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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."
See the Library Bill o' Rights for a more concise explanation than I could ever give.
--kotj.mf, para-professional library drone
hang brain.
It seems only librarians are able to appreciate the meaning of this:
/. who see the end in libraries and librarians forget that there are people who still *use* libraries for their reading materials, reference and enjoyment. Beware /.ers! You scream when your electronic "rights" of privacy are violated but seem far too quick to sacrifice the rights of those who don't fit in your clique of 'libraries are old school, the web is the only way'. Beware the pendulum of opinion, it swings like the sword: both ways.
.02% of all the books ever published.(Correct me if I'm wrong!) I want to go to my library (and web site) and read whatever I like without having the latest incarnation of a Cloaked Big Brother leaning over my shoulder looking for Thought Crimes.
[The United States]Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Fear of prosecution for reading is the corollary to abridging the freedom of speech.
In reading the responses of some of the (probably younger) technophiles here at
Last I checked there were about 85,000 full text books on the web for free. That's less than roughly
Is it just me, or do "The Patriot act" and "The Office of Homeland security", sound a lot like something from Orwell?
Oh well, off I go to the library...
D'oh!!!
Not everyone deserves a 320i
But they don't control what you read. It's just that if, after the fact you're under investigation for being a terrorist, yeah, having checked out books on making bombs just might be relevant to the investigation!
Now IANAL, and I have heard some talk of erosion of the need to get a subpoena for this stuff, and I disagree with that. We need to have a judge playing ref on this stuff.
But failing that, I guess I just don't see a special privelege for checking out books. Consider that on one hand, it would be admissable in court that I purchased the supplies for a bomb but not that I checked out a book on how to make one. Really it comes down to the question of: why should library records be inadmissable? What special privelege exists? And before you answer, make sure that you believe that at least something should be admissable in terrorist investigations, otherwise you're wasting everyone's time here.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The Patriotic Act says a lot more than just "the feds can see what books you read", but thats a story for another day.
No, today, I'll tell you the story about Jim. Jim was a fine young man, he just graduated with a degree in criminology. He was an honest and caring individual, who was selfless and brave. He would have been an outstanding police officer some day.
Well, would have been, except that Jim's freshman year, his roommate Steve was arrested. He didn't know the guy too well, Steve always hung out with the "tough crowd" and usually didn't use the room at all, preferring to stay out all night or crash at his girlfriend's place. Anyway, Jim went home for summer break to see his old friends, and when he came back, he had a different roommate. He hadn't heard much about it, and nobody was too keen on talking about it, so he figured he'd just let it slide.
So, after graduating, Jim applied to join the police force. He passed the civil service exams, and waited to hear the good news. And waited. And waited.
Then one day, there was a knock on the door. He got up, to answer it, and suddenly there was a loud bang and the door splintered, then collapsed inwards. 5 armed FBI agents rushed him and threw him to the ground then pinned him down. That was the last anyone heard from Jim. His neighbors thought it was sad that he'd be hauled away, since he seemed like such a nice quiet boy.
The End.
So, what happened?
Well, Jim's life started on the quick road to Hell when the university's random housing lottery placed him with Steve. Except Steve wasn't named Steve. He was just using that name while he was illegally in the US to study piloting airplanes. Then, Jim started checking out books on famous murders, criminology, DNA testing, and the like. His final mistake was applying for a position on the police force, thats when they ran the background check on him.
They punched his name into the database, and out popped the following:
Warning lived with "steve" for one year. Possible terrorist connection.
Well, this was enough for the FBI to get involved, so they went and looked up the list of books Jim had checked out and read. The list certainly was eye-opening. They fed this data into their database (which incidentially had Jim's major incorrectly listed as "English". But that was OK, since it wasn't important for the information to be correct)
The database churned for a few minutes and spat out the following:
Warning subject lived with "steve" for one year. Possible terrorist connection.
Warning subject has extensive interest in criminal behavior and violent crimes.
Conclusion: HE'S A TERRIST! GET HIM!
So now, Jim's sitting in a cell (if you can call those chain link things in Cuba "cells"). Been there for a few years. They still haven't told him why though. Every now and then they beat him or make him kneel with his head back and his arms straight out for hours on end, but they let up a little after a couple of other guys died. On the up side though, he's gotten to be good friends with this Ali guy in the next cell over, who seems like someone he knew his freshman year.
Moral (if you're still reading):
If you think this kind of thing is bullshit, you seriously underestimate the ability of the US justice system to be perverted. Take a look at the current mess the Houston Police Department is in, using shoddy lab work and practically lying through their teeth to get the conviction. Its not about justice here, no, its about having the big conviction numbers, whether or not the criminals are still roaming the streets. And now the FBI wants to maintain a database on everyone (oops, did I say "maintain"? That kind of suggests some effort in upkeep and keeping it correct) and is using terrorist arrests and secret trials which always end in conviction to convince everyone that they need even more power to catch every last terrorist out there.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
> As anyone who studies political science will tell
> you, a democracy only works well when you have an
> educated public.
That explains what Karl Rove (you know, Bush's brain) was thinking when he said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans--unless they have too much education and vote Democratic."
You can easily steer the country on the road to fascism all the while calling it "democracy," if your citizens don't know any better. Republicans have made no secret of their anti-academic views (e.g. they want to teach Biblical Creation in science class, and the current president probably hasn't even read a book since The The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Utimately, they want to replace our democracy with a plutocratic theocracy under their brand of Christianity. Sounds a little extreme, right? Well, Bush already believes that he was elected by God to lead this country.
Wow, this post is probably one sentence away from violating Godwin's law. I should have read my sig before posting.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
What, you expect the government to make sense? Heres a clue for you: this government you speak of doesn't do anything. It doesn't fight wars. It doesn't play in the park with its dog. It doesn't "make sense". "Government" is the label applied to a collection of people who claim a higher amount of authority over other people.
Thats right. Humans do the work. The government has no "ulterior motives" or "conspiracies", instead, some human has a power trip. Or a nervous breakdown. Or types in Jim's "Academic Study Code" as 80 (English Major) instead of 08 (Criminology Major). There could be many number of reasons why an FBI agent didn't interrogate Jim right away. Maybe the file fell behind someone's desk. Maybe some agent put Jim under survelliance to see if anything concrete enough to haul him in would come up. After a year or so, he got bored and started wiretapping corporate headquarters for stock tips. "Steve" was present illegally, so he was breaking the law even if studying to be a pilot was legal (when did it become illegal to learn to fly a plane? Maybe "Steve" just wanted to do cropdusting back in his home country. Or is that illegal too now?).
Jim's captivity results directly from the Patriot Act in this case. Years ago, just associating with "Steve" wasn't enough for an outright arrest warrant. Now, in the more-permissive "we gotta get the terrorists at all costs" environment, the attempt of an apparent English major who used to live with a terrorist to "infiltrate" LEA, was enough to obtain a warrant for the library records, and the library records, on top of all of that was sufficient circumstantial evidence for the arrest warrant.
So lets say that the FBI decides to do the token "Constitutional" thing, and gives Jim his trial after all. The FBI agents show up, and after initial arguments, an agent takes the stand and reads his prepared speech: "We have direct evidence which proves that Jim is engaging in terrorist activities." On cross examination, the agent is unable to actually produce any evidence in court due to the "sensitive nature" of the evidence and its "importance to national security". How does Jim defend against this?
As for Gitmo, lets call it a proof of concept. It proved that the American public was willing to allow the governement agents representing them to indefinitely hold and torture (oh wait, im sorry, according to the PR bits released by the government to the news which you so blindly follow, there was no beatings going on. In fact, the two detainees who died, died of "not-tortured" causes.) non-citizens. And now we have a fellow citizen from Intel, who apparently gave money to a fake charity, and is now being detained. Before you say "well, maybe he did more than just being misled by a false charity", ask yourself why the "justice" department hasn't given him the fair and speedy trial he is entitled to as a citizen of the US. Why haven't they proven he was more than a victim of circumstance?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
A few years ago, I read a book by Neil Postman called: Amusing Ourselves to Death. In the first chapter, he compared the books 1984, and A Brave New World. The conclusion he came to is that it is much easier to control people through what they love, rather than through what they fear. A distopia like in 1984 can never last long (on a historical time span) because people will try to destroy it, either covertly, or overtly. On the other hand, we have already accomplished 90% of the distopia presented in A Brave New World, and no one is worried about it, no one rallies against it. People openly embrace it. The funny thing is I'm not too worried about our government ruling through fear. I'm more worried about how our government currently rules: through apathy. How do you think it was that we were presented with the Hobson's choice of Al Gore, or George Bush.