression and that is very important. Adults must have right to choose what materials they want to view and read. How can anyone else make decision what is correct for me to see, read or be exposed to?

I do not want government telling people what is not and what is acceptable for viewing. This is not proper role for our elected officials, and it is certainly not what a librarian should be doing. Other people may have other beliefs and viewpoints and they should be allowed to make their own choices.

Then again, if I am walking through a library, I really do not appreciate walking by someone who is viewing a hardcore sex site, and I definitely would not want my own children viewing it. This violates my own ethical standard.

Pornography is something that people should be viewing in privacy of their own homes, not in public places. In our society sex is something that is practiced in private (or at least not out in streets, well, at least not by majority of people), and, in my view, an exception should not be made for pornography.

If that were entire issue we could probably all come to an agreement, but unfortunately there is more to it than that. One question is where do you draw line over what's viewable and what's not? Okay, perhaps we could agree not to allow hardcore sex sites to be viewed, but what about softcore? What about a hate site or a site about gay lifestyles or an alternative religion? Perhaps children should not be exposed to those things as well.