Librarians Join the Fight Against The Patriot Act

An anonymous reader writes "This article at the New York Times (free reg.) shows how lots of libraries are moving to destroy privacy related data as quickly as possible and still others have gone as far as posting signs and handing out leaflets to scare / educate their patrons."

Comments

link to story (no reg req'd)

[klparrot]

You can read the story here without registering. Whenever a NY Times link gets posted, replace www with archive to avoid registration.

Re:Somebody please explain this to me...

[cperciva]

If that is it...then good grief, what are we talking about here?

Courts have ruled in several instances that if something is to be considered available, it must be available anonymously. Freedom of speech implies freedom of anonymous speech, because otherwise people will self-censor out of fear of retribution; access to abortions implies anonymous access to abortions, because otherwise the social stigma could stop people seeking abortions; access to public libraries implies anonymous access to public libraries, because otherwise people will avoid reading "subversive" material.

You're right, it is unlikely that the ability to access these records would be abused; but it has been abused in the past, so many people are very wary of giving law enforcement that ability again.

Re:Somebody please explain this to me...

[warpSpeed]

So basically the Patriot Act says that library records can be used in terrorist investigations. Is that it, or is there something more sinister I'm missing? Honestly, I'm not trying to troll here.

If that is it...then good grief, what are we talking about here? What is there about borrowing a book that should make it a sacrosanct activity like confessional, or attorney-client privelege?...

We are not talking about borrowing a book, we are talking about unfettered access, by the government, to records that we should reasonably expect to remain private. They want access to all personal data, in the name of national security, but there is no control over how that data is actually used. This can put a chilling effect on what we may or may not do just by association and the fear of being targeted for said associations.

How long until you are stopped driving and asked for your 'papers', where are you going, why? Sounds far fetched, it probably is, but where it the line that once the governemnt crosses it is no longer OK for them to have unfettered access to our personal lives?

If the government wants to know that I have read "such and such author", they should be required to tell me that they want to know, and further they should show a good reason for neededing the information.

PATRIOT II is even WORSE

[holland_g]

PATRIOT II as drafted would

Allow the Attourney General to:
o deport permanent residents
o revoke citizenship

Allow the government to:
o Create DNA databases
o grant immunity to police and businesses

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=15541

Get Ready for PATRIOT II

Matt Welch, AlterNet
April 1, 2003
Viewed on April 8, 2003

The "fog of war" obscures more than just news from the battlefield. It also provides cover for radical domestic legislation, especially ill-considered liberty-for-security swaps, which have been historically popular at the onset of major conflicts.

The last time allied bombs fell over a foreign capital, the Bush Administration rammed through the USA PATRIOT Act, a clever acronym for maximum with-us-or-against-us leverage (the full name is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism").

Remarkably, this 342-page law was written, passed (by a 98-1 vote in the U.S. Senate) and signed into law within seven weeks of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. As a result, the government gained new power to wiretap phones, confiscate property of suspected terrorists, spy on its own citizens without judicial review, conduct secret searches, snoop on the reading habits of library users, and so General John Ashcroft wants to finish the job. On Jan. 10, 2003, he sent around a draft of PATRIOT II; this time, called "The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." The more than 100 new provisions, Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo told the Village Voice recently, "will be filling in the holes" of PATRIOT I, "refining things that will enable us to do our job."

Though Ashcroft and his mouthpieces have issued repeated denials that the draft represents anything like a finished proposal, the Voice reported that: "Corallo confirmed ... that such measures were coming soon."

You can read the entire 87-page draft here. Constitutional watchdog Nat Hentoff has called it "the most radical government plan in our history to remove from Americans their liberties under the Bill of Rights." Some of DSEA's more draconian provisions:

Americans could have their citizenship revoked, if found to have contributed "material support" to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be "terrorist." As Hentoff wrote in the Feb. 28 Village Voice: "Until now, in our law, an American could only lose his or her citizenship by declaring a clear intent to abandon it. But -- and read this carefully from the new bill -- 'the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct.'" (Italics Hentoff's.)

Legal permanent residents (like, say, my French wife), could be deported instantaneously, without a criminal charge or even evidence, if the Attorney General considers them a threat to national security. If they commit minor, non-terrorist offenses, they can still be booted out, without so much as a day in court, because the law would exempt habeas corpus review in some cases. As the American Civil Liberties Union stated in its long brief against the DSEA, "Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus -- a protection guaranteed by the Constitution -- since the Civil War."

The government would be instructed to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at "detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities." Samples could be collected without a court order; one need only be suspected of wrongdoing by a law enforcement officer. Those refusing the cheek-swab could be fined $200,000 and jailed for a year. "Because no federal genetic privacy law regulates DNA databases, privacy advocates fear that the data they contain could be misused," Wired News reported March 31. "People with 'flawed' DNA have already suffered genetic