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Patriot act prompts librarian outcry Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Posted on Sat, Apr. 19, 2003
Patriot Act prompts outcry by librarians
By Eils Lotozo
Inquirer Staff Writer
Librarians in Santa Cruz, Calif., have begun shredding records daily. In Killington, Vt., and Skokie, Ill., they're posting warning signs. In Calais, Maine, they're passing out leaflets.
What's gotten the librarians agitated? The USA Patriot Act, whose provisions have given the U.S. government powers of surveillance over the reading habits and Internet interests of library-goers.
"It's important to appreciate the core values this country is built on, like freedom of information," said Jan O'Rourke, adult-services coordinator at the Bucks County Library. "And I think the library is at the forefront of protecting those values - especially in difficult times."
Passed just weeks after the 9/ll attacks, the Patriot Act gave the government broad powers to access business and other records and conduct surveillance, including wiretaps and e-mail monitoring, as part of any foreign-intelligence investigation.
In January, the American Library Association passed a resolution calling sections of the Patriot Act "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."
Under the Patriot Act, federal law-enforcement officials seeking to seize library records and hard drives, or to trace e-mail, no longer have to go to open court and show probable cause. They may go to a secret court (established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in 1978) to get a judge's order. They need only certify that what they are requesting is relevant to a foreign-intelligence investigation.
Once agents show up at their door, libraries are subject to a strict gag order. Other than the library's lawyer, said Emily Sheketoff, director of the ALA's Washington office, "they [the libraries] can't tell anyone they even got this court order. They can't tell the mayor or city council -or even their library board - or they'll go to jail."
The Free Library of Philadelphia's director, Elliot Shelkrot, is not posting warning signs yet, but he said he was worried about the law's effect on intellectual pursuit. "People expect that what they use at the library is nobody else's business," Shelkrot said. "If they can all of a sudden have their records examined because of some allegation, it presents a situation where Big Brother is watching you."
According to a Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, the changes enacted under the Patriot Act are a way to aid law enforcement in pursuing highly mobile and technologically savvy terrorist cells.
"We are trying to prevent terrorist activities," said Corallo, who pointed out that several of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 plot used public-library computers to communicate by e-mail. "This law allows the FBI to come into the 21st century."
Camden County Library director Claudia Sumler wondered, though, how useful libraries will be to investigators.
"Libraries have always been concerned about confidentiality," she said. "As items are returned, the information is deleted from our database."
In Pennsylvania, concerns about the Patriot Act have spurred five Philadelphia-area library systems into collaboration. Next month, they will team up for a workshop on protecting patron privacy under the act.
"We're going to be taking a look at information we should be shredding on a daily basis and on how to respond if a library gets one of these orders," said Bucks County's O'Rourke, one of the organizers.
The Patriot Act is also getting renewed attention in Congress.
"This is very sweeping language," Rep. Bernard Sanders (Ind., Vermont) said of the law. Sanders, who voted against it, said there was almost no deliberation on the bill before it was passed. "Not a lot of members of Congress read it," he said.
To amend what he sees as some of the law's excesses, Sanders is sponsoring the Freedom to Read Protection Act, which would bar library- and bookstore-record searches unless there was evidence of a crime. His bill, which has 68 cosponsors, would also lift the gag order.
So, how often has law enforcement used the Patriot Act to get records from libraries?
That information is classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union was rebuffed when it tried, under the Freedom of Information Act, to get statistics on how many times the FBI has used the new surveillance powers. The ACLU has filed suit against the Justice Department to try to get those numbers.
F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R., Wis.), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the Justice Department, told the Associated Press in an interview this week that the Justice Department was sharing so little information, he could not assess how the Patriot Act was working.
The Justice Department's Corallo said the law bars the Justice Department from releasing data on how the Patriot Act is being used. He dismissed concerns about the secrecy of the FISA court.
"They always have to have a bogeyman," Corallo said of the critics. "They say: 'Oh, it's a secret court.' But these are all federal judges who are sworn to uphold the law." Also, he said, "Section 215 expressly provides that the FBI cannot conduct an investigation of a U.S. person solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment."
Corallo's words don't assure ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer.
From 1978 to 2001, when the Patriot Act went into effect, he said, the FISA court heard about 15,000 requests for surveillance and did not turn down one.
"These provisions can be used to go on a fishing expedition. They can say, 'We want to know which people borrowed books on building bridges or radical Islam,' " Jaffer said.
Said the Free Library's Shelkrot: "Libraries don't want to be safe havens for terrorists. But our history is much too replete with actions being taken against people, [like] intimidation and incarceration."
Shelkrot pointed to the civil rights era and the FBI's role in investigating activists, among them the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "A lot of people were being accused of being anti-American and fomenting uprising. But they were talking about righting wrongs in society."
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Contact staff writer Eils Lotozo at 215-854-5610 or elotozo@phillynews.com.
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