Citizen Snoop Turns in Florida Patron for "Bomb" Site

The Punta Gorda branch of the Charlotte-Glades Library System, FL, was evacuated for three hours on July 29 after a sheriff's volunteer reported an Internet user he deemed suspicious to local police, who then found chemicals of unknown origin in the visitor's backpack. The chemicals turned out to be paint thinner and jewelry cleaner, and the man was surfing web sites about mineral supplements and an ancient battery, not bombs.

While police and the volunteer, retired police officer David Myers, declared themselves proud of their vigilance, the case raises some troubling questions for librarians. When Myers accompanied his wife to the library, he decided to investigate a tip he had heard from a friend, about "a lot of Middle Easterners using computers at libraries," according to the local Sun-Herald.

The man he watched, however, was a homeless man originally from London, Nigel B. Gates, who is not of Middle Eastern appearance. But Gates was looking at a site for the "Baghdad Battery," a clay jar that functioned as an early battery, so Myers kept watch, noticing that Gates looked at sites about Iraq, the President, the September 11 attacks, and agriculture. When Gates clicked on a site about "concealing metal objects," said Myers, the volunteer—without approaching library staff—drove to the local police department and reported Gates.

When police found the chemicals in Gates's backpack, they evacuated the library, and it took some time before the bomb squad could arrive. Two days later, Gates was still in jail, having given authorities a false name and a false passport, but police had backed off other allegations. After obtaining a search warrant and searching the hard drive, they had no evidence Gates was looking at bomb- or weapons-related sites, and the director of the shelter where he stayed described him as quiet and nonviolent.

Library Director Mary Ellen Fuller told LJ that library policy mandates intervention only when there's something sexually graphic visible to others: "Beyond that, we're not going to police the Internet. The individual who reported it was doing what he felt he had to do. I'm not going to say he was right or wrong; he made his professional opinion and carried forth with it."

Will the library remind patrons not to snoop on other patrons, or warn that others may be watching them? She said the library will pull together information on the Internet policy and promulgate a general statement.

Given that some of the September 11 hijackers were allegedly seen in Florida libraries, there is a heightened concern in the state, and librarians there may have to tread a cautious line. Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, observed, "We have always had the ability as citizens to report what we consider to be out-of-the-ordinary behavior. Within today's environment, particularly in the context of TIPS [a pilot program to report suspicious activity], it scares the daylights out of me. In libraries, what goes into your head is your business."

"This brings home the importance of making sure there is at least a modicum of privacy in the context of the Internet," Krug added. "Many libraries, in order to protect people from sexual materials, have put computers in a location where they are viewable from the service desk. If that man had been accessing the same information in a book, he would not have had someone looking over his shoulder."

Local commentators also criticized authorities for going too far. While Gates's expired visa was against the law, it wasn't "worth the commotion of his arrest," editorialized the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The newspaper criticized the sheriff's department volunteer who reported Gates: "But targeting foreign-looking or suspicious-acting people, or scaring the neighborhood by overreacting to a bomb threat, does little to bolster a sense of security."

Columnist James Abraham similarly criticized "an overzealous patriot." That drew a response from Charlotte County Sheriff William E. Clement, who claimed that "Volunteer Deputy David Myers...used his years of police experience by being responsive to a tip he received about possible improper use of public library computers." Clement pointed out that Gates was not charged with anything relating to his computer usage. "Had the man not lied to law-enforcement officers, possessed the counterfeit passport, and been an illegal alien in the country for the past 11 years, he would have been free to pursue his activities," wrote Clement.