They said “specific” book, which I take to mean “we found this book at a crime scene, can you tell us who checked it out?” Not, “I want to know everyone who checked out war and peace this year.”
But after thinking about it, I think they meant the former and you meant the latter. But to the library, it’s the exact same thing. A library doesn’t (traditionally) track each and every book, so if it’s a popular book, it could have been checked out by any number of people.
I think this is fine, as long as courts work to keep the scope small and laws allow people to do whatever they want without hindering freedom.
Libraries track books individually. If you and I each check out a copy of War and Peace, and you turn yours in on time but I don’t, they know who to pester.
I think there’s a continuum from the cops being able to say “we found this here book at a crime scene, who had it checked out?”, which should clearly be allowed, to “the security footage shows a copy of War and Peace with the libraries sticker on it in the crooks hand, who had it checked out”, which should probably be allowed, to “we need to know everybody who checked out The Anarchists Cookbook in the last six months because the crook used an IED thats described in there”, which probably should be allowed.
> If you and I each check out a copy of War and Peace, and you turn yours in on time but I don’t, they know who to pester.
They track checkouts. But back in the day, we could switch checkout cards in the cover of the book and return them and the library would never know the difference. With modern computers and barcodes, I do believe the individual books are tracked.
But after thinking about it, I think they meant the former and you meant the latter. But to the library, it’s the exact same thing. A library doesn’t (traditionally) track each and every book, so if it’s a popular book, it could have been checked out by any number of people.
I think this is fine, as long as courts work to keep the scope small and laws allow people to do whatever they want without hindering freedom.