What the Vendor Saw: Digital Surveillance in Libraries - Intellectual Freedom Blog

"Big publishers are getting into large scale user data collection that – without sufficient privacy protection – enables public surveillance. This change in business model puts academic and intellectual freedom at risk by making people reluctant to read or share publications for fear of government or commercial reprisal. One solution is more collective attention to and pushback on contract terms to curb use of library users’ personal data....

One daunting possibility is that patron data could feed into large scale surveillance. Both Thomson Reuters (owner of the Westlaw legal database) and RELX group (formerly Reed Elsevier) have had contracts to provide data to U.S. law enforcement, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It’s not clear that patron data has ever directly pipelined from vendors to police. But according to CUNY School of Law Professor Sarah Lamdan, both Thomson Reuters and RELX have not denied the possibility, and their privacy statements would not discount it...."