Warrants? We don't need no steeeenkin' warrants!

by: JulieWaters

Sun Jul 20, 2008 at 07:02:49 AM EDT

The short version: the state police showed up at Kimball Public Library to seize the library's computers because they had a tip that Brooke Bennett may have used them at some point and she asked them for a warrant.  

As reported in, of all places, The Fresno Bee (used to avoid linking to an AP article; otherwise I'd use the Herald):

Children's librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on "Love That Dog" when police showed up.

They weren't kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library's public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.

Flint demanded a search warrant, touching off a confrontation that pitted the privacy rights of library patrons against the rights of police on official business.
[...]
"What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," said the library's director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint.

The police did return with a warrant eight hours later (see?  How difficult was that?), but concerns remain.  Continuing from the Bee article:

Once in police hands, how broadly could police dig into the computer hard drives without violating the privacy of other library patrons?

[Vermont State Police Colonel] Baker wouldn't discuss what information was gleaned from the computers or what state police did with information about other people, except to say the scope of the warrant was restricted to the missing girl investigation.

"The idea that they took all the computers, it's like data mining," said [deputy director of intellectual freedom issues for the American Library Association] Caldwell-Stone. "Now, all of a sudden, since you used that computer, your information is exposed to law enforcement and can be used in ways that (it) wasn't intended.'"

Go Judith Flint!  Go Amy Grasmick!  

And as far as the Vermont State Police go, why would you waste your time during a frantic search trying to obtain computers that you have no right to obtain when it's easy enough to go to a judge first?

I mean, come on.  This is not rocket science.