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

Some Blog

Another link

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.

Originally Posted by blueerica

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.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by 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.

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?

[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.