The Draft Helsinki Charter - Response of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University
Principles of Access
Overall we welcome this draft charter, however we have a number of concerns.
It is our opinion that one of the principles of access should be privacy. Users should be able to access whatever materials they choose without being monitored or records being kept of what they access, unless there is prior evidence from another source that their activities violate the law or policies consistent with this charter to protect the network or safeguard resources for the purpose for which they were allocated.
Such a principle would be in line with existing librarians' codes of ethics (see http://www.lianza.org.nz/policy/confid.html, http://www.alia.org.au/policies/professional.ethics.html, point 4 for example)
2.3 We believe that mainstream schooling should integrally include education for all children on how to avoid being preyed upon, including in networked contexts.
3.2 We are pleased that there is recognition of the need of specialised institutions to restrict use that might "hinder the institution's ability to serve users pursuing its primary purposes". However, we are anxious that specialised instituions do not impose limits on access _beyond the extent needed_ to ensure that resources are committed to their primary purpose, as well as "on grounds other than the need to commit their resources to the service of their primary purposes".
4.3 We beleive that it is not appropriate for great reliance to be placed on commercial gateway pages and sources of information when non-commercial sources are available, and thus that any gateway pages created should take this into account.
5.1 We are concerned that the current wording of this clause does not say anything about staff monitoring use for no reason beyond nosiness. Thus we would be anxious that the final sentence of 5.1 is re-worded to read "However it would be an unwarranted invasion of users' privacy for staff to monitor the nature of the content accessed unless there is pre-existing good reason to suppose illegal content is being accessed (or access in a specialised institution is taking resources from the primary purpose of the institution).
6.2 We encourage the use of recommender systems, but only provided there is no commercial bias in such recommendations.
8.1 and 8.2 We have read reports of disturbing content being accidentally accessed without warning pages: we consider it important that staff do not discount or unduly down-play this possibility.
9.1 - 9.5 We are anxious that all such policies should be consistent with the charter.