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Posted on 07/01/2006 9:06:47 AM PDT by plan2succeed.org
Librarian Ensnared in Privacy Conflict
Saturday, July 1, 2006
By MERRY FIRSCHEIN
STAFF WRITER
Can a librarian withhold information from the police and claim the public's right to privacy trumps catching a potential criminal?
That question is at the center of a debate raging in Hasbrouck Heights and is one that constitutional law and privacy experts, librarians and law enforcement authorities nationwide are struggling to answer.
In May, Hasbrouck Heights library director Michele Reutty refused to turn over circulation records to local police seeking a man who had allegedly made sexually threatening comments to a 12-year-old girl outside the library. Citing state law, Reutty told authorities they would need a subpoena before she could comply with their request.
Investigators secured subpoenas and eventually received the information they requested, but Reutty is now under fire from borough officials who decried her "blatant disregard" for law enforcement and accused her of putting the interests of the library above the interest of police.
The library board is scheduled to meet July 10 in a closed-door session to decide what, if any, disciplinary action to take against Reutty, the library's director for the past 17 years. The controversy, meanwhile, provides a keyhole on a larger national discussion, as the circumstance in which Reutty finds herself is occurring more frequently in libraries across the country.
In January, for example, the FBI demanded computer records from the Newton, Mass., public library after determining that a bomb threat made against Brandeis University originated from one of the library's public computers. In June 2004, the FBI ordered a Washington state public library to hand over circulation records after interpreting a sentence written in the margin of a biography of Osama bin Laden to be a threat. In both cases, the libraries refused to honor the FBI's request without subpoenas.
At the center of the Hasbrouck Heights debate is a New Jersey law, in effect since 1985, that considers personal information of library users to be confidential. The legislation requires any individual or entity wishing access to those records to have a court order.
New Jersey is one of 48 states with laws governing library confidentiality."There's a reason for according this protection," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. "Librarians don't want to stand in the way when there's no reason to, but they want to say, 'This is private stuff, and there has to be a good reason to invade privacy.' "
Some people disagree with that interpretation. The Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures" without a court order, doesn't apply in cases in which the data belong to a third party, such as a library, according to Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University and an expert on privacy who wrote a book, "Privacy in Perspective," in 2001.
"So you couldn't come into my house to get my library records, but you could go to the library and get the records," Cate said. "There's no real constitutional privacy right [in this case]."
Not so, said Grayson Barber, a Princeton attorney and chairwoman of ACLU-NJ's privacy committee. She contends New Jersey's law is expressly designed to protect the privacy of library records.
"This New Jersey library law is completely consistent with the Fourth Amendment because the New Jersey Legislature said, 'Before the police can find out the books you are reading from the library, [the police] have to get a court order," Barber said. "The police can't go and say, I don't approve of the books you are reading."
'A balancing act'
Hasbrouck Heights elected officials and county law enforcement maintain that they have no problem with the Constitution. Their problem, they say, is with librarians overstepping the boundaries of their position.
Because police had incorrect information on their first subpoena, Reutty said she could not find the specific data they sought and asked them to get another subpoena if they wanted to conduct a broader search. Nearly 36 hours elapsed before Reutty provided police with the information they requested. While investigators found that the suspect did not molest the young girl, the delay could have jeopardized or interfered with an active police investigation, officials said.
"Law enforcement does not deny the existence of privacy rights," said Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli. "However, where there is a lawfully served subpoena by law enforcement, there are procedures that could be followed if an individual has difficulty in honoring a subpoena."
Shortly after the incident, the New Jersey Library Association told borough officials the group planned to revise its rules governing subpoenas.
Reutty, who is vice president and president-elect of the state library association, stands behind her decision to have police secure a subpoena before turning over information, but she and other librarians do not want to develop the reputation of being uncooperative when dealing with law enforcement, said Arthur Miller, Reutty's attorney. Librarians, he said, want to help whenever they can – within the legal limits of the law.
"There is a balancing act that goes on here...," Miller said. "That balance has to be struck in every case where there is a subpoena or search warrant or court order."
E-mail: firschein@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2006 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
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I don't see anything wrong with what the Library Director did. The law says the police need a subpoena to access someone's library records.
Okay, and same answer to you I just gave to saquin.
It looks more like she was trying to protect the borough from a civil suit the perp would have file if she had handed over info without a subpoena. It may have also affected the use of the evidence in criminal court.
She didn't right the law, she just followed it.
"Former librarian (though for an academic library, not a public one) here. I think the librarians are mostly on target, when they demand subpoenas. For one thing it does prevent arbitrary checks for such information."
Only if the state law is on their side in requiring such a stance, which was the case here.
It would be a wrong interpretation of the 4th amendment to insist that 3rd party information requires a warrant to be turned over. This is the same sloppy error being made by those making the hullabaloo about the NSA phone records. Just as you have no constitutional right to stop a credit card company from sharing information about your payment history with a credit rating agency, you have no right to stop 3rd parties from sharing info with others.
To stop abuses of info sharing, laws have been put in place to protect records, eg, HIPPA, which protects medical records. But these are legislative not constitutional bars, as it should be.
There is NO constitutional right to 'privacy' that extends to stopping 3rd parties from sharing info. "Privacy" is a concocted constitutional right build upon our real rights against self-incrimination, free speech, rights of property and rights against unreasonable search.
A cop is looking for a murder suspect and finds a pack of matches from a particular restaurant at the murder scene.
If it's a cop show, you see the cop go to the restuarant, talk up the owner, and ask if they have a record (say a credit card bill) or a memory of seeing person X at the restaurant.
3rd person info.
To demand a court warrant for such information is absurd and would turn the courts into micro-managers of investigations.
Libraries are just another form of socialism which believes the government should buy me books.
It's not a private library, it's the Public Library. Everyone is entitled to use it because it's public. You are not entitled to privacy when you are in the public square.
"However, while not illegal, the library director really annoyed people when, upon receipt of the second subpoena, she turned to the NJ-ALA and the ACLU for advice and not the town's attorney. While not illegal, I can see how that would make town officials annoyed and justifiable so."
Very good point.
And that has been successful in a number of communities -- using the purse strings to remind libraries communities own the public libraries, not the ALA and the ACLU.
Two points. That has nothing to do with borrowing records. It's Internet use policy. Someone who uses an library computer to download obscenity is unlikely to leave any indication of who they are on the computer.
Well, that's not the entire line. It ends, "naturally directed towards the source, i.e., the publishers of such material." In other words, the police should be using their own computers to track down the sources of this.
Furthermore, the guidelines also state that libraries should "Expressly prohibit any use of library equipment to access material that is obscene, child pornography, or "harmful to minors" (consistent with any applicable state or local law). "[A]pplicable to state or local law" answers the question of "Who's in charge of the town library, the ALA or the taxpayers?"
Note, however, that the ALA is the professional organization for public librarians, as the AMA is the professional organization for doctors and. A librarian has a responsibility towards their profession and, for better or worse, the ALA sets that guidelines for that. Granted, the ALA does not oversee librarianship, like the AMA oversees medicine -- there are no licensing requirements or the like for librarians. But a librarian does answer to his profession, as well as the community.
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