The Bork Shield

by Bruce Schimmel

When it comes to protecting our basic freedoms, it’s usually the little guy who acts as a shield for the rest of us. Defending the rights of immigrants, the accused and the poor is often used as a bulwark against an attack on everyone’s liberties.

But not always regarding the rights of privacy, where sometimes the best defense is to be offensive, especially to the rich and powerful. Which is why, this week, some folks accused of brewing meth in a Denver trailer park might be a little bit thankful to now-retired Judge Robert Bork, and his taste in videotapes.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork, a darling of the conservatives, to be a justice of the Supreme Court. To some on the left, Bork talked like a prig but walked like a hypocrite. But nobody could get the goods on him.

So the Washington City Paper (no affiliation) checked up on what the good judge had been checking out of the local video store. They wanted to see what the preacher practiced.

Bork was a public figure, and as such his right to privacy in this instance was weaker than lesser-knowns, the John and Jane Does of America. And so what the Washington City Paper did was probably not illegal. Offensive, yes, but not against the law.

The Congress of the United States swung into action. With their own reading and viewing habits about to be outted, they passed an act -- in record time -- forbidding the disclosure of what a person rents or buys.

With their rights on the line, the powerful created a shield for themselves and the weak.

Which brings us to the current Denver case. Police there wanted an independent bookstore to turn over customer sales records to see who was buying books on making drugs. Joyce Meskis, owner of The Tattered Book, told them to go fish elsewhere.

The local courts held for the cops, but last week the Colorado Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, reaffirmed "an individual's right to purchase books anonymously, free from government interference."

The alleged chemists are undoubtedly relieved, but the local police are apparently unfazed. Denied the bookstore's customer list, the police did go fish elsewhere, and now they say they've got enough evidence to take it to the D.A.

Civil libertarians applaud this court decision. "There is [an] implied understanding when an individual goes into a library or to a bookstore with the respect to the privacy of their reading material," said Meskis, as quoted in the New York Times.

And if this principle is extended, as it should be, to the reading and viewing we do from our personal computers, we may all be grateful, in part, for a pip-squeak paper's attack on the privacy rights of a powerful person.




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