Librarians Prevent Police from Taking Vermont Library Computers without Warrants
Imagine you are a public librarian. Police come to you to ask to see the library’s computers because a missing girl might have used one. Per your library’s policy, you ask them for a warrant. They don’t have one. What would you do? Aid the police in their investigation in case they can quickly find the girl or protect the privacy of all of the library’s patrons and uphold library policy by demanding the police get a warrant?
Many of us in New England have had Brooke Bennett and her family in our thoughts because of the tragedy surrounding her disappearance and death a few weeks ago. It turns out that police detectives visited the Kimball Public Library in Randolph, Vermont, the day after she disappeared to try to trace Brooke’s actions online. They did not have a warrant. The library staff insisted the investigators get one. As a compromise, the librarians shut the computers down to preserve whatever clues they might hold. When the police got the warrant almost eight hours later, the librarians released the computers into their custody.
Some people believe the librarians acted appropriately, while others think their reluctance might have had negative consequences for the investigation. Many news organizations are reporting different aspects of the situation, including the Rutland Herald. It doesn’t say specifically what the detectives found on the computers and whether it helped their investigation. How much of a difference did an eight hour delay make? With all the incidents of libraries requiring warrants for authorities to access patron records, why doesn’t it seem like police get warrants before asking for library records? (Maybe those stories just never make the news.)
Addendum 7/24: A lot of people like to point at librarians as the source of delays in these kinds of processes because of the “extra” 8 hours it took law enforcement to get a warrant to get access to the computers. If anything needs to change in situations like this one, perhaps it’s the time it takes to get a warrant. I don’t know what’s involved in that and the news articles I read didn’t explain. I know enough to know it’s often not like it is in television shows and movies where the authorities can get warrants in a few minutes without really proving their need for one.
One of my friends described it as the kind of situation where someone mentions something about a bomb going off in about an hour and he knows the location, but he’s not going to share that information. Is it appropriate to torture him or otherwise violate his rights in order to potentially save people from the explosion?
