Librarians lead move to amend Patriot Act

Friday, February 27, 2004
Librarians lead move to amend Patriot Act
Petition seeks to change federal law seen as a threat to exchange of ideas
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Librarians, writers and booksellers have joined forces in an effort to eliminate a section of the USA Patriot Act that they assert is chilling the "marketplace of ideas" so vital to American democracy.

The book industry presented a united front in Seattle yesterday against provisions of the law that allow the FBI to secretly find out what books people buy at bookstores or check out from libraries.

"Our customers are concerned that the government has granted itself the power to violate the sanctity of their privacy by compelling us to disclose what they read," Seattle bookseller Phillip Bevis said in a news conference at the Public Library Association convention in Seattle. The group is a division of the American Library Association.

Joining Bevis was the American Library Association's Judith Krug, who said the law strikes at two core principles of libraries: intellectual freedom and privacy. Krug unveiled a petition to Congress to amend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which "gives the FBI the power to apply to a secret court for an order compelling the surrender of records of books you purchase or borrow."

Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, said the group hopes the petition, which is sponsored by an umbrella group called Campaign for Reader Privacy, will gather 1 million signatures.

The campaign, which maintains a Web site at www.readerprivacy.com, supports pending federal legislation that it says is designed to strengthen the privacy of bookstore and library records while still allowing the FBI to obtain critical information on targets who are foreign agents engaged in acts of terrorism or espionage.

Bevis, who described himself as a lifelong Republican, said patriotic people of both political parties are "troubled by the thought that we are sacrificing our basic freedoms."

And although Bevis was unable to provide anything more than anecdotal evidence of the chilling effect of the law, he said that customers at his First Avenue bookstore -- just down the street from the Federal Building --are bucking national retail trends and buying controversial books with cash rather than credit cards so no records of their reading habits are created.