I had been studying in the library with a group of classmates that I did not know so well. I was the last one to leave, and noticed that someone had left a mini external hard drive on the couch. It is one of those USB port key-chain kinds. I would like to return it to the owner. I think that it belongs to one of my classmates because I did not notice it when we got there. I could just plug it into my computer to see if there is a name on something saved on it, but this feels like snooping. What should I do?

–Curious Classmate

You are right to feel that it is snooping. You have no way of knowing, without looking, what is on that drive, and that is enough of a reason not to look. Your ends seem pure: to return the item. But your means to those ends needs to change.

There is no law against leafing through a book that is found in the park, but what if that book is a diary? Most people use these kinds of mediums for very personal and private dictations, and do not want others to see them. It is morally wrong to go against others wishes and look anyway. The same could be said for a found camera — you might find pictures of the owner or some other clue — but there might also be very personal or private pictures as well.

The hard drive you found is capable of storing both dictated information and also pictures. While the owner might have them labeled somehow, you might also violate their very personal processions.

There is also a problem in that it could belong to one of your classmates. If you were studying for a take home exam or quiz of some kind, the information that you look at while searching for an owner’s name could be pertinent to that test. You could be in violation of the Honor Code by looking at the documents on the drive.

Fortunately, there are other ways of getting the hard drive back to the owner that will not land you in a Honor Code Violation Hearing.

Since you believe the owner might be in your class, you have an opportunity to make Blackboard work for you (for a change). If your class has a Blackboard site, you can send a mass e-mail to everyone in the class about the found drive. Or you can e-mail the professor and ask them to. You could also turn it over to the library, as that will probably be one of the first places the owner goes.

Another course of action you can take is to post something on the Oberlin Classifieds under the lost/found section. I myself had an iPod returned to me through this site. A last-ditch attempt could be to post something on the infamous Oberlin Confessional.

Whatever course you take, be sure to say when and where you found the drive and describe its physical features/make and model as best you can.

There is the chance that some non-owner opportunist will claim it is theirs, get it from you, and sell it. You cannot predict this, nor are you ethically wrong to take this chance. You are trying to do a good thing and if others are doing evil without your knowledge, you cannot be held responsible. It would have been worse to let the drive sit in the library.