Deep-Fried Data

I run a small web archive for about twenty thousand people. Being invited to speak at the Library of Congress is like being a kid who glues paper fins to a cardboard tube and then gets asked to talk to NASA about rocket propulsion. As every speaker has correctly said, it is a signal honor to be here. It also feels strange to be speaking in D.C., at the seat of government. In most of the talks I give, the U.S. government is an adversary. But today I am at a government institution that champions not just freedom, but the fundamental right to privacy, and the dignity that that entails. During the panic that followed September 11, Carla Hayden, then head of the American Library Association, took a principled stand against provisions in the Patriot Act that required librarians to reveal what their patrons were reading. She did it in the face of ridicule from Attorney General Ashcroft and the administration. And of course just a few days ago, she became our new Librarian of Congress. It saddens me that those provisions in the Patriot Act, which seemed so threatening and un-American at the time, look almost quaint today. And this time it's not the government, but the commercial Internet that has worked so hard to dismantle privacy.