I am not a lawyer. Richard cites conservative Heritage Foundation’s Paul Rosenzweig in suggesting that the patrons’ privacy was not in fact protected by the Constitution. He weakens his point, though, when arguing that the Constitution must sometimes be circumvented to be protected. Which is it?

It hardly matters, in the end. As I’ve said before, the police and FBI, as armed law enforcement officers, always have a remedy available should they consider the public safety put at risk by an overzealous privacy activist. That they did not could suggest something more dangerous: were these officers simply attemptingf to test their authority and set a precedent for future searches? Or, even worse, did they actually believe that they had the authority to seize library records?

Glick-Weil’s point, entirely missed by Cravatts, was not that the police did not have the right to examine the records of a potential criminal or terrorist. Her concern, which I share, is the privacy of other library patrons. The police should be concerned as well. Any evidence of illicit activites gained through such illegal search and seizure could likely be excluded from prosecutorial evidence as poisoned fruit. Or something. Anyways, I’m not a lawyer.