Tucker Carlson’s Videos
posted by Daniel Solove
The Washington Post reports on an interesting little incident involving Tucker Carlson:
Potomac Video store clerk Charles Williamson, 28, posted a message on his blog, Freelance Genius, Dec. 23 that described how he set up a movie rental account for MSNBC host Tucker Carlson at the MacArthur Boulevard store the day before.
“I could tell you what he and his ridiculously wasped-out female companion (wife?) rented if you really want to know,” he wrote. “I won’t tell you where he lives, though. That would be wrong and stupid.” Williamson also joked that he wouldn’t send 10,000 copies of Jon Stewart’s best-selling political satire, “America (The Book),” to Carlson’s home; Stewart ridiculed Carlson on “Crossfire” before the 2004 election.
A week later, Williamson had forgotten all about it, he told us yesterday. That is, until Carlson, 37, reappeared at the video store and, said Williamson, “got pretty aggressive.” According to Williamson, Carlson confronted him about the blog and said he viewed the post as a threat to him and his wife. “He said, ‘If you keep this [expletive] up, I will [expletive] destroy you,’ ” Williamson recalled. . . .
In a phone interview Thursday, Carlson acknowledged that he approached Williamson in the store and said he was “very aggressive” because he wanted the post removed: “I don’t like to call the police or call his boss. . . . I’m a libertarian. I’m not into that.”
The store clerk removed the post. And afterwards, the store fired him. According to the article, the clerk “consulted a lawyer friend and was told he had probably not broken any laws.” Not as of yet, but had he disclosed, he would have violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. 2710, which provides a private cause of action when a videotape service provider “knowingly discloses . . . personally identifiable infroamtion concerning any consumer of such provider.” The VPPA provides for liquidated damages of $2500 plus punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
The store was right to punish the clerk. Perhaps firing him was a bit extreme, but he certainly should have been subject to some kind of punishment. The story makes me wonder whether the clerk was ever informed about the store’s legal obligations under VPPA to protect customer privacy. Had the clerk not been trained, then the store managers are also partly at fault.
Tucker Carlson’s take-the-law-into-his-own-hands approach by making vague aggressive threats seems a bit too wild west, especially given the existence of a law prohibiting the clerk’s disclosure. And why isn’t it appropriate for a libertarian to speak with the clerk’s boss? I sure hope most libertarians would handle it differently and be glad that there’s a law protecting the confidentiality of video rental records.
January 14, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Posted in: Privacy
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Responses (2)
Pinko Punko - January 14, 2007 at 8:50 pm
It is my understanding via personal communication with the clerk that he had indeed been trained in regards to the act. Consistent with this, he did not violate it.
Secondly, Tucker Carlson did not complain about violations of his rental privacy, he complained about perceived threats against him and his family. Threats that are not supported at all in the text of the original post, or subsequent posts. Of course I don’t know about the law, but I’m wondering how appropriate it is for Tucker to claim as fact that the clerk threatened his(Tucker’s) family, as this assertion is ver much liable to be damaging to the clerk’s reputation.
Maryland Conservatarian - January 15, 2007 at 12:10 am
The store was right to fire the clerk; his actions were potentially damaging – going on line to post ethnic slurs about a customer’s family is just bad for business. What if next he made an ethnic slur about a ethnicity that lefties get all PC about?
Mr. Carlson tried to do the guy a favor by just keeping it between themselves.
…and for our PP above – the only one who says that TC called the post a threat is Williamson
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