Amy Ridenour is talking about the case of a librarian in Vermont who refused the police access to the library’s public computers.
To me this is not only a clear obstruction of justice, but an issue of personal arrogance on the part of the librarian as well.
After all, had the police shown up and signed in like anybody else, they could’ve looked around those computers to their heart’s content. Who’s to say that nobody ever does that, anyway?
Just because you don’t like somebody doesn’t mean you can deny them the same full access to public services granted to anybody else, but that’s what the librarian in Vermont was doing. She should be fired and brought up on charges, especially considering the serious nature of the investigation. She is clearly not a responsible person to be running children’s programs.
One’s personal political beliefs do not trump the safety of those whom one serves.
{ 8 comments }
Trudy,
just because the police could have done that, doesn’t mean it was their right to do so. i honestly have no idea, though, i mean that comment as inquisitively as possible. does anyone know whether the librarian was, as a point of law, way out of line?
working on a public computer in a public place does not suggest the exixtence of a reasonable expectation of privacy, hence specific laws have to be passed to ensure it. IMHO, the library issue is pure paranoid hysteria. If you don’t want Uncle Sam to know what pornography you are reading, get it in a plain brown wrapper through the mail addressed to "Resident" (or an assumed name) like everyone else.Â
The police didn’t want to just use the computer like anyone else, they wanted to seize the computer and take it for analysis. Seems reasonable that they get a warrant to do that.Â
The Library did cooperate by turning off the machine so that nothing would change on it while the police got their warrant.Â
Dave Justus’s last blog post..Oil Prices
Trudy, Dave’s facts seem to radically alter the way the story goes.
Ron Coleman’s last blog post..The ‘litigant-funded? research canard
I don’t mind the cops being able to look at a publicly available computer without a warrant. But if they want to seize the computer and take it to a lab, they should need to get a warrant for that – just because something is public property doesn’t mean the police should be able to do anything they want to it.
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..Phew
@Zach
Your question was more than logical – Was the Librarian legally out of line? And the answer to that is in the article Trudy linked to from The Examiner.
‘A new Vermont law requires libraries to demand court orders in such situations [which] took effect July 1, but [that] wasn’t in place that June day. The library’s policy was to require one.’
So it looks like she was well within her boundaries.
As for the moral aspect that has seemed to arise from this case, I am surprised to see that the very important difference between secrecy and privacy is not clearly defined.
Judith Flint’s actions have somehow been misconceived, making her out to be somewhat of a criminal, when in fact she was exercising not only her civil liberty of privacy but every single patron that had ever used that public computer.
I would have done the same.
Louise
"personal political beliefs"Â
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Hoo boy. It was <i>library policy</i> and a <i><b>law</b></i> – passed a few weeks later -Â says the same.Â
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If the police are looking for a killer who might appear on a bank’s surveillance video, they cannot just walk into the bank and demand all the files and equipment. Why should it be allowed in a library?Â
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And it seems they wanted to see the history of her blog and EMails – which would not actually be on the library computers anyway without at least very extensive forensic work, which takes days. Easier to get a subpoena and request the records/files from the host.Â
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No, the cops were in panic mode: justifiable, in their place I would probably have reacted the same way until I had maybe ten minutes to think.Â
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@teqjack
My thoughts exactly – going to the host for the info probably would have been a better idea.
Louise
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