Fourth Amendment is alive and being protected by librarians...

There has been much news and ranting (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, and here) about a nice young librarian and her staff. In brief, on June 26th five state troopers showed up at the Kimball Public Library in Randolph, VT and demanded that the children's librarian, Judith Flint, turn over the libraries 5 public terminals to them. She said that would be fine, as soon as they showed her a search warrant. And thus the fun began.

The library's director, Amy Grasmick (pictured) arrived to find "a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," (Flint is 4-foot-10...I'd give a great deal to find a picture of *that*). She backed up her librarian and demanded they return with a warrant. They did secure the machines to prevent tampering and the police did return with a warrant.

Interestingly, a new Vermont law requires libraries to demand court orders in such situations took effect on July 1, but it wasn't in place that June day. The library's policy was to require one. This would seem to fly in the face of the beloved "Patriot" Act, that basically states that that 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is quaint and dated and should be ignored given the constant threat confronting this country and its ever-so-fearful inhabitants.

The great danger with all these folk who complain about criminals getting off on "technicalities" and the governments demands that they have effectively unfettered access to any data they want, any time and without limit is that these "technicalities" are Constitutionally protected rights and they simply can not be tossed to the wayside because we don't like the suspect or because the government says it can't wait (N.B. there are clear exceptions relating to the issue of exigent circumstances). I am not going to rant about the affront to the Constitution ironically call the "Patriot" Act as it would take to long, annoy me too much and it has been done cogently elsewhere (see here and more broadly here).

Suffice it to say that I am a great fan of feisty librarians [hi mom] everywhere. It is strangely fitting that these stewards of knowledge are on the front-lines of this battle that cuts to the core of what this country *should* embody. So a tip-of-the-hat to our librarians...thank you for defending the constitution from those who should know better....

Speaking of feisty librarian and the like, I want to give a strong plug for one of my favorite blogs, Librarian.net ("putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999"). J. West came into her own around the Patriot Act...posting a set of signs to notify patrons of federal monitoring to great acclaim. It is a great site and should be on your RSS list.