Livingston Parish council member hired private investigator to check for porn in libraries

A Livingston Parish Council member has admitted he hired a private investigator to attempt to access online pornography in the parish library system. The news comes as conservative forces within the parish have pushed to censor certain titles and restrict access to content they have deemed unsuitable for younger readers. 

Councilman Garry Talbert revealed at a Thursday council meeting that he hired Lucas Investigations, a Baton Rouge-based private investigative firm, to check if patrons could access pornography via the internet on parish library computers. The investigator was unable to access adult content websites directly because the library uses a content filtering system, according to Talbert, but he said adults-only content could be reached through via Reddit, Twitter, TikTok and DuckDuckGo.

Talbert specified that the investigator was able to “backdoor” content the library’s content filtering system blocked but did not elaborate.

The investigator’s findings are evidence that minors still have access to sexually explicit material on the internet, said Talbert, who asked parish library director Giovanni Tairov to address the issue. 

“We need to do a better job,” Talbert said. “We need to figure out what’s going on and we need to do a better job as a library board and as a library in general, preventing children or anybody else from accessing pornographic material in our library.” 

“The investigator found a backdoor to break through the library’s firewall and viewed inappropriate content,” Tairov wrote in a statement condemning Talbert’s actions. “These actions are a willful violation of Library Board of Control policy 3-328 concerning internet usage via library computers.” 

While Talbert did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Illuminator, he took to Twitter to say that it was “fake news” to suggest that the investigator used hacking. 

Talbert, who has said he intends to run for the District 64 seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, condemned the library for stocking multiple books from the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List, which highlights books for children of all ages that include LGBTQ representation. He has also asked the Livingston Library Board of Control to support proposed state legislation to restrict minors’ access to certain library materials. 

Last year, the parish library board rejected a proposal to censor certain books with LGBTQ+ content from its collections. Board members deemed the effort an attempt to circumvent their policies and procedures.