Tuesday, January 28, 2003

- US Librarians See ‘Big Brother’ in Monitoring of Library Patrons Under ‘USA Patriot Act’

PHILADELPHIA—A federal law aimed at catching terrorists has raised the hackles of many of the nation’s librarians, who say it goes too far by allowing law enforcement agencies to watch what some people are reading.

The USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, gave the FBI new powers to investigate terrorism, including the ability to look at library records and computer hard drives to see what books patrons have checked out, what Web pages they’ve visited, and where they’ve sent e-mails.

The Department of Justice says the new powers are needed to identify terrorist cells.

But some librarians, who were meeting in Philadelphia for an American Library Association convention, worry that the FBI has returned to routinely checking on the reading habits of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other Americans.

Those tactics, common in the 1950s and 1960s, were occasionally used to brand people as Communists......

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0126-05.htm