Library director under fire for privacy issues

Lee Hadden says:

Who’re Ya Gonna Ask?
If the child had seen a Catholic Bible in the hands of the suspect, would the police have gone to a priest and asked for all the names of the people in his congregations, and who might have had carried a Bible around with them, or who had confessed to any misdeeds, without a warrent? If the child had seen an IRS form in the suspect’s hand, would the police have gone to the IRS and demanded all forms sent in to the IRS from the county for the last month, without a warrrent, and expected anything but cynical laughter? If the child had seen a doctor’s examination report in the suspect’s hand, would they have demanded that doctor turn over all his medical records on his patients, without a warrent? If they had seen a bill from a lawyer in the suspect’s hand, would they have gone to that lawyer and demanded to thumb through all his records on all transactions with his clients for the past month, without a warrent?
      No to all of these.
        The legal drift from the Patriotic Act, which demands records from libraries in order to fight terrorists, now means that cops can demand records on a whim to fight local crooks. Next it can mean using public records to define undesirables. Thus it will be for the telephone records and commercial records being examined by the government. Good intentions now mean gooder intentions in the future by using the private records to catch more people who are the enemies of the government. After all, if the president can do it, why not the local sheriff?
        This constitutional requirment for a warrent merely requires the police follow the law, which is designed to protect the citizens from the police. After all, American citizens are still upset that J. Edgar Hoover used to read FBI reports for amusement and to give the secret information to political opponents in order to intimidate them by implying he could do the same with their records. Thank God that today we have people in the Republican government we can trust. After all, they would never do anything unethical or illegal with the records they have collected. They say so, so it must be true.