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from the land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-easily-coerced dept.
The Kilton Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, had been hosting an exit relay on the Tor network since July as part of a pilot program to safeguard citizens' privacy online.
After meeting with [local cops, tipped off by the US Department of Homeland Security], however, the librarians have taken the box offline over fears it was being used for criminal activity.
[...] Kilton's exit node was the pilot for an effort by the Library Freedom Project to equip local libraries in the US with Tor nodes that could be accessed by users in areas where internet traffic is censored and closely monitored.
ProPublica claims that the police did not threaten any action against the library, but merely informed them of the possibility that their Tor node could be used for criminal activity.
The library's board of trustees will vote later this month on whether to bring the node back online.
[...] The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was starting a campaign to flood library trustees with letters of support for the node in an effort to get the Tor box back up and running in the Kilton Library.
Additional reporting here.
SoylentNews is available through Tor, as well. Here is our .onion link. -Ed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 12 2015, @05:17PM
Yes - there is research, and then there is research. And, when that doesn't suffice, there is yet more research.
It's one thing to do some Google searches to see how things work - at least in theory.
It's another thing to go out and make something work - that is, testing the theory.
It is quite another thing to have two, six, twenty or more armed men come into your sanctum, and to issue veiled threats about the disposition of your body and worldly goods - not to mention the fate of your loved ones.
Librarians are generally admirable people. I've known a few, some more intimately than others. I've met few librarians that I didn't respect. But, librarians and armed men aren't a really good match. Unless you're a criminal, a cop, or a soldier, you probably won't mix well with armed men, either. I have mixed with armed men, but then, I'm a lot less civilized than the typical librarian. *
Local cops. Always remember that the cops are armed. Always remember, as well, that cops generally don't like armed people who aren't cops. When a cop approaches you, it is almost always an adversarial confrontation.
I will disagree with your assessment of cop's responsibility for evil in our society. There are plenty of other evil mofos out there. An evil cop, of any rank, is just small fry compared to the Clintons and the Bushes of the world.
*This is the point at which I expect my fan club to chime in, and sing my praises, LMAO!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday September 12 2015, @07:57PM
When was the last time six or twenty cops entered a library and shot a librarian?
Come on. Librarians use to standup for freedom and privacy, they even lobbied and got laws against police seizing someone's library reading history, and stopped keeping histories in many cases. They will reserve meeting rooms for Numismatic Societies and Nambla without batting an eye. They won't kick greasy old geezers off the computers for viewing porn.
These particular librarians were none of those fine things. They should have sent the police away.
I suspect the library board will reverse this decision.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2015, @08:12PM
> Come on. Librarians use to standup for freedom and privacy, they even lobbied and got laws against police seizing someone's library reading history
(1) Librarians as a professional organization did some of that, there have always been individual librarians who disagreed with the official policies of the american library association (ALA).
(2) They failed to get those laws passed. What they did succeed at is redesigning their circulation databases to delete the lending history of a book as soon as it was returned.
BTW, congress was super efficient at getting video store rental records protected, after a member of the political class got Borked. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2015, @05:59AM
I just realized I left out an important word which could make that post misleading, it should read:
(1) Librarians as a professional organization did some of that, but there have always been individual librarians who disagreed with the official policies of the american library association (ALA).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 13 2015, @02:44AM
See AC's response. He helps to point out that librarians are pretty smart, but they aren't "men of action" - or women in most cases.
Enter a library and shoot a librarian? I can't think of one single time. But, you've missed the point, I'm afraid. Librarians are smart enough to understand a veiled threat, no matter how subtly it is delivered.