Reviews.indd 194 College & Research Libraries strong and well-supported arguments to advance their cause. This worthwhile and provocative col- lection belongs in most academic librar- ies. Many readers will be encouraged by the authors’ proposals of practical and forceful means to reassert the importance of higher education in a democratic soci- ety.—W. Bede Mitchell, Georgia Southern University. Adams, Helen R., Robert F. Bocher, Carol A. Gordon, and Elizabeth Barry-Kes- seler. Privacy in the 21st Century: Issues for Public, School, and Academic Libraries. Foreword by Judith Krug. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2005. 247p. alk. paper, $40 (ISBN 1591582091). LC 2004-63832. The objective of this book is to “gather, in a single volume, information and further resources on privacy and confidentiality for public, school and academic librari- ans.” The four authors include an attorney and three librarians representing the three types of library. Although the structure of the book suggests that the issues are quite different for each library setting, a review of the material presented reveals a large amount of overlap among the three. The first three chapters cover legal and technological issues relevant to privacy in a library setting. The book traces the theme of privacy through law review articles and case law, and describes a number of federal statutes of interest to libraries, including the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and Neighborhood Children’s Internet Protection Act (NCIPA). For most libraries and their patrons, the strongest privacy protections are through their re- spective state statutes. All but two states have statutes related to library privacy and confidentiality, and Hawaii and Kentucky have attorney generals’ opinions uphold- ing the privacy rights of patrons. Although the statutory language and protections in each state differ, most state statutes define March 2006 “what is protected; who is protected; and when protected information can be released to or viewed by others including law enforcement authorities.” In addition to examining privacy protections under state and federal law, this book explores the threats to privacy inherent in a number of federal surveil- lance programs, including Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA), Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD), Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX), Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II), and DCS1000, also known as the FBI’s Carnivore program. Of particular interest to libraries is the FBI’s Library Awareness Program. In the 1970s and 1980s, the FBI conducted secret surveillance of the use of unclassifi ed scientific publications by foreign nationals in public and academic libraries. By the time the program ended, most states had passed confi dentiality laws to protect the records of library patrons. More recently, the USA Patriot Act has had a significant impact on privacy issues for libraries. The act changed the law as it relates to telecommunications and pri- vacy and mandated new procedures law enforcement agents and courts must fol- low for implementing those changes. The book provides a detailed discussion of the law relevant to library operations and ex- amines current developments, including the ALA’s response to the legislation. Also included are descriptions of a number of privacy issues related to In- ternet use, including technical issues such as cookies and spyware, and behavioral issues such as entering personally iden- tifiable information on Web sites. The potential of global positioning systems (GPS) and biometrics to compromise privacy, especially in the use of radio fre- quency identification (RFID) technology within library settings, is examined. Data can be stored on a chip using RFID tags in a manner similar to uniform product codes. RFID tags are activated by an elec- tronic reader, and the transponder on the tag sends the reader its data. Most RFID tags are passive and can only be read from a few feet away. However, active RFID tags, used to track shipping containers or railroad cars, transmit data and can be read from several hundred feet away. Although the book describes the category of RFID tags used by libraries as passive devices, it notes that privacy concerns related to the use of RFID led the ALA to pass a resolution addressing the issue. The discussion of privacy issues within public libraries, school media centers, and academic libraries is divided into three chapters. Although each sett ing has unique issues such as parental consent as required by COPPA, access to licensed resources, intellectual freedom, etc., there are more similarities than diff erences in the issues confronting each type of library. These issues include the use and reten- tion of patron records in circulation and interlibrary loan (and in some instances reference transactions), Internet use policy compliance, radio frequency iden- tification, other uses of library facilities (e.g., meeting rooms), and surveillance activities such as cameras. Each chapter also examines the use of privacy audits and privacy policies, their purpose be- ing to both protect and guide libraries in the treatment of privacy issues. The legal authority for these privacy protections is described elsewhere in the book in the general discussion of privacy statutes. The review of these issues and their basis in law would have worked better if they had been discussed together, identifying unique issues where appropriate. The appendices complement the dis- cussion providing privacy audit docu- ments and sample privacy and confiden- tiality policies for each type of library. They also include a number of policy statements on privacy and confidentiality issued by the ALA. Each chapter is well documented with footnotes. In addition, one chapter is a select bibliography of both Web- and print-based resources on privacy. The emphasis on Web-based resources throughout the book will make it easy Book Reviews 195 to research these issues in more depth; however, the relatively short lifespan of Web-based resources may make these references less useful in the future. Each abbreviation used is clearly defi ned, but the definitions do not always immediately follow their use in the text. Many, but not all, of the abbreviations used in the book are included in the glossary. Although the book is short and some- times repetitious, it does address a num- ber of complex legal and ethical issues in a clear and concise manner. In particular, the sample privacy audit documents and privacy and confi dentiality documents will be valuable to any library currently reviewing its policies relating to privacy and confi dentiality.—Juri Stratford, Uni- versity of California at Davis. Rogers, Richard. Information Politics on the Web. Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Pr., 2005. 216p. alk. paper, $35 (ISBN: 0262182424). LC 2004-050458. Rogers’s new book consists of six chapters that present a profoundly different way of thinking about information in cyberspace. It begins and ends with discussions of “back-end” and “front-end” politics and the extent to which they increasingly have led to the demise of alternative accounts of reality. In between, the author attempts to establish a set of principles and from them derive a proactive research strategy that can survive a searching info-political critique. Rogers bases his political analy- sis of the back-ends and front-ends of Web projects on the assumption that there exists, in the public sphere, a widespread public-spiritedness. In chapter one, the author introduces information politics. According to him, the terminology is used “to describe how sophisticated Western governments stage democracy, not through classic forms of deliberation and representation, but with polls that pulse and other manipulative tactics that attempt to ensure media communication strategies are eff ective in forming views that will fall in line with the offi cial account.”