1st ammend actually applies to bookstores!!!
April 9, 2002

Bookstore Cannot Be Forced to Divulge Buyers, Court Says

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

DENVER, April  A local bookstore
does not have to turn over customer sales
records to help police investigators determine who
bought a book on how to make illegal drugs, the
Colorado Supreme Court ruled today.

In a unanimous decision, the state's highest court
found that both the First Amendment and the
Colorado Constitution "protect an individual's
fundamental right to purchase books anonymously,
free from governmental interference."

The 6-to-0 ruling reversed a state appellate court's
decision that ordered the bookstore, the Tattered Cover, to turn over 
receipts for the purchase of two books on the construction and 
operation of drug laboratories. 

The books had been found by drug task force agents in a March 2000 
raid of a methamphetamine laboratory
in a trailer home in a suburb of Denver. Outside the trailer was an 
envelope from the bookstore, and the
police wanted to determine which of the trailer's residents had 
bought the books and might thus be
responsible for the drug laboratory.

Civil libertarians, the police and booksellers around the country 
had closely tracked the case. 

"We think this is a very, very important decision because it is the 
strongest opinion on the issue of protecting
customer privacy in bookstores that has come down so far," said Chris 
Finan, president of the American
Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The foundation, a nonprofit group, filed a friend-of-the-court brief 
and helped raise money to pay for the bookstore's legal fees.

The Supreme Court ruled that a hearing had to be held before any search
warrant could be executed on a bookstore when the store was not itself 
the subject of a police investigation. It also repeatedly referred to 
the "chilling effect" if warrants were issued without such hearings. 

"We hold that the city has failed to demonstrate that its need for 
this evidence is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the harmful 
effects of the search warrant," Justice Michael L. Bender wrote for the court.
Joyce Meskis, 60, who has owned the Tattered Cover since 1974, said 
today that she was relieved that the case was over. "Two years is a 
long time to be working on this," she said.

Ms. Meskis added that she felt she had to pursue the appeal to the 
state's Supreme Court. "There is implied understanding when an 
individual goes into a library or to a bookstore with the respect 
to the privacy of their reading material," she said.

  
    ---<note>---
  
does this mean that *you* can legally CONCEAL what you read??????
  
where is BigBrother wheh you need 1984 and (Brave) New World (Order)?
  
.

37 responses total.

This is interesting, because it presumably will apply to all of retail by
default.  I was under the impression that retail records were free to be
auditted by law enforcement--I know the establishments themselves will use
the records in legal procedings when necessary, and presumably credit card
companies do the same, so where do the exceptions fit in?

If they try to restrict it to just bookstores, why?  Books are just items,
products like any other.  Are magazines at a Kroger newsstand included?  How
about cereal boxes with substantial, original written content (for example,
a box of Count Chocula with a Where's Waldo picture on the back).

I think it's a good decision.

i think it's a good decision also, but *why* did the case have to 
be brought in the first place? <1984 or (Brave) New World (Order)?)
  
damn gummints just WON'T quit fscking with us! 

This response has been erased.

The CASE was brought because the bookstore wanted to defend its right
to not divulge customer information. On the other hand, I think it
would not be obvious to police agencies what are the limits on their
ability to pursue clues. I recall it was not unusual in Sherlock Holmes
stories for merchants to readily describe, and name if they knew,
their customers: there was no implied necessary confidentiality in a
seller-buyer transaction. This is, in fact, a requirement of (legal)
gun transactions. Books appear to be a special case because of the
First Amendment. 

I suspect, though, the bookseller would have to answer that they
SAW a defendent in their bookstore at such and such a date and time,
that coincided with the purchase of said  book(s). 

The First Amendment includes freedom of thought and conscience.
Wanting to know about drug labs and wanting to make one are not
the same; besides, it's possible that the person who bought the
book wasn't the one who read it.

I think this decision is great.  The government shouldn't be
using records from either bookstores or libraries to finger people.
If there isn't any better evidence to implicate a suspect, then
maybe there shouldn't be a prosecution.

And maybe bookstores shouldn't be attaching titles to personal
information about sales.  Come to think of it, maybe lots of
businesses should be separating personal information from the
other data they use.  What isn't recorded can't be abused.

Do it yourself.  Pay cash.

Hmm... cash register receipts have titles, last I looked, which makes it
possible to get a refund.  I think Kroger's would have a very hard time
linking a particular check to a particular register receipt.  (Although I've
not looked at what the cash register actually puts ont he check; it may be
easier than I think.)

I do see this particular case as an example of freedom of speech.

It was theoretically possible at Meijer, though the cache of transactions
turned over daily.  I have a strong, strong suspicion that transaction records
are stored, though, and if I looked at a Meijer-endorsed check today I could
still probably give you a fairly solid idea of what it indicated.

Actually, some retail establishments have, in the past and possible the
present, had policies that dictated that checks would be returned to the
customer for same-day or next-day refunds.  Any later than that and the store
waited until the check cleared and sent a check of its own.

i was under the impression that the first ammendmant was null and void
anyway..

Next time I'm in DC, I'll go to the Smithsonian and see if I can find a "Void"
stamp on the Bill of Rights.

stamps are obsolete nowadays aren't they?

Meanwhile the prosecution of the manufacturer of an illegal and 
really bad drug is hindered.  And that is sad.  What if it were 
a murder case where a 'hit man' manual was the issue?  Somebody
died and the bookstore owner is standing in the way of finding
out who did it.

On the other hand I too think it seems on the surface a very good
decision.  I don't like the concept of 'the state' compelling 
citizens to do much of anything.  I believe that 'rights' are a
citizen's (god given or however) and are delegated to the state 
by individual citizens for convenience of the citizens collectively 
but may be taken back in a particular instance as an individual 
citizen sees fit.  If I were in the bookseller's shoes I would 
have already turned over the invoice details, but I fully support 
the bookseller's desire to do otherwise for whatever reason.

I can't help but point out that other 'ammendments' - such as
the second - don't seem to have the same weight in the media
et al....

Now consider the case instead of detailed plans for a nuclear
device who's receipt was found at a site where radiation and
other evidence suggested that such a device had been constructed.
And the 'bookseller' refused to cooperate with authorities on 
account he liked Osama or somebody equally demonstrably dangerous.
Would there then be a compelling collective right of the citizens
to insist that records of the sale of such plans be released to
state investigative organs?  So is it merely a question of degree?

Re #7:  I do, most places and for most things (not just books).

gelinas, If you pay with a check, the odds are they can link it to the
register reciept.  I used to have to do the Impacting at Mervyn's, and that
included reconciling the checks to the reciepts and verifying the amounts if
there was a register shortage.

If you pay cash nobody knows your name.

In the underground economy, nobody knows you're a dog.

The gulf between reading and action is pretty wide.  Reading about
assembling a drug lab doesn't actually make one a pusher any more than
simply reading USMC training manuals makes one a Marine or simply
reading a lab manual makes one a phlebotomist.  I've read two or three
different sets of instructions for shrinking human heads, but there are
no human heads in my freezer awaiting shrinkage.

I've read books and other media about all kinds of stuff I've never 
actually done and probably will never do.  I'm just a curious person.  
I do sometimes wonder what a police searcher would make of the 
collections of hacker and phreaker text files on my hard disk, but 
thanks to the Bill of Rights it's unlikely to ever become an issue.

Paying cash is highly *underrated*, particularly for people who have spending
problems.

And the problem is:
There is a crime scene with evidence - a receipt for a drug manual
from the bookstore.  It is entirely possible the receipt is from
a 14-year old neighbor of the drug lab with an interest in
biochem and has nothing whatsoever to do with the crime in question.  
It is also entirely possible it is a 'lead' on the actual
criminal.  The police sometimes get clever and actually try to
follow up on leads to see where it leads them - sometimes shockingly
it actually leads them to the actual criminal who committed the crime.
The bookstore is for whatever reason - either it condones criminal
activity or simply services a market that is not in and of itself
illegal no matter how unsavory - doesn't matter.  The bookseller
should probably be a good citizen and cooperate with the police,
maybe, but only if the bookseller sees that drug use leads to greater
crimes and it is part of nipping the problem in the bud as it
were.

The problem with the information the police request is that it
won't go away after the investigation is completed.  Lets say
there are 10 purchasers of the book only one of whom was the 
lab chemist.  The other nine will now have a record in a database
somewhere opened for them and on a slow day the police may 
decide to investigate them - I suppose an innocent person hasn't
a fear of a police investigation, huh?  Well, its a waste of
taxpayer money at the very least.  Now consider one of those
being a fine upstanding citizen wants to be a police officer, now
the background check reveals that he was a subject in an investigation
of a drug lab (a 'true' statement on the surface).  The innocent
citizen might be denied a job (or military career) merely on that
information.


No, the more I think about it, the more correct the decision was.
The power of the state to even inadvertantly suppress its citizens
is so great that the wish of one of its citizens - no matter what
the reason - to not comply with a request should be upheld over
the state's request.

(jsaul, am I a 'strict constructionist'?)

   No, the bookseller was being a good citizen by demanding that the
police behave in a lawful manner themselves.

If you think an innocent citizen has no fear of a police investigation, in
this day of million-dollar trial costs and media that barely pays lip service
to innocent-until-proven-guilty, you're even dumber than you sound.  

> It is also entirely possible it is a 'lead' on the actual
> criminal.  The police sometimes get clever and actually try to
> follow up on leads to see where it leads them - sometimes shockingly
> it actually leads them to the actual criminal who committed the crime.

True.  But no law could stop the police from using this receipt as a lead.
They'll just need more convincing evidence to present in court if they
want a conviction.

Re #21:  I don't have enough information to tell.

Re #23:  He was being sarcastic, methinks.

Ah.  On rereading, you're right, of course.  I got confused 'cause he was
arguing the opposite point earlier. 

You know, in the past, this information wouldnt have even been 
available. Maybe the best way for a bookstore to protect themselves is 
not to collect the data in the first place. It probably is still ok for 
the police to interview staff at the store although it is unlikely that 
the staff would remember who bought the book. 

Re #20: I often pay cash for stuff I buy in person, but I consider it 
risky to send cash through the mail.

I think the weakest part of the scenario in #21 is that the police
have far better ways of determining who really was involved with
the drug lab than by seeing who bought a book.  Have these cops
ever heard of fingerprints?  They should look into them.

If the cops can't make a case without looking to see who bought
a book (assuming the book isn't the actual evidence, like it was
used to smuggle contraband or something), they need more education
in what is commonly known as "police work".  A LOT more.

re#29:  Do you know what 'gloves' are?  They are actually kinda
clever devices useful in lots of situations.  Have you ever heard
of the concept of 'calculus'?  Its a notion in part of variable and
often opposing forces. In the social world this means we kinda do want a
'police' who pursue all leads (specially if we are the victim) to a 
crime without regard for due process balanced against a judicial system 
that tends toward favoring what the individual citizen wants - at least
in theory.  Thus in the case of the drug lab it is probably better to
er on the part of the book seller whereas in the hypothetical case of
a nuclear bomb book its clear that every citizen who ever purchased
said should submit to proctological exams at the extreme.  (simple -
don't buy nuclear bomb manuals unless you are interested in building
same.)

Beady, I suggest you write your congressperson immediately and demand 
proctological exams for anyone purchasing a "nuclear bomb manual".  This
is exactly the sort of thing Congress needs to be working on to secure
this country's, uh, security.  And stuff.  

Re #30:  I own a number of pairs of gloves m'self.  I seriously
doubt that someone building a drug lab would wear gloves all the
time, especially when handling delicate and slippery stuff like
glassware.  Glassware also does a really nice job of holding
fingerprints.

Given the small size of (im)mobile homes, I'm really surprised
that the prosecutors haven't charged all the occupants with
conspiracy (because they had to know) and waited to see who
turns state's evidence first.

Do we as a nation actually care about the anal health of nuclear
terrorists?

re #32: don't discount the grip-enhancing, fingerprint-obscuring 
advantages of latex surgical type gloves.

hahahaha!!!!!

Re #34:  I discount the likelihood that someone who needs to buy a
book to find out how to make a drug lab would spend money on them.

Maybe the book told them to.

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