This week at your local public library...

My intent is not to piggy-back posts for the sake of posting, but here goes.

If you have made it this far into this particular blog, then you know that one of our public computers was taken from our building for an investigation into allegations of illegal Internet activity regarding minors....'nuff said.

Not too big of a deal at this point because the local authorities secured the proper paperwork to do so and it was all carried out in a fairly safe and secure manner. But one thing has been sticking with me throughout this whole process. Our public Internet computers do not erase the browsing history until just before midnight for each day that we are open. In order for this to happen, they have to be plugged into our network and basically they are cleared out (cache, cookies, passwords, all of that) and we start carte blanche every day. While there are very practical and technical reasons for this, part of it is also due to the fact that we do not monitor 'behavior' patterns of our patrons on the Internet.

Well...the computer in question was taken from us earlier this year and on the day of the incident, per our library procedures set in place to deal with this, I unplugged the computer from the network and powered it down. Meaning, it left the building before the'dump' (in the afternoon) and the browsing history of every other patron that used the computer prior to the individual who was busted was then made available to the local detectives. Part of what makes this tricky is that our IT department was informed and backed up the files for this individual in question only (meaning for only the time period that he was logged on to the computer) and offered that to the authorities instead. They declined and stated that the language of the subpoena was specific to the computer itself - so we complied.

The computer came back to us this week (hence being pertinent to a timely post) and was wiped clean by all parties involved. But the question remains - did we protect, to the best of our ability, the privacy of the other patrons who used that particular unit, that particular day prior to the incident?