Library, Child Pornography, Personal Privacy, First Amendment Rights, Bacon? What?

[blueerica]

I heard about this the other day on the radio and found the implications to be most intriguing of all.

I'm short on time, but wanted to make sure I posted this while the action was going.

Story (http://www.fresnobee.com/local/sv/story/462727.html)

Some Blog (http://www.fresnobeehive.com/opinion/2008/03/catch_a_childporn_suspect_lose.html)

Another link (http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080318/NEWS01/803180318&template=printart)

There are about a hundred ways to look at this. Who's right? Who's wrong?

As soon as I heard it on the radio, I wondered what LoTters would have to say about it.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

First of all, here's the fixed link - http://www.fresnobee.com/local/sv/story/462727.html

Seems to me that there was a mixup in policy. The superior she went to didn't seem to know that child porn is much more important a case than regular porn and needs to be reported to the police. This kind of procedure mix up happens a lot, regarding much more mundane topics. The idea that that person would think that child porn is no big deal is pretty disturbing.

The real shocker is that she was fired. It may very well be that she was a bad employee otherwise. We're only hearing her side of the story at this point. If it was due to her going to the police, that's pretty f'd up.

[Alex]

Once seen it was appropriate to report to the police (I have no idea if there was legitimate misunderstanding as to what type of pornography was in question).

If I were running the library the firing offense wouldn't have been going to the police but rather going out of her way to observe what a patron was doing on the computer.

[Ghoulish Delight]

We'll never get the full story, there's no way of knowing why she was actually fired (for the reasons she thinks? For entirely unrelated reasons? For unrelated reasons with this being the final straw?). So I'm not even going to guess on that side.

However if it's true that her supervisor told her not to report child porn, that's not cool, whether it lead to the firing or not. No one should be discouraged from reporting a crime.


As soon as I heard it on the radio, I wondered what LoTters would have to say about it.

Who knows, but I bet it will eventually involve bacon and/or boobies.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, 'natch, i'm eager to read CP's take on this. [ETA: Like moth to flame, and she was already posting while I was posting this, heheh]


My own is that the busy-body probationary librarian-in-training got fired for good cause. During that stage of employment, disobeying a direct order from a supervisor is enough to get you fired. She suspected as much, and thought it was worth risking her job to report a potential crime. Ok, so she took the risk, gambled and lost. So what?


I hate all the jumping to conclusions that because some deaf guy likes to get off on photos of little blond boys, he must be a sexual predator in the real world. I'm especially unfond of the good-nazi-citizens' conclusion that he must have committed a crime if he was arrested.

Ugh, I wish I hadn't read any of the stupid blog stuff.

[blueerica]

I should have added privacy rights to the Thread Topic, because I meant to.

It's a convoluted case, for sure.

Maybe lunch will provide more than quick-scan time on LoT...

[Ghoulish Delight]

I think if something's viewable on the screen in a public place, privacy isn't an issue. If it were a matter of them, without warrant, going in and looking at the history on the computer, that'd be one thing, but in general there is no way to turn a computer monitor at a library where it's not visible to someone else in the public space from some angle. He may have had it turned so that when he was talking to her, she couldn't see it, but the article doesn't seem to say that she had to do anything extraordinary beyond move to another angle to be able to see it.

And agree with the law or not, it is a crime to view child pornography. And a library employee who has reasonable suspicion of a crime should (and should be allowed to) report it.

[Strangler Lewis]

I think this is one of those cases where what appears to be clear cut criminal activity conjures up visions of slippery slopes. E.g.:

What if he had been looking at a "teen" site where all the models were over 18?

What if he wore bottle glasses and drafted a large-print e-mail full of death threats against his enemies that he had no intention of sending?

What if he was reading about how to make a bomb?

What if he was sitting at a table writing fan fiction that may or may not infringe copyrights?

What if he was in a chat room discussing prices and markets with a competitor? ("Sir, this is your first warning. Please don't use our library to restrain trade?")

Etc.

[Ghoulish Delight]

What if he had been looking at a "teen" site where all the models were over 18?From her description, they were obviously underaged. Of course we only have her account to go on.



What if he wore bottle glasses and drafted a large-print e-mail full of death threats against his enemies that he had no intention of sending?

What if he was reading about how to make a bomb?

What if he was sitting at a table writing fan fiction that may or may not infringe copyrights?

What if he was in a chat room discussing prices and markets with a competitor? ("Sir, this is your first warning. Please don't use our library to restrain trade?")

Etc.

What if he had been dictating death threats out loud (though not too loud for a library, of course) into a tape recorder?

Since when is reading about making a bomb an illegal act?

There is obviously a gray area where judgement is involved, but I don't see anything wrong with someone seeing someone doing something that is reasonably obviously illegal in a public place reporting it to the police.

[Alex]

I think if something's viewable on the screen in a public place, privacy isn't an issue. If it were a matter of them, without warrant, going in and looking at the history on the computer, that'd be one thing, but in general there is no way to turn a computer monitor at a library where it's not visible to someone else in the public space from some angle. He may have had it turned so that when he was talking to her, she couldn't see it, but the article doesn't seem to say that she had to do anything extraordinary beyond move to another angle to be able to see it.

By no means do I mean to imply a legal issue in a library worker looking at what patrons are doing. Just as a library policy issue. She didn't just happen to see what he was doing. She decided that he was "acting suspicious" and snooped into what he was doing. Regardless of how difficult the snooping was or wasn't, from a management policy perspective I'd get rid of that employee. Because if she had decided he was being suspicious and went around to look over his shoulder and it turned out he was just trying to keep others from seeing him read a page about premature ejaculation or coming out of the closet or just ideas for anniversary presents to his wife it would be an invasion. Yes, she found a crime (allegedly) and it should be reported. And she should lose her job. At least she can feel the warm glow of thinking good came out of the cost.

But then, when I worked at a public library we were on the far liberal side of interpreting the ALA guidelines for user privacy and rights of access (until electronic systems made it impossible to avoid, they didn't even have library cards and it was quite literally impossible to identify all the books checked out by an individual without manually reviewing EVERY book checked out of the library and even then no identification was required so anybody could lie). And when I was in library school I was a strong advocate of liberal application of the guidelines (which wasn't necessarily popular in a program dominated by school librarians). Fortunately, it didn't often come up in academic librarianship which was the area I actually worked in.

[SacTown Chronic]

Where's Carl Monday when you need him?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

The library is a public place, no porn allowed on computers. Period.

Reading about how to make a bomb is not illegal. The act of looking at child pornography is illegal.

Librarians do not lean in and read everything that you're reading/writing. Images that are viewable to other patrons are another story. I've never heard of someone getting in trouble for text of any kind.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Oh, and in response to Alex - I guess I'm used to our environment, where there is no way to hide your monitor, yet there's plenty of room for you to look at text and no one should see it close enough to tell what you're reading. In my personal opinion, attempts to hide the monitor should be seen as suspicious.

[Alex]

Well, my public library had Playboy and Playgirl in the periodicals section so pornography was most certainly allowed. And you could view porn on the computers which is why they put filters on the screen making sure that you couldn't see the screen unless you were sitting right in front of the computer.

And who is going to define when a pornography line has been crossed? I almost guarantee you have actual books in your collection that contain pictures that would be considered pornographic by a healthy cross section of the public. Hell, growing up, before I learned how to get access to it myself, the public library was the greatest source of pornographic imagery available to me.

If he had been doing this and someone just happened to see it I wouldn't have an issue at all. It is because the employee went out of her way to find out what he was looking at that I have a problem.

[Strangler Lewis]

Composing violent threats is not a crime. Communicating them to the threatened person is. I think there is a crime of attempted criminal threats, and it might consist of typing threats into a draft e-mail as opposed to a word processing program, which is less suggestive of intent to communicate.

Reading about bomb making is not a crime. Taking notes about what you read is not a crime either, but it is suspicious. People generally call the police when they are suspicious about criminal activity being afoot.

What would library policy be if the patron came in and said, "I can't decide what to look at on the internet today. Part of me says hummingbirds. Part of me says kiddie porn. Here's my list of porn URL's if you need one." And he stood there mulling. Would you throw him out? Call the police? Or wait until he had committed the crime.

Copyright infringement, antitrust, money laundering, fraud, etc. are all crimes that could be committed at the library. However, I doubt that librarians--or most people--would feel compelled to report those crimes no matter how strong the evidence was. More to the point, we certainly wouldn't want librarians playing detective with our library usage on the theory that a crime could be afoot.

[SzczerbiakManiac]

Since when is reading about making a bomb an illegal act?Thought crimes have been illegal since October 26, 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_act). :rolleyes:

[innerSpaceman]

Gotta say I love SL's comparison of kiddy porn to other crimes. The woman even said she imagined her own son could be the boy the deaf guy was wanting to publically masturbate about.

She was personally offended by kiddy porn. That's why it's the crime she chose to report. Even if she could detect insider trading or money laundering, would she have reported it? Only she can know. But I suspect not.

Therefore I suspect I'm glad she lost her job.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Gotta say I love SL's comparison of kiddy porn to other crimes. The woman even said she imagined her own son could be the boy the deaf guy was wanting to publically masturbate about.

She was personally offended by kiddy porn. That's why it's the crime she chose to report. Even if she could detect insider trading or money laundering, would she have reported it? Only she can know. But I suspect not.

Therefore I suspect I'm glad she lost her job.You obviously would not report someone for buying or selling drugs. Even so, I'm sure there are some crimes that you would personally be horrified by and would report. Wait - aren't you offended by kiddy porn? Maybe I shouldn't be asking, yeech.

And who is going to define when a pornography line has been crossed? I almost guarantee you have actual books in your collection that contain pictures that would be considered pornographic by a healthy cross section of the public. Hell, growing up, before I learned how to get access to it myself, the public library was the greatest source of pornographic imagery available to me.Same here. I checked out my share of certain books at a certain age. But that doesn't mean that I opened them up and lay them on the table at the library for anyone to see the pictures.

Who is going to define it? The Librarian in Charge, that's who. We get plenty of tattlers patrons who like to complain about things that aren't a big deal. It's up to the LIC to figure out when to take action and when to reassure the complainer and go back to work.

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

[€uroMeinke]

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

I can think of a number of embarrassing things someone might legally might want to look up anonymously at a library - but I suppose the real issue here is there is no expectation of privacy in a public library.

[Alex]

Again, I say that if someone is trying to hide their monitor, they most probably should not be using the computer in the public library. I see no problem with investigating that.

And I disagree. No more than I would go up and insist on seeing what someone was reading if they were obviously trying to hide it. Of course, in my opinion, no library should force people to hide what their viewing. It should be inherent in the set up.

If this was a case of "doing it in plain sight" then I'd be more interested in discussing the limits on that. But it wasn't. If going to some lengths to discover and block porn watching beyond "plain sight" is warranted why not just set up mirrors of all the computer displays on a machine in the back room so you can watch what every person is doing? Yes, obviously that is much more extreme, but from my point of view it is only a difference in degree not nature. So, she did the right thing once she saw what she saw. She did the wrong thing in the way she came to see it.

The police should give her a medal. The library should fire her.

[tracilicious]

I hate all the jumping to conclusions that because some deaf guy likes to get off on photos of little blond boys, he must be a sexual predator in the real world. I'm especially unfond of the good-nazi-citizens' conclusion that he must have committed a crime if he was arrested.


As far as I know, a great deal of child porn involves kids being forced to perform sexual acts. Even if it's just a naked kid, said child had no way to consent to his/her picture being put online for some creep to beat off to. Child porn is a predatory act regardless of whether you are the one looking at it or the one making it.

What if he had been looking at a "teen" site where all the models were over 18?

If all the models were over eighteen and mentally capable then they would have given their consent to be in porn.


If he had been doing this and someone just happened to see it I wouldn't have an issue at all. It is because the employee went out of her way to find out what he was looking at that I have a problem.

I think maybe librarians have good cause to be hyper-aware of suspicious behavior. I've heard loads of stories about people beating off in the aisles or following other patrons around and whatnot. What is it about places where books are that cause the nuts to come out? When I worked at a used bookstore here in Phoenix we always had people jerking off, walking in with socks on their penis and nothing else, pooping in chairs, etc.

If she got fired for disobeying a superiors order then that is fvcked up, considering the fact that her superior's order was illegal. If she got fired for deliberately looking at what a patron was viewing on the computer then I can see the library's point.

[tracilicious]

The police should give her a medal. The library should fire her.

The library should fire her solely for that lameass medal comment at the end of the article.

[Alex]

I think maybe librarians have good cause to be hyper-aware of suspicious behavior. I've heard loads of stories about people beating off in the aisles or following other patrons around and whatnot. What is it about places where books are that cause the nuts to come out? When I worked at a used bookstore here in Phoenix we always had people jerking off, walking in with socks on their penis and nothing else, pooping in chairs, etc.

Sure, I've dealt with more than my share of library masturbators in my time (a library that doesn't close until midnight really seems to attract them and I spent 4 years closing it). I've dealt with a patron that crapped in his own hand and he smeared it over 15 years worth of The Princeton Review before he was noticed. Book defacers and thieves. Graffiti artists.

I'd not say that a library patron should be able to hide themselves, but I think they are certainly entitled to hide the exact nature of the library resources they are using.

But again, she didn't go out of her way to observe him, she went out of her way to observe what he was looking at. I can imagine all sorts of ways she might have incidentally seen what he was looking at. Except she, in giving her own story, says she was trying to see what he was looking at so all of those theories and hypotheticals are moot.

I also have no idea if the reason I would fire her is the reason the library actually fired her. It may very well have been "bitch went over our heads" retaliation. In which case the only appropriate thing for whoever is in charge of that library to do is say "we apologize, we respectfully offer her job back so that we can fire her for the correct reason."