[wordup] Hey, There's a Federal Agent In My Book!

[Adam Shand]

I think librarians may be the next civil liberty heros.  Good for them.

Adam.

Via: http://boingboing.net/#200055612
From: http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0077010

Hey, There's a Federal Agent In My Book!
Jessamyn West

If you’re at all like me, hearing the word “patriot” lately makes you 
stop listening, reactively clench your fists, or recall that grand old 
phrase “I love my country, I just hate my government.” However, there is 
one patriot that is worth paying close attention to and that is the USA 
PATRIOT Act [USAPA]. This forced and awkward acronym stands for Uniting 
and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to 
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism [Act] a 342 page forced and awkward 
piece of legislation passed in a hurry a month after September 11 by a 
scared and vengeful Congress who barely read it. “Appropriate tools” in 
this case, means expanded surveillance and monitoring abilities as well 
as significantly reduced checks and balances surrounding how these tools 
are used. And “terrorism” means, well, almost anything.

You should care about the PATRIOT Act if you frequent libraries or 
bookstores, use pay phones, use an Internet service provider, go to 
school, go to the doctor, use credit cards or banks, have a lawyer, 
leave the country, go to jail, belong to an activist organization, read 
alternative publications [like this one] or know anyone who is 
contemplating any of the above activities, or maybe if you’re just a fan 
of freedom or the Bill of Rights. Why? Because the assumptions you may 
be making about your privacy, and your right to it, may be all wrong. 
Your rights to do all of these things, or do them free of surveillance 
and/or harassment, have changed in the past two years.

One of the most talked about implications of these new powers is the 
privacy of library and bookstore patrons, or lack thereof. Previously, a 
government or police official that wanted patron information [such as 
lists of books checked out, Internet habits, or home addresses and phone 
numbers] had to have a subpoena issued by a court of law. Now they 
usually need a search warrant, and the warrant, which can be issued 
almost immediately, does not need to have a specific name on it. In 
other words, the FBI can go on snooping missions in libraries or 
bookstores, and go there solely for the purposes of “gathering 
intelligence” on everyone who may use the library, not necessarily to 
track down a particular suspected criminal. They can also install 
monitoring software on library computers without telling anyone it’s there.

The worst part of this new legislation is the associated gag order. If 
the FBI does come to your library, your librarian is forbidden by law to 
tell you or anyone else that they have been there, or what they did. If 
they installed surveillance equipment on the computers, they can’t tell 
you. If they asked for the list of the last 50 books you or everyone who 
uses the library checked out or purchased, they can’t tell you. The same 
is true for bookstore owners and employees. The USAPA creates an 
entirely new class of prosecutable criminal: librarians who tell the truth.

Many libraries have written privacy policies that spell out what 
information they will or will not share [see link below] that are 
themselves offshoots of state laws regarding privacy of library 
information -- all states but Kentucky and Hawaii have laws making 
library records confidential.

In fact many of these state privacy laws are themselves a reaction to 
another misguided program, the FBI’s so-called Library Awareness Program 
in effect during the 1980’s. During this period, agents went to 
libraries and asked for information on patrons it considered 
“suspicious.” Backlash by librarians and resultant heightened visibility 
of the program itself brought an early demise to the FBI’s activities 
and more codified assertions of public library patron privacy.

The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has 
offered legal assistance to libraries who are facing, or have faced, 
federal investigators in their libraries [as long as the librarians 
don’t tell the OIF they have been served with a search warrant]. The 
USAPA has created a series of conflicting laws where state laws 
contradict the USAPA which itself contradicts the Bill of Rights. What’s 
a librarian to do?

While this is all chilling information, the next question is: are these 
dreaded visits actually happening? While no accurate count of federal 
agents’ visits to libraries can be made due to the [insane and illegal] 
gag order, a recent survey of 906 libraries done by the Library Research 
Center at the UIUC [see link below] found that nearly half the libraries 
surveyed reported a visit by state or local law enforcement or the INS, 
in the year following 9/11/01, as compared to less than 15% reporting 
similar visits in the previous year.

Libraries who have been visited by the FBI can’t mention that fact AFTER 
the visit, but many libraries and library systems are becoming 
pro-active and getting ready in case the feds do come to the door. To 
this end they have begun making staff and patrons aware of the Act and 
its implications. Some of them have begun tweaking their systems for 
greater patron privacy: tossing out Internet terminal sign-up lists at 
the end of the day; not requiring a card number or allowing pseudonymous 
Internet signups; removing patron borrowing records once a book has been 
returned; and in some cases, working within their communities to pass 
resolutions against the PATRIOT Act and pledging non-compliance in advance.

At this writing, San Francisco, Oakland, Arcata, West Hollywood, Yolo 
County, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Fairfax and Sebastopol California as well 
as Boulder CO, Madison WI, Ann Arbor and Detroit MI, Burlington and 
Montpelier VT, Eugene OR, Fairbanks AK, Mansfield and New Haven CT, 
Flagstaff AZ, Cambridge, Amherst, Leverett & Northampton MA, Takoma Park 
MD Alachua County FL and Santa Fe, NM have passed some form of 
resolution condemning the USAPA. Almost all of these resolutions were 
the result of grass roots and/or library agitation by the general public 
fed up with infringements on their rights. If your town or city isn’t on 
this list, perhaps you could help it get there.

Other organizations have been fighting back as well. In August 2002, the 
ACLU, the Freedom to Read Foundation, The American Booksellers 
Foundation for Free Expression and the Electronic Privacy Information 
Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the Justice 
Department to disclose how it has been using the USAPA since its 
inception. They had gotten no response by October, so they filed a 
lawsuit with the US District Court for the District of Columbia 
demanding a response. In November, a judge ordered the government to 
respond to the request by January 15th of this year. In January, the 
government’s response was widely reported in the media:

“On that date, the government supplied 200 pages, most heavily redacted 
or blacked out so nothing can be read. None of the documents contained 
any of the information that had been requested. In the letter 
accompanying the released pages, the Justice Department made it clear 
that it would not supply any further information based upon the August 
FOIA request without further litigation.”
Clearly the US government isn’t too happy about sharing information 
about its program to force other agencies to share information.

The next big question is what can we all do to prevent, thwart, ridicule 
and generally combat intrusive government surveillance and intimidation 
in our lives? There are many levels of involvement, all of which are 
useful and like most activism, doing anything at all is preferable to 
staying home and waiting for a knock on the door. Here is a short list 
of things you can do that will help expose the USA PATRIOT Act as the 
total unconstitutional violation of our civil liberties that it really is:

    1. Inform yourself, follow these links below and learn what the 
USAPA is and what it is not. Make a point of telling people about it 
every day. Be aware of the many public places you go where you could be 
being spied on just for crossing the path of a “suspected terrorist.”
    2. Go to your library and talk to your librarians and library staff 
about the PATRIOT Act. Ask if they have a plan in case the FBI comes to 
their library. Ask them what privacy policies they have put in place. 
Remind them that it’s okay to tell people if the FBI *hasn’t* been in 
the library. Check out every book on Afghanistan and militias you can, 
and fill up the library computers’ Internet cache with articles on home 
made weaponry and drugs. Then, if the FBI comes to your door, tell 
everyone you know.
    3. If your community hasn’t yet passed a resolution against the 
PATRIOT Act, see if you can get one passed. Check out the sample 
resolutions online, or craft your own. Have community meetings and talk 
with people about their rights, and their privacy, and what should or 
shouldn’t be allowed in a free society. Get people’s honest opinions on 
the new legislation and its effectiveness in fighting terrorism.
    4. Write letters to elected officials. They passed it, they should 
deal with the repercussions. Tell them you are unhappy that they have 
sold out your freedoms for the sake of appearing “tough on crime.”
    5. Resist, in whatever form you think is appropriate, government’s 
attempts to silence or oversee you.

Further reading

* Text of the USAPA http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
* Bill of Rights Defense Committee http://www.bordc.org/index.html
* Privacy, Computers and the PATRIOT Act: The Fourth Amendment Isn’t 
Dead, But No One Will Insure It by Steven A Osher 
http://www.flr.law.ufl.edu/pdf/july2002/osher.pdf
* EFF Analysis of the The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act That Relate 
To Online Activities 
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_militias/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis.html
* American Library Association USAPA Resource Page 
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/usapatriotact.html
* Surveillance Powers, Changes after USAPA, from ACLU 
http://archive.aclu.org/issues/privacy/Patriot_Chart_law.html
* State Privacy Laws Regarding Library Records 
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/stateprivacylaws.html
* Public Libraries http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/gslis/research/finalresults.pdf
* The State of Civil Liberties in the US One Year After 9/11 
http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/excep/ccr.html

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