Meet the library porn police. City officials here have agreed to pony up $175,000 more to add one full-time librarian and three assistants to help put Phoenix's new no-porn public library policy into full effect.
Well, ok, they're not exactly police. But they are there to help library users who have questions about both the new no-porn policy and better user monitoring.
"As a result of this one specific case, we've discovered that this behavior has been going on all the time," said Vice Mayor Peggy Bilstein, announcing the new policy, and referring to the case of a child molester who said he got Internet child porn from a public library computer early in the fall.
Bilstein and Mayor Phil Gordon pushed for the new policy, which ran into opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association.
Phoenix library computers now filter all Web sites classified as porn and Adult library users, considered 17 years old and older, no longer have the option of an unfiltered online session, though they can choose between "basic" (blocking porn) or additional (blocking violent or other material the users deems inappropriate for children) filtering levels.
The extra staff members are needed to help patrons with questions they may have about the new policy and to better monitor users' activity. The new policy also includes the library putting in a logging system that tracks and saves all uploads and downloads at all library computer terminals, data kept for thirty days and accessible to law enforcement armed with a court order if the material in question warrants one, according to published reports.
"I am confident that we have the best filtering system available," Bilstein told reporters of the filtering programs, "and if we don't, we'll get a better one."
