A Quick Chat About Patron Data Privacy During Company Acquisitions and Mergers

Another week, another acquisition. The latest news in the library vendor world came last Monday, with Clairvate purchasing ProQuest at the small sum of $5.63 billion. Academic libraries that subscribe to Web of Science and EndNote with Clairvate and Alma and Primo with ProQuest face the reality that now all of these products are owned by one company. We can’t forget that ProQuest has its fair share of mergers and acquisitions, though, as illustrated in Marshal Breeding’s ProQuest mergers and acquisitions chart.

This latest acquisition continues the trend of consolidation in the library vendor marketplace. With this consolidation of products and services comes the ability for companies to create more complete profiles of library patrons through increased data collection and tracking capabilities. In fact, during the company call regarding the acquisition on May 17th, company representatives commented that with the ProQuest acquisition, the company “can serve the entire research value chain, early stage and K12 setting, thru postgrad.” Put another way by another company representative, “We can touch every student in K through doctoral degrees everywhere. There is no product overlap.” Combine that quote with phrases from the press release such as “long-term predictive and prescriptive analytics opportunities from the enhanced combination of ProQuest’s data cloud with the billions of harmonized data points in the Clarivate Research Intelligence Cloud” (emphasis mine). You start to understand why this acquisition is a patron privacy concern.

This isn’t the first time a merger or acquisition brought up library privacy concerns. However, the size of this acquisition is cause for all libraries to stop and review their vendor management practices. The vendor relationship lifecycle can assist libraries in reviewing some of their vendor management practices. It’s difficult to determine if a vendor will still be around as an independent company in a few years when you’re shopping for a product or service. Nonetheless, it’s still worthwhile to do some research around the company. For example, you can find the latest vendor news in various library industry publications and sites such as Computers in Libraries and Library Technology Guides. Doing some research ahead of time (including asking around your professional network) can flag potentially problematic or unsustainable businesses to remove from consideration in the selection process.

The onboarding stage provides opportunities for libraries to mitigate privacy risks throughout the rest of the vendor lifecycle. Contracts usually do the heavy lifting when determining the fate of customer data after an acquisition, merger, or bankruptcy. We won’t get into the detailed legal aspects of mergers and acquisitions – we are not lawyers at LDH. Still, you can read a two-part blog series about pre- and post-closing liabilities around privacy and acquisitions/mergers if you want the nitty-gritty legal details. Nonetheless, vendor contracts should have something in the contract about what will happen to patron data in the case of a merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy. Though the concept of data ownership is fraught with equating data to a commodity, retaining ownership of patron data by the library addresses some of the risks, including patron data in the list of company assets during a sale or bankruptcy. Another contract negotiation point is reserving the right to withdraw the library’s data from the company after a sale or bankruptcy. This withdrawal needs to address how the data should be securely transferred and deleted from the vendor’s systems, treating this process as the separation process at the end of a business relationship. Yet another control strategy is requiring explicit and affirmative informed consent from patrons if the vendor wants to include the patrons’ data in the acquisition or merger. The more control the library has over the fate of the data after a company is bought or goes under, the better chances the library has to mitigate privacy risks.

Thanks to the trend toward monopolies in the library marketplace, libraries subscribing to ProQuest or Clairvate products and services have limited options outside of using the contract in controlling data flows and disclosures during a merger or acquisition. When discussed with your legal staff, the contract strategies mentioned earlier can mitigate data privacy risks when the vendor eventually becomes part of a giant conglomerate. Conglomerates (or monopolies) can go beyond the basic user profiles and analytics with more invasive behavioral tracking and analytic practices traditionally absent in libraries. Until there is a critical mass of libraries combining their political capital to push vendors to engage in privacy-preserving data management, individual libraries will need to continue navigating contract languages and “what if” scenarios on a vendor-by-vendor basis.

Open Data of Another Kind

Entryway door with the words "OPEN" and "NOW" written in tape on the two steps leading up to the door, respectively.
Photo by Kadir Celep on Unsplash

We sometimes like to say that something happens because of “magic” – in reality, that “magic” is the result of the (invisible) labor of real and unmagical people. To some patrons, this “magic” takes the form of the many programs, resources, and services the library provides daily. It takes the work of people in both the public and back-office spaces of the library. What happens, then, if you take the “magic” created by people and replace it with the “magic” of technology?

Last month the Santa Monica Public Library announced their plans to reopen a branch closed to the public due to staff cuts last year. The branch opening wasn’t made possible by regaining staff positions but instead made possible through a state grant to expand physical services through a suite of self-service technology. This grant uses existing technologies that many libraries use, including self-checkout machines, security cameras, and a controlled entry card swipe/tap or keypad. Combining these technologies to create a self-service library without staff isn’t new, either – for example, several European libraries expanded physical library hours through self-service technologies. The technology behind Santa Monica Library’s branch reopening, Open+, has been piloted in other US libraries such as Gwinnett County Public Library to expand library hours and service sans on-site staff.

This open library model comes with tradeoffs that leave many library workers worried. Library workers and patrons alike raised valid concerns around open libraries replacing staff to save costs. Another tradeoff that some might miss is the increased collection, processing, and retention of data generated from patron use of the physical library. While the individual technologies are not new, the combination of existing technologies to create an open library expands the amount of surveillance and data collection to a level that exponentially exposes patrons to various privacy harms.

We might as well start with the elephant in the room. The use of security cameras in libraries has been contested throughout the years, with libraries trying to balance using cameras for physical library security and patron privacy. ALA created guidelines about security camera use for libraries but the use of cameras in library spaces brings the risk of violating patron privacy throughout each stage of the patron data lifecycle:

  • Collection – where are the cameras located? Are they recording footage of patrons using library resources, such as browsing shelves, computer usage, or other identifiable usages of materials in the library?
  • Storage, retention, and deletion – where is the recorded footage being stored? Is it locally stored in the library? If not, where is that storage? Is it with a vendor, organizational IT, or even local law enforcement? How long are recordings kept? How many copies, including backups, exist, and how long are they kept?
  • Access and disclosure – who has access to the footage? Library workers, the vendor, the parent organization? Can law enforcement access the footage without a court-issued order? What are the policies around disclosing footage?

Depending on the library’s location, some state and local regulations around library privacy can potentially include security camera footage as part of their definition of protected patron data. However, this protection cannot be guaranteed even if the regulations include such footage if the vendor recording and retaining footage is not legally obligated to protect this footage or if the footage is stored and retained by law enforcement.

The use of controlled entry technology brings another privacy risk to patrons in an open library setting. Academic, school, and other special libraries might be familiar with using card swipe or tap machines that control access to physical library spaces. These technologies are uncommon in public libraries, however.[1] These controlled access systems can create logs of patron data: who came into the library at what time. This patron log can potentially put patron privacy at risk through a data breach or misuse through secondary use (the reuse of data collected for another purpose) in the form of learning analytics and marketing campaigns.

Security cameras and controlled entry onto themselves create some privacy risks; nonetheless, these risks can be mitigated if particular care is put into the planning and implementation of each technology. Pairing these technologies with other monitoring technologies creates a profile of a patron’s library use through the combination of data sets. Who is doing the data collecting, storing, and retaining determines the level of risk to patron privacy. That is where libraries considering open library models need to spend considerable time assessing the privacy risks associated with who controls the surveillance technologies used to collect and store patron data. Currently, open library models consist of third-party technologies and services to coordinate all of these technologies. These third parties are not subject to state and local regulations around library data privacy (outside of California and Missouri). Trying to replace one “magic” (people) with another (technology services provided by a third party) doesn’t get rid of cost. Instead, it transfers and transforms it to the point where some library workers might not realize that the open library “magic” comes at the cost of patron privacy.

[1] The use of controlled entry technology in public libraries is also an equity issue concerning which groups of patrons can access the library outside of staffed hours. Who is excluded from the physical library in an open library model, and what are the implications of excluding them?

Vendor Ethics and You, Or Giving a Damn About Who’s Sharing Your Patron Data

A red sticker on a metal utility pole reads "do you want a future of decency, equality, and real social justice"
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The news cycle did not stop during our Cherry Blossom Break last week, alas. Last week LexisNexis signed a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide massive amounts of personal information, including financial data, consumer data (such as purchases), and criminal data. The data provided by LexisNexis captures a very intimate view of a person’s personal and public life. As Sam Biddle states in the investigative article about the contract, “While you can at least attempt to use countermeasures against surveillance technologies… it’s exceedingly difficult to participate in modern society without generating computerized records of the sort that LexisNexis obtains and packages for resale.” If you haven’t already done so, read the article to get a sense of the contract details.

It is not the first time LexisNexis has been under scrutiny for its personal data dealings. We wrote about LexisNexis back in 2019 about their relationship with ICE, including LexisNexis’s interest in building an “extreme vetting” immigration system. This interest did not go unnoticed or unchallenged, particularly from library workers who led the calls to boycott the company. The latest contract news has renewed calls for libraries and scholarly communities – such as this statement from SPARC – to question their relationships with businesses such as LexisNexis that increasingly play significant roles in surveillance systems through their roles as data brokers.

“But Becky,” you might say, “we don’t do business with LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters. As long as we don’t do business with them, we don’t have anything to worry about.” While your vendors may have escaped the public scrutiny that LexisNexis has received throughout the years, your vendors are most likely, at the very least, collecting and sharing patron data as part of their business model (e.g. surveillance capitalism). Read the vendor contract:

  • What patron data does the vendor collect from patrons? From the library?
  • Under what circumstances does the vendor disclose patron data to fourth parties?
  • Does the vendor reserve the right to resell patron data collected from patrons and the library, even in aggregated or “anonymized” form?
  • Does the vendor reserve the right to keep patron data, even in aggregated or “anonymized” form, after the end of the business relationship? For what purposes do they keep the data?

After reading the vendor contract (as well as the vendor privacy policy), you might have a sense as to how a vendor works with patron data; however, the contract and policy are not telling the entire story. While a contract might state a vendor’s right to disclose or resell data, the details about where that data’s going and how it’s going to be used are sparse. Vendors like LexisNexis have multiple revenue streams. Your vendor might have another product not targeted toward the library market but still uses patron data in ways in which can harm patrons. How can a library figure out if a vendor’s business model doesn’t violate patron privacy?

This is where ethics comes into play. The library profession has several codes of ethics, such as the codes from ALA and IFLA. Library vendors by default are not beholden to these codes; however, this does not mean that libraries cannot hold vendors to a level of ethical practices or standards before they will do business with them. For example, Auraria Library conducts a comprehensive ethics review of library vendors, ranging from privacy and accessibility to sustainability and diversity, using both consultants and an internal ethics questionnaire. At the end of their article detailing the review process, Auraria Library’s Katy DiVittorio and Lorelle Gianelli make a call to other libraries to proactively review their relationships with vendors and taking measures in encouraging vendors to adopt a business model that aligns with Corporate Social Responsibility. As we have encountered in the past, a critical mass of libraries demanding changes to a vendor’s practices can make that change happen. Having more libraries conduct ethics reviews of vendors can prompt vendors to change their business models if their current models cause libraries to do business elsewhere.

Where should libraries start with reviewing vendors’ business ethics? The Auraria Library review process is one place to start. Even creating a statement such as Auraria’s can start the conversation about vendor ethics at your library, particularly with library patrons who might be at higher risk for harm due to the vendor’s business practices. The selection process of the vendor relationship lifecycle can be modified to include a review of the vendor’s business model, including checking the vendor against the Library Freedom Institute’s Vendor Privacy Scorecard or scorecards from independent third parties such as EcoVadis (if one is on file, that is).  Vendor assessments and audits are other places where scorecards and metrics can be used. Being detailed about the appropriate uses of patron data in the vendor contract – including details around patron data collection, processing, retention, and disclosure – can give libraries some legal leverage in protecting patron data from questionable vendor business practices. The more libraries demand ethical business practices from their vendors, the more likely vendors will notice.

With these suggestions, however, comes a warning for libraries. Vendors might start marketing themselves as socially responsible or abiding by library ethics codes as more libraries ask for details about the ethics of a vendor’s business model. If a vendor’s marketing around social responsibility and ethics centers around legal compliance or if the marketing lacks specific details about their practices, then you might have a case of “ethics washing.”  Commonly encountered in tech companies, “ethics washing” can obscure or obfuscate problematic business practices through the use of savvy marketing tactics or pointing customers to one non-problematic area of the business while not drawing attention to a more problematic area (e.g. Google’s ethical AI work and, well, Google being Google). While it is tempting for libraries to accept vendors at their word through their marketing materials and sales pitches, it is not enough. Libraries must actively review vendor practices throughout the entire business relationship to ensure that the vendor’s ethics are in line with the ethics of the library profession.

In the end, libraries compromise their ability to live up to our professional ethics when working with vendors that violate those ethics. If libraries cannot or will not work with vendors that respect and uphold patron privacy, we as a profession then must have the difficult conversation about the inclusion of a patron’s right to privacy in our professional ethics codes. At the very least, we owe patrons the truth about the library’s data practices, including our relationships with vendors who use patron data in ways that can come back to harm them and not engage in ethics washing of our own.

LastPass and Clubhouse and Virginia, Oh My!

A grey tabby cat curled up and sleeping between newspaper sheets.
It’s hard to get started on a Monday morning… image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyawan/2325855567/ (CC BY 2.0)

A lot happened in the privacy world last week! Let’s go over a couple of news items that affect libraries and library patrons alike.

LastPass Free Tier Woes

The popular password manager LastPass announced changes to their free tier accounts last week that could leave many libraries and library patrons scrambling for an alternative. Starting March 16th, LastPass will require free account users to choose where to use LastPass: mobile or computer. Free account users will also lose access to email support to troubleshoot any problems with the password manager.  For many free tier account users, being forced to choose to have their primary password manager only installed on one platform severely limits the usefulness and protection of their chosen password manager.

If you have a LastPass free tier account and don’t want these restrictions, your options are limited:

  • If you have room in your budget and want to stay with LastPass, you can upgrade to a paid account. This option not only avoids migrating your passwords to another manager and instead unlocks additional features, such as encrypted file storage. While we’re used to having “free” accounts, it might be time to make peace with the fact that it’s time to start paying for password managers.
  • You can migrate to another password manager. There are several choices in the marketplace; however, not many have free tier accounts, which means you might end up paying for a password manager anyway. Bitwarden, an open-source password manager, does have a free tier account that allows for syncing between multiple devices if you need a free account. KeePassXP is another free option for the more technically-inclined who can self-host their password manager.

You can read more about the basics of password managers in our Obligatory Password Manager post from April 2020.

Clubhouse Is Not Your Library’s New Social Media App

So… Clubhouse, that new shiny app that everyone’s talking about. You’re curious about it, aren’t you? You’re wondering if you can add it to the family of social media accounts for your library when you get an invite to join.

Let us stop you right there.

In addition to being exclusive to iOS, being inaccessible, and being a free-for-all for harassment, Clubhouse’s privacy practices are almost non-existent. Literally – the privacy policy did disappear for a while! Nonetheless, the privacy policy is up, and it’s one of the more invasive privacy policies that should make you pause before using the product for any library program, service, or process. We’ve rounded up several articles that describe these invasive data privacy practices in detail:

Some folks will say that other social media companies engage in some of the same practices. However, the overall poor quality and construction of the privacy policy combined with privacy practices that violate several privacy laws in the US and the EU,  the best way to protect patron privacy while using Clubhouse at your library is to not use Clubhouse.

Virginia Getting a New Data Privacy Law?

Virginia libraries! You might have heard about a new data privacy bill that currently sits on the governor’s desk at the time of this writing (it might be signed by the time this post is published!). What is the library tl;dr of the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act?

  • The bill provides similar data rights as California’s two new privacy regulations, CCPA and CPRA, including rights for consumers to request access and deletion of personal data, as well as the right to opt-out of businesses selling their data.
  • The bill’s scope is also similar to CCPA’s and CPRA’s scopes, targeting for-profit businesses doing business in the state who meet certain thresholds, such as controlling or processing data from 100,000 consumers. Non-profits and higher education institutions are exempt.

Once this bill is signed into law, library vendors who do business in the state and meet the scope thresholds will need to comply with the new law. Library vendors who already comply with CCPA have a head start, but libraries might find themselves with vendors who have to play catchup. It might be time to start reviewing contracts and vendor privacy policies as well as the Act to determine what data rights your patrons have and how they can exercise those rights with those vendors.

LDH in The News

LDH is proud to announce that our founder, Becky Yoose, will give the Keynote Address at the Evergreen International Online Conference on May 25th, 2021! This annual conference draws Evergreen users, developers, advocates, vendors, and others interested in the Evergreen ILS or open-source software community from around the library world and beyond. This year’s conference is online and registration is now open! If you want to join in on the presentation fun, the call for proposals is open until March. We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

Security Without Privacy

Powerpoint slide listing the types of data collected by typical web app logs, including timestamps, user behavior, biometric data, and geographic location.
Slide from the SNSI October Webinar

Academic libraries have been in the information security spotlight due to the resurgence of Silent Librarian. The collection of academic user accounts gives attackers access to whatever the user has access to in the campus network, including personal data. Attackers gaining access to library patron data was not the reason why academic library information security was in the news again this past month, however.

Protecting The Bottom Line

In late October, the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI) presented a webinar [slides, transcript] that made several controversial statements and proposals. The one that caught the attention of the academic researcher and library worlds is the proposal of a publisher proxy tool to monitor user access and use of publisher resources. In the transcript and slides, the proposal included tracking behavioral data in addition to other personally identifiable data. For example, the publisher would actively track the subjects of the articles that the user is searching and reading:

159

00:29:10.020 –> 00:29:17.280

Corey Roach: You can also move over to behavioral stuff. So it could be, you know, why is a pharmacy major suddenly looking up a lot of material on astrophysics or

160

00:29:18.300 –> 00:29:27.000

Corey Roach: Why is a medical professional and a hospital suddenly interested in internal combustion things that just don’t line up and we can identify fishy behavior.

While there are other points of contention in the presentation (we recommend reading the transcript and the slides, as well as the articles linked above), the publisher proxy tool brings up a perennial concern around information security practices that libraries need to be aware of when working with IT and publishers.

You Say Security, But What About Privacy?

Security and privacy are not one-to-one equivalents. We covered the differences in security and privacy in a previous post. Privacy focuses on the collection and processing of personal data while security focuses on protecting organizational assets that may include personal data. Privacy is impossible without security. Privacy relies on security to control access and use of personal data. However, there is the misconception that security guarantees privacy. Security is “do one thing and do it well” – protect whatever it’s told to protect. Security does not deal with the “why” in data collection and processing. It does the job, no questions asked.

When security measures like the proxy tool above are touted to protect publisher assets, the question of “why this data collection and tracking” gets lost in the conversation. Libraries, in part, also collect behavioral data through their proxies to control access to library resources. Even though this data collection by libraries is problematic in itself, the fact remains that the data in this proxy is collected by the library and is subject to library policy and legal regulations around library patron data. The same information collected by a vendor tool may not be subject to the same policies and regulations – outside of California and Missouri, there are no state laws specifically regulating vendor collection, processing, and disclosure of library patron data. Therefore, any data collected by the vendors are only subject to whatever was negotiated in the contract and the vendor privacy policies, both of which most likely allow for extensive collection, processing, and disclosure of patron data. Security that uses patron data doesn’t necessarily guarantee patron privacy and could even put patron privacy in jeopardy.

Bringing Privacy into Library InfoSec

Academic libraries are part of a campus system and are one of many ways an attacker can gain access to campus assets, including personal data, as demonstrated by Silent Librarian. However, academic libraries are also targets for increased surveillance in the name of information security, as illustrated by the SNSI presentation. The narrative of “academic library as the weak link in a campus network” can force libraries into a situation where patron privacy and professional ethics are both compromised.  This is particularly true if this narrative is driven by information security professionals not well acquainted with privacy and data ethics or by vendors who might financially benefit from the data collected by this increased surveillance of library patrons.

Library organizations and groups are weighing in on how information security should consider library privacy and data ethics. This Tuesday, ALA will be hosting a Town Hall meeting about surveillance in academic libraries. DLF’s Privacy and Ethics in Technology Working Group and the Library Freedom Project, co-collaborators with ALA’s Town Hall event, will most likely add to the conversation in the coming weeks with resources and statements. We’ll keep you updated as the conversation continues!

In the meantime…

A small postscript to the blog post – one reoccurring theme that we come across when talking to libraries about privacy is the importance of relationships with others in and outside the library. These relationships are key in creating buy-in for privacy practices as well as creating strong privacy advocates in the organization. What type of relationship do you have with your organizational information security folks? Check out this short presentation about building organizational relationships to promote a strong privacy and security culture if you are still wondering where to start.

Just Published – Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Today we’re happy to announce the publication of the Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries. This toolkit is part of the Data Privacy Best Practices Training for Libraries project, an LSTA-funded collaborative project between the Pacific Library Partnership and LDH focusing on teaching libraries the basics of data privacy. This introduction into data privacy in libraries serves as a guide for both administration and front-line workers, providing practical advice and knowledge in protecting patron data privacy.

The cover page for Data Privacy Best Practices Toolkit for Libraries: A Guide for Managing and Protecting Patron Data.

What does the toolkit cover? The topics range from the data lifecycle and managing vendor relationships to creating policies and procedures to protect patron privacy. The toolkit covers specific privacy concerns in the library, including law enforcement requests, surveillance, and data analytics. We also get to meet Mel and Rafaël, two library patrons who have unique privacy issues that libraries need to consider when thinking about patron privacy.  At the end of the toolkit is an extensive resource section with library privacy scholarship, professional standards, and regulations for further reading.

This toolkit is part of a larger group of resources, including templates and examples libraries can use to develop contract addendums, privacy policies and procedures, and data inventories and privacy risk assessments. In short, there are a lot of resources that are freely available for you to use in your library! Please let us know if you have any questions about the project resources.

Finally, stay tuned – the project is going into its second year, focusing on “train the trainer” workshops for both data privacy and cybersecurity. We’ll keep you updated as more materials are published!

Summer Homework – Requesting Your Data

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Have you ever wondered what data OverDrive collects while you’re reading the latest ebook? Or what Kanopy collects when you’re watching a documentary? As library workers, we have some sense as to what vendors are collecting, but we are also patrons – what exactly are vendors collecting about *us*?

GDPR and CCPA both give different sets of users (EU residents and CA consumers, respectively) the right to access the data collected by organizations and businesses; however, some organizations extended that right to all users, regardless of geographic residency. Below are some of the more well-known library vendors who are offering some form of data request process for their users (aka library patrons, including you!):

  • Cengage
  • Elsevier
  • Kanopy’s data request appears only to apply to CA consumers: “Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, if you are a California resident and your business relationship with us is primarily for personal, family or household purposes, you may request certain data regarding our disclosure, if any, of personal information to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to privacy@kanopy.com with “Request for California Privacy Information” in the subject line. You may make such a request up to once per calendar year. If applicable, we will provide to you via email a list of the categories of personal information disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately-preceding calendar year, along with the third parties’ names and addresses. Please note that not all personal information sharing is covered by Section 1798.83’s requirements.”
  • LexisNexis
  • OverDrive
  • ProQuest
    • ExLibris, owned by ProQuest, appears to have a different data request process: “You may request to review, correct or delete the personal information that you have previously provided to us through the Ex Libris Sites. For requests to access, correct or delete your personal information, please send your request along with any details you may have regarding the method by which the information was submitted to privacy@exlibrisgroup.com. Requests to access, change, or delete your information will be addressed within a reasonable timeframe.”

What is surprising is that there are not more library vendors that offer this option, or not extending the option to all users. This might change over time, depending on how the newest data privacy ballot initiative in California goes in November, or if additional regulations are passed in other states or even in the federal government. If more companies provide this right to access for all users, then it’s more likely that this practice will become a standard practice industry-wide. LDH will provide the latest updates around data access options from library vendors when they come along!

Last Minute Panic: A CCPA Update

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

We hate to break it to you, but there are only a few weeks left in 2019. Do you know what that means? That’s right – only a few more weeks before the California Consumer Privacy Act comes into effect. A lot has happened since our first newsletter about the CCPA in March, so let’s take some time to catch everyone up on the need-to-knows about CCPA as we head into 2020.

Everything and nothing have changed

Lawmakers introduced almost 20 amendments in the past few months in the State Legislature, ranging from grammatical edits to substantial changes to the CCPA. In the end, only a handful of amendments were signed by the state governor, all of which do not substantially change the core of CCPA. There are now a few exceptions to CCPA with the amendments, such as employee data, but that’s the extent to the changes introduced into the Act going into 2020.

However, this doesn’t mean that we won’t see some of the stalled or dead amendments come back in the next legislative session. Expect additional amendments in the coming year, including new amendments that might affect regulation and scope of the Act.

What you need to know about regulation and enforcement

In October 2019, the California Attorney General office published a draft set of regulations of how their office will enforce CCPA. While the public comment period is open until December 6th, many businesses are taking the regulations as their new playbook in preparing for CCPA compliance.

“Household” dilemma

The problematic definition of “personal information” remains… problematic. The amendment that sought to remove “household” from the definition stalled in the State Legislature. The regulations address the handling of household information to a small extent. If someone requests access to personal information, including household information, the business has the option to give aggregated data if they cannot verify the identity of the requester.

Again, this broad definition has ramifications regarding patrons requesting information from library vendors. Libraries should work with library vendors in reviewing confidentiality and privacy policies and procedures and discuss the possible impact this definition will have on patron privacy.

Hello, COPPA!

One of the major elements of CCPA is the regulations surrounding collecting and processing personal information from anyone under 16 years of age. CCPA requires businesses to get affirmative authorization from anyone 13 years old up to 16 years old before the business can sell their personal information. To comply with the new requirement, many businesses might now have to collect or otherwise verify the age of the online user. This leads into the realm of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) – now that the business has actual knowledge of the online user’s age, more businesses could be subject to liability under COPPA.

This could lead to another tricky conversation for libraries – library vendors who fall under CCPA collecting additional patron data for compliance. Collecting and processing patron data is sometimes unavoidable due to operational needs, but it’s still worthwhile to ensure that the data is properly secured, processed, and deleted.

Do Not Track, for real this time

Do your browsers on your library public computers have “Do Not Track” turned on by default, or have other browser plugins that prevent tracking by third parties? If not, here’s another reason to do so – the regulations state that “If a business collects personal information from consumers online, the business shall treat user-enabled privacy controls, such as a browser plugin or privacy setting or other mechanism, that communicate or signal the consumer’s choice to opt-out of the sale of their personal information as a valid request…” So get installing those privacy plugins already!

Do we have to comply with CCPA?

It depends on who the “we” is in this question. As of now, most California libraries are most likely out of the scope of CCPA (though, as Joshua Metayer pointed out, the CCPA gives no guidance as to what is considered a for “profit” business). Library vendors will most likely have to comply if they do business in California. Some businesses are trying to keep CCPA compliance strictly to CA residents by setting up a separate site for California, while other businesses, such as Microsoft, plan to give all US residents the same rights CA residents have under CCPA.

We’ve only covered a section of what’s all going on with CCPA – there’s still a lively debate as to what is all entailed by the definition of “sale” in regards to personal information which is a newsletter in itself! We also could have an entire newsletter on CCPA 2.0, which is slated to be on the November 2020 ballot. California continues to be a forerunner in privacy law in the US, and the next year will prove to be an important one not only for everyone under the scope of CCPA but for other states looking to implement their CCPA-like state law.

Leaving Platforms and Patrons Behind

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!

Remember when the online library catalog was just a telnet client? For some of you, you might even remember the process of moving from the card catalog to an online catalog. The library catalog has seen many different forms in recent decades.

The most recent wave of transitions is the migration from an old web catalog – in most cases an OPAC that came standard with an ILS – to a newer discovery layer. This discovery layer is typically hosted by the vendor and offers the ability to search for a wider array of collections and materials. Another main draw of the discovery layers in the market is the enhanced user experience. Many discovery layers allow users to add content to the site, including ratings, comments, and sharing their reading lists to others on the site.

While being able to provide newer services to patrons is important, this also brings up a dilemma for libraries. Many discovery layers are hosted by vendors, and many have separate Terms of Service and Privacy Policies attached to their products outside of the library’s policies. The majority of library catalogs that the discovery layers are meant to replace are locally hosted by the library, and fall under the library’s privacy policies. Libraries who made the transition to the discovery layer more often than not left their older catalog up and running, marketed as the “classic” catalog. However, the work necessary to keep up two catalogs can be substantial, and some libraries have retired their classic catalogs, leaving only the discovery layer for patrons to use.

The dilemma – How will the library provide a core library service to patrons objecting to the vendor’s TOS or privacy policy when the library only offers one way to access that core service?

We can use the Library Bill of Rights [LBR] interpretations from ALA to help guide us through this dilemma. The digital access interpretations of the LBR provides some guidance:

Users have the right to be free of unreasonable limitations or conditions set by libraries, librarians, system administrators, vendors, network service providers, or others. Contracts, agreements, and licenses entered into by libraries on behalf of their users should not violate this right… As libraries increasingly provide access to digital resources through third-party vendors, libraries have a responsibility to hold vendors accountable for protecting patrons’ privacy. [Access to Digital Resources and Services: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights]

Moving core services to third-party vendors can create a barrier between patrons and the library, particularly when that barrier is the vendor’s TOS or privacy policy. The library then needs to decide what next steps to take. One step is to negotiate with the vendor regarding changes to the TOS and privacy policy-based to address patron concerns. Another step is a step that several libraries have opted for – keeping the classic catalog available to patrons alongside the discovery layer. Each step has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of resources and cost.

The classic catalog/discovery layer dilemma is a good example of how offering newer third-party platforms to provide core library services can create privacy dilemmas for your patrons and potentially lock them out from using core services. If your library finds itself making such a transition – be it the library catalog or another core service platform – the ALA Privacy Checklists and the interpretations of the LBR can help guide libraries through the planning process. Regardless of the actions taken by the library, ensuring that all patrons have access to core library services should be a priority, and that includes taking privacy concerns to account when replacing core service platforms.

Privacy in the News: LinkedIn and the “Like” Button

Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat! We have various updates from around libraryland and beyond, so let’s start the week by catching you up on important news and developments.

LinkedIn Learning Stalemate

Last week we learned that negotiations between ALA representatives and LinkedIn Learning stalled over the proposed changes the company plans to implement later this year that would require users to create a LinkedIn profile to access LinkedIn Learning resources. ALA released a public statement to LinkedIn Learning to reconsider their changes, while a petition on EveryLibrary is collecting signatures of libraries and library staff who will not renew (or will consider not renewing) their contracts with LinkedIn Learning in light of this upcoming change. The list of libraries committed to not renewing the service grows, with state libraries getting into the fray.

The story has also found its way to various news outlets:

LinkedIn Learning has directed those seeking comment for the recent statements from ALA and libraries to a blog post from June 2019, which doesn’t give much in the way of addressing the concerns raised in the recent weeks.

Time to rethink the embedded “Like” button?

Today, the Court of Justice for the European Union delivered a ruling that could have ripple effects in the US. The Court ruled that websites that embed the Facebook “Like” button are responsible for the privacy of the users on the website. According to the Court, a website that has the “Like” button must follow the same consent and data processing regulations laid out in European law, even though that data is being transferred to Facebook. This is not the first time that the embedded “Like” button has gotten into trouble in the EU – a recent example comes from 2016, where a German court ruled that a site with the embedded button violated user privacy.

Many libraries and vendor products include the “Like” button on websites, catalogs, and other patron-facing applications and services. Embedding social media buttons such as the “Like” button already presents several privacy issues. For example, this 2013 article from Mother Jones explains how companies can track users through websites that have the “Tweet” button embedded into their pages. These buttons and widgets collect patron information and this information can be sent back those social media sites even if the patron doesn’t use the buttons on the page.

With US states looking toward the EU and GDPR as a foundation to build their own state data privacy laws, this ruling may influence how US law interprets the responsibility for user privacy when a website embeds social media buttons that have been known to track users. Even if no laws come to pass, it would still be worthwhile to revisit your organization’s use of these types of social media buttons on your websites and if that use aligns with your privacy policy and patron privacy expectations.
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