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FBI Seizes Library Computers Without Warrant
An anonymous reader writes "Two FBI agents walked into a public library in Maryland, without a warrant, and walked out with two computers. The library director agreed to release the machines to these smooth-talking feds. According to the article, the director of Frederick County Public Libraries indicated that this was the third time in his 10 years there that the FBI had requested records, but the first time they had come without a court order. The director seemed to indicate no regrets, stating 'It was a decision I made on my experience and the information given to me.' He further justified his actions, noting that the agents indicated specific computers they needed (of the several dozen in the library) and further that they 'had an awful lot of information.'" The library director speculated whether the raid may have involved the Bruce Ivins / anthrax case, musing "Obviously it coincided with the events everyone is talking about," but he said the agents hadn't mentioned it.
A police state isn't erected in one chunk. It is built up brick by brick, and this kind of seizure is one of these bricks.
People will tell you that you are being alarmist when you raise this sort of thing with them. But if you don't pay attention to it when it is at this level then there will be nothing you can do about it when you've completely lost your freedom.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Our city's library director (and the board) declared that they would no longer keep records of ANY patron's activity. The only records they keep are issues currently checked out, and overdues for fines. Other than that, their attitude is: "The Feds can go screw themselves. They can't demand what does not exist."
"Seize" isn't really the right word here, given they asked the library director for them and had no real force of law behind their request. This is basically the equivalent of a cop stopping you on a highway and asking to search your car. You're within your legal rights to say 'no', but if you say 'yes' he doesn't need a warrant.
It's fashionable for the left to go and say that Bush has rendered the FBI somehow clueless or incompetent. But I'd like to let it know when it was.
Let's see.
The FBI was originally founded to deal with the likes of Al Capone but despite all the self promotion of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, it was the Treasury that nailed him. Speaking of Elliot Ness, the famed super-detective never did catch the Cleveland serial killer and while we are at it, the FBI completely missed the rise of organized crime in the 1940s and 1950s and the total corruption of labor unions that continues to this day.
As a measure of domestic counterintelligence, the failures of the FBI are numerous. The Soviets had no problem infiltrating any number of American institutions during the Cold War, garnering everything from the US Navy codes, plans for the atomic bomb, and more.
The FBI has not produced a victory in the war on drugs. If anyone does any drug interdiction its the Coast Guard. The FBI usually only finds serial killers across state lines after they've killed a dozen people. The FBI couldn't put two and two together and prevent either the first WTC bombing and then 9/11, and in the meantime proved its inestimable worth by shooting up a child at Ruby Ridge and burning up 93 people at Waco Texas.
If anything, that the FBI hasn't done a Ruby Ridge or a Waco should be viewed by an improvement of Bush, over Clinton, but even still, with that said, if you hate Bush so much, when was the year and term of President where you thought the FBI was actually good?
This is my sig.
Not to be melodramatic, but any Librarian(real MLS), who gives up patron records without a fight would really have a tought time justifying their existence in that capacity. If librarians are just going to be glorified shop attendants, we can get them for a whole lot less, and with much less investment in education, than we do know.
We might agree to give up some peripheral rights for perceived safety thinking it is a good deal. However, the greatest risk to the elite is that the at-risk servants might become educated. Therefore, the primary objective of the elite is to minimize the educational opportunities for said servants. Recall that many citizens of Texas, partly because they could not read, were held up to four years after slavery because illegal.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"If the police want security tapes from a local business, for example, they have always just asked for them. The business isn't obligated to hand them over in that situation, but often does anyway, to be helpful."
I have personally known 3 business owners in the course of my life who cooperated in similar manner with police "requests". They all admitted to me that they did so out of fear of the well-established (and once plainly-communicated) threat of "slower response times in case of emergency".
This is a game cops play with anyone who has something the cops want - hand it over, or else they'll punish you by refusing to do their job (while still eagerly accepting the pay for that job), while still enforcing each and every law against you that makes it difficult or dangerous to protect you and yours.
If we guess that this library is average, then each of those 10k libs is visited every ~3 years. Or about 10 Libraries per day, every day of the week/year. Thats a crapload of data collection.
Remember that Libraries can't talk about when they get visited if the (un)Patriot Act is used.
Scary.
And they dont even need to visit a judge.
Or maybe the two guys just wanted two free computers. Seems like two guys only requesting two computers could easily have something to do with the difficulty in getting away with hauling off multiple PCs. Either way, I think you are right on the money.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
How is that totalitarianism? The feds didn't demand the computers; they asked for them. They might have suggested that they had sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant and the library director acquiesced to their request in light of this. They didn't forcibly remove anything, however, which is key.
Assuming the worst of government in every situation is not a good policy, ever.
A "request" by a government official with a gun is an order. As such, they do need a warrant. Of course they need a warrant to conduct a search, which is what this is. What part of the fourth amendment do you not understand?
The FBI came and asked. The Librarian agreed.
The law isn't exactly clear in this case.
Was the seizure illegal? Was it even a seizure?
Do you have an expectation of privacy when using public computers?
The FBI certainly didn't violate the law. The librarian may have.
They're using their grammar skills there.
A friend of mine is a librarian, and when I asked her what she thought about the issue of reader privacy and releasing records, she told me that the city instructed the library system to comply with any such federal requests, releasing any records they have.
The library response was that they decided not to keep any records beyond who has what book checked out now. When a book is returned, the only information retained is the dates of check out--the reader's name is completely disassociated. They know a book was checked out, but they can't tell you who had it. Nice.
The Library Director may not know what he is talking about, but as an ex-MIS director of a fair-sized library system, I can tell you what I did in the same circumstances. All our public computers had devices in them that erased all activity on a reboot, and most of it on a sign-off (bookmarks, cookies, etc.) When the local police officers decided they wanted to snoop on a computer used by a pedophile, I explained to them that it was useless because the material, if any was automatically erased. They didn't believe me, rather snidely, I thought, so I let them run a DOS-based program that explored the hard drive for images. They were so proud of their little program. I even coached them how to get to a DOS prompt (which they couldn't quite do.) Sure enough--nothing. They wanted the name of the manufacturer of the device, which I gave them readily. They never got anything.
The point here is that if you set up the computers in such a way that they do not retain information, this whole issue is a moot point. Our Director did not understand any of this. I had Wi-Fi up in all our libraries for a year before she understood what it was. She then got a public service award award for being so far-sighted as to start it. I'm retired now. Ha ha.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I interpreted the article to say that the director made the final call to allow the FBI to take the computers. In a library, it would only make sense for such a decision to be delegated up to that level. The director of the Frederick County Public Libraries is also the current president of the Maryland Library Association (an organization whose primary mission is to serve the public libraries in the state). I am a member of this association, and I do not like how things transpired in Frederick.
It's worth pointing out also that, increasingly, library directors are not even librarians but government officials with marketing/business management experience who run the library as a "corporate business" rather than a public service.
They are "CEOs" rather than chief librarians.
I'd love to find out what type this guy is.
I'll hazard to guess the point being that federal elections are also publicly funded, yet fundamentally involve privacy.
FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are the HIGHEST authority on domestic snooping, and they are also publicly financed. This wasn't social engineering and seizure, this was government enforcement making a request for a reason, likely to prevent a crime.
No, in the US the HIGHEST authority on domestic snooping or any other matter of law is the US Constitution. It's not clear to me why any business or public institution should be able to turn over its records to law enforcement without a search warrant.
In general I think most of us are interested in stopping (dangerous) crimes from happening. If the police could produce photo evidence that drug dealers were stealing your car each night for heroin runs, would you say no they can't inspect it for the benefit/safety of yourself, or the dealers' right to privacy, or so that the public can feel safe drug enforcement has to follow due process? Meanwhile your car is developing a strange odour...
Why aren't they issuing a search warrant on my car? I would say "no" at first while quickly getting myself a lawyer. The more you deny the police the less they can do to you. If they find drugs in my car no matter who put them there and I'm not legally prepared, then I can get into major prison time or have my property seized.
Except child porn. We as a society have decided there are no absolute freedoms when those freedoms harm the defenseless.
We must always have an excuse to disregard the laws of the land. Something repellant that every right-thinking individual can rally against. Something easy to plant or nebulous. Child porn and terrorism serve the purpose well.
RTFA. The Library Director was there to function as oversight. Library procedure normally involves court orders, but the agents explained the situation. If the Director felt intimidated with the agent, he is fully able to write a stronger policy. No warrant, no deal.
One of the key things a warrant does is restrict the scope of what the FBI can do. The Library Director cannot act in that capacity. How did he determine that the FBI had a reasonable request or decide on the scope of the FBI's investigation of the contents of that computer? Only a judge writing a warrant is in a position to oversee such a seizure. "Explanation" is not an adequate substitute for proper procedure. Writing a stronger but toothless policy is not going to help if the Library Director "feels intimidated" in the future. There has to be real punishment to the Library Director for exposing private data about library patrons.
It's funny how libraries uphold patron privacy (ie. you shouldn't know if I borrow copies of 2600 magazine), yet with anything online like Google or Netflix or Amazon, it's part of the feature set to keep track of a user's history, and that's where more and more of the subpoenas are going. When /. reported the Youtube user log demands, did you go and flush your view/comment/rating history? Oh, you can't? Darn.
Did you say "subpoena"? So it's not actually relevant to the current problem.
There should be an expectation that if a cop asks for documents and such, they have a legal right to do so.
I have a friend who's an attorney, and his advice to me indicated precisely the opposite. If a cop asks you for something, it's a reliable indicator that he doesn't have the right to take it. If he did, then he wouldn't be asking, he'd be telling you what to give him.
And what if the FBI agent and his buddy decide they want to seize other things? What if they decided to start seizing books? Will the librarian just hand everything over without a warrant or court order?
How does the librarian know that these agents had an actual need for or case involving those computers? How do they know they were acting on behalf of the government and not in their own interest?
If you surrender your property (or the property of the People) to anyone who flashes a badge, you teach those with badges that that is to be expected.
Liberty is a not something that you are entitled to without sacrifice. It is something that every individual has a responsibility to preserve and we must fight tooth and nail every day to preserve it. There are no magic Liberty fairies scattering Liberty pixie-dust everywhere. It makes me very sad that people have fought and died to secure Liberties that others would mindlessly toss away. A librarian should know better.