Cool Marketing Thoughts

EnGadget reports that the public library in Naperville, Illinois, (US) now takes fingerprints of people who want to check their e-mail or surf the web using the library’s computing facilities. Library officials are implementing a system that requires authentication by fingerprint scanner before you can execute any action on a pc. This thing is just one of the silly undemocratic rules that are applied in the combat against invisible evildoers.

“There’s some mumbo jumbo flying about how your fingerprint scans can’t be reverse engineered by evildoers, and how the data can’t possibly be cross-referenced with other more notable fingerprint registries kept by the FBI and state police but we and the ACLU know the fishy whiff of privacy invasion when we smell it. Yeah, call us paranoid if you must, but it just seems like overkill to have to submit to a fingerprinting before being able to check email in a public library.”

Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing says :

“Library officials in a Chicago suburb plan to scan and record visitor fingerprints, purportedly to prevent unauthorized persons from using library computers. Way to make libraries a more happyfun haven of knowledge, guys!”

From the Washington Post :

“Library officials said they wanted to tighten computer access because many people borrow library cards and pass codes from friends or family to log on. The technology also will help the library implement a new policy that allows parents to put filters on their childrens’ accounts, officials said.

But privacy advocates have criticized the plan, which would make Naperville only the second library system in the nation to use fingerprint-scanning technology, according to the American Library Association.”

If you’re wondering why they’re doing it, the answer is also in the article. OMG, they’re not even hiding it. What kind of a country has such a profound mistrust in its population? If I get this straight, the US government is convinced everyone has something to hide. Every citizen is a potential criminal. Pretty soon, you’ll see an anti-terror squad taking over a library with teargas and brutal force because someone who didn’t pay his parking fees got recognized by the system and accidentally got marked ‘dangerous’. Nice prospects.

Here’s the quote :

“We take people’s fingerprints because we think they might be guilty of something, not because they want to use the library,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois.”

’nuff said.

[via EnGadget]

Article on the Washington Post
BoingBoing’s Entry on this matter

Do you sometimes also question the current media-landscape ? Do you also have the feeling that audience-numbers, and thus commercial interests prevail ? That even public broadcasters seldom leave the beaten track ? Do you believe that citizens should also be able to exert their communication right to produce their own media ? That there is little space for the unexpected, for the local, for small things, as well as big issues ? Do you also miss auditive adventures ? With music that cannot be listened to elsewhere ? Spaces where talents get the chance to grow or even mess about in a funny way ? Where minorities get a voice and are empowered ?

In the whole of North-Belgium there are only three radio’s with an independent, non-commercial profile and organised in a basic-democratic way, by each community for its own community. Spaces where people can realise their creative ideas in a flexible way, be it on a weekly basis or a single project. Radio Scorpio (106.0 fm) in Leuven, Radio Katanga (105.1 fm) in Aalst and Radio Centraal (106.7 fm) in Antwerp. Radio Progress in Sint-Niklaas is still active, but did not get a licence during the recent round of frequency allocation in the summer of 2004.

Especially in big cities such community radios fulfill a specific and increasingly important role in terms of social inclusion and participation. It is, however, precisely there that the equally sounding commercial stations dominate the spectrum. Alternatives, on the other hand, are forced to operate at very low emission power at the margins. Take the case of Antwerp and that of Radio Centraal. The station, celebrating its 25th birthday this year, is totally independent and self-supporting without transmitting any advertising. Last summer Radio Centraal got a new licence as city radio, but due to the very technical regulation in place it can only transmit at 14watt, not enough to carry its signal across the city. In large areas of the city the radio can no longer be listened to. Because Centraal defied these regulatory limits, to reach its many publics, they were forced to pay a fine and will be taken off air for a week from 18th till 25th of June 2005.

In doing so, the Flemish media regulator is silencing one of the very few really independent and non-commercially operating radios in North-Belgium, temporary now, but structurally in the long run. Such forms of soft censorship are a democracy unworthy and cannot be accepted!

As collaborator, listener, sympathiser or just concerned citizen, we call upon you to protest against this decision and also support our aims regarding the democratic, social and cultural relevance of alternative community media, media diversity and regulation that supports such initiatives instead of gagging them.

• For the recognition at a regional, national and international level of governance of the cultural and social benefits of (local) independent and non-commercial media-initiatives
• For a statute of non-commercial radios
• For the adaptation of technical norms allowing for another voice to be heard next to the abundant commercial offer

Transnational mobilisation for local actions regarding communication rights is not only important in terms of support, but also to raise awareness about the consequences of commercialisation in terms of the public sphere and the citizens right to communicate. So, please do distribute this text and URL as widely as possible!

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CE TEXTE EN FRANCAIS
LIST OF PEOPLE WHO’VE SIGNED ALREADY
SIGN THE PETITION

[via Larz,D.]