Show Me the Paper
Why is it that a petite librarian has the conviction to stand up for your rights than gigantic telecom corporations with armies of lawyers?
Read:
Children’s librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on “Love That Dog” when police showed up.
They weren’t kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library’s public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.
…
“What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman,” said the library’s director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint.
…
Flint was firm in her confrontation with the police.
“The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers and I said `OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,’” said Flint, 56. “He did say he didn’t need any paper. I said `You do.’ He said `I’m just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,’ and I told him `Show me the paper.‘”
Cybersecurity expert Fred H. Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, said the librarians acted appropriately.
“If you’ve told all your patrons `We won’t hand over your records unless we’re ordered to by a court,’ and then you turn them over voluntarily, you’re liable for anything that goes wrong,” he said.
Well unless you are a telecom company because, if anything goes wrong, you can count on a fascist president and a craven congress to change the law so that whatever it was that might have gone wrong just doesn’t matter anymore.
Well the librarian didn’t buy into that. When the Feds screamed “Warrant? Warrant?! We don’t need no stinking paper!” Flint didn’t flinch. She protected the privacy of the patrons of the library.
Maybe the good citizens of this country will take notice and demand the same from the keepers of their personal records and information.
We’ll have to wait and see.
