Not to keep harping on the same subject, but I found this article about the FBI obtaining phone records based on little more than a post-it note relevant to our thinking about Intellectual Freedom issues in libraries.
Unlike libraries, phone companies don't seem to have much of a culture of protecting customer/patron information. As a result they were sometimes all too eager to go along with any request from an FBI agent, assuming that the information requested must be urgent and important to an investigation. Perhaps they weren't even aware of the system of warrants/subpeonas that are meant to offer some independent oversight that the requests really are relevant to an ongoing investigation.
While I'm sure there are librarians out there who aren't entirely on board the intellectual freedom train, and may be willing to provide information to a police officer or FBI agent, especially when pressured, I would hope that no one would give up that information based solely on a polite question and a scribbled post-it note. But maybe I'm being overly optimistic here.
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