Effects of the Patriot Act on Librarians

Quaryon writes "The Patriot Act apears to have some chilling effects with respect to libraries and booksellers. An FBI agent can get a warrant, without any evidence, in order to compel a librarian to reveal lending details on a suspect. The librarian cannot tell anyone about the search, including the target of the search, and the details of how many such searches are done are not made public. Articles at SFGate News and Common Dreams give more details." We had a related Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago.

Comments

Hopeful sign

[jvmatthe]

Here at Duke, the school newspaper The Chronicle ran a recent story about the effect of the Patriot act on librarians. I hope that word becomes more widespread about the effect of this passed-in-the-heat-of-the-moment legislation, so that we can get it off the books as soon as possible.

Re:Librarians, throw down your yokes!

[Alpha Prime]

As the spouse of a Librarian, I can assure you that *most* modern libraries do not track lending habits past the currently checked out books. The ALA (American Library Association) stance is one favoring privacy, not government intervention.

Old card systems kept the names on a card, and the FBI did not need to do much more than scan through the backs of books to get their list. It was available to everyone. Nowadays, once the book is checked in, the users name is dropped from the system, thus fouling any search for history.

I should add the disclaimer that this is true in most cases. You should check with your librarian to see if your library software follows ALA guidelines.

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Re:Librarians, throw down your yokes!

[StoryMan]

I wonder if some libraries keep this information in order to know when to withdraw books and sell them at book sales.

Lately, at a lot of the 'Friends of the Library' booksales I've been to, I've noticed a lot of "Withdrawn" editions -- perfectly good books, in pretty good shape, but for whatever reason they've been pulled from the shelf.

Well, last weekend I got a copy of Milosz's 'History of Polish Literature' and was actually curious why a book like this was at a FOL sale for a quarter. Anyway, I bought the book then went upstairs to check the card catalog. I figured the book had been replaced. But there was no sign of a new edition.

Then I figured it might be from a different library -- a branch or something -- but all the markings on the spine and front cover matched with the library where it was for sale.

I should have asked the ref librarians -- because i was actually pretty curious about this -- but they were busy and I didn't feel like waiting.

Anyway, I scored a great book (if you're into the history of Polish lit, I suppose) for twenty-five cents. I figured that because it was pretty obscure was why it was pulled.

But I might be wrong. I'd hate to think libraries are driven by marketing -- what's popular, what's not -- but then I figure: well, most libraries have a finite amount of space and new space is not always forthcoming. So instead of just adding, adding, adding to the inventory, they probably have to make some hard decisions and pull stuff off the shelf.

This *might* be why libraries need records. (But they don't need to correlate the borrower records with the book check-out history, I suppose.)

*shrug*

Re:PUBLIC Libraries

[MoneyT]

You obviously have never taken a political science course have you? The biggest impact of any federal ruling or court decision or action is not the immediate impact but the precident it sets further down the road. For example, the creation of a national bank was not provided for in the constitution, and when the idea first came up, it was a heavy legal battle fought all the way to the supreme court. There, the decision was made based on a 3 part test.
1) Does the law explicitly violate the constitution?
2) Is the purpose bennificial to the people as individuals, the states as entities and the US as a whole?
3) Is there a better way to reach the same ends?

All this ruling did was create a national bank, but the precident for deciding how to rule on controversial laws is still in use today. Those same 3 steps, established in one of the first supreme court cases is a method that is used for many many laws today.

Likewise, there was a ruling which established that there is no such thing as an absoulte right to free speech (can't yell fire in a theater). This ruling allows for the supression of anti government propaganda durring a war. That is a scary precident.

SO is this one. If they can read your borrowing logs today, why shouldn't they be able to read your credit history tomorrow? And read your phone logs the next day? What's the difference? It's all part of the better good to save your life. Better to die young and free than old and opressed.

Re:patriot?

[Dannon]

Many bills cross the floors of Congress with deliberately misleading names. For example, ask someone if they'll favor a Medical Privacy Act, and they'll say yes in a heartbeat. Unless you elabroate that this Act will require all doctors to surrender medical records of their patients to the Federal Government upon request, while making it a crime for your doctor to tell you that your information has been reported.

Or, take the Florida Wetlands Protection Bills, so heavily favored by the Eco-Crowd... which propose to seize privately-owned lands and flood these areas beyond their natural levels, threatening the natural ecological balances.

I do wish we had a rule requiring appropriate naming of legislation. I also wish we had a rule that all sponsors of any legislation at the State or Federal level would have to sign a certain document. This document would state their belief that the legislation is more important than any other use the taxpayers may have for the money it would require, including food, bills, transportation, home repair, personal investment towards retirement, personal investment in education, etc.

But then, I can't see any bill with either of those proposals getting very far.