catspaw

Stuff like this tends to make one of my working lives interesting, challenging even - and trust me, that's not a word that's usually associated with librarians *g*

LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Librarian stands up to FBI
Refuses to turn over list of users who checked out bin Laden book

Posted: May 26, 2005
WorldNetDaily.com

A librarian in Washington state stood up to the FBI after it demanded
internal patron information - and she won.

Joan Airoldi, director of the library district in Whatcom County,
Wash., between Seattle and Bellingham, told her story in an op-ed piece in USA
Today.

"It was a moment that librarians had been dreading," Airoldi writes in the
opening of her column.

She explains that in June, an FBI agent stopped into one of the district's
branches and requested a list of people who had borrowed a biography of
Osama bin Laden.

"We said no," Airoldi wrote. "We did not take this step lightly. First, our attorney called the local FBI office and asked why the information was important. She was told that one of our patrons had sent the FBI the book after discovering these words written in the margin: 'If the things I'm doing is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by God.'"

It turns out that quote is quite similar to a line from a bin Laden
statement uttered during a 1998 interview.

The library told the FBI it would have to go through legal channels to
request the information, which it did. A week later, the agency served a
subpoena on the library demanding a list of everyone who had borrowed
the book since November 2001.

Wrote Airoldi: "Our trustees faced a difficult decision. It is our job
to protect the right of people to obtain the books and other materials
they need to form and express ideas. If the government can easily obtain
records of the books that our patrons are borrowing, they will not feel free to
request the books they want. Who would check out a biography of bin Laden
knowing that this might attract the attention of the FBI?"

The library trustees, Airoldi explained, had to balance privacy rights
with its desire to help the government fight terrorism. It decided to fight
the subpoena in court, and 15 days later the FBI dropped its demand.

Airoldi mentioned the experience heightened her sensitivity to the
ramifications of the USA Patriot Act: "There is a shadow over our happy ending. Our experience taught us how easily the FBI could have discovered the names of the borrowers, how readily this could happen in any library in the USA. It also drove home for us the dangers that the USA Patriot Act poses to reader privacy."

The librarian explains that since the passage of the Patriot Act in
October 2001, the FBI has the power to go to a secret court to request library
and bookstore records considered relevant to a national security investigation.
It does not have to show that the people whose records are sought are suspected of any crime or explain why they are being investigated. In addition, librarians and booksellers are forbidden to reveal that they
have received an order to surrender customer data.

Concludes Airoldi: "Fortunately for our patrons, we were able to mount a
successful challenge to what seems to have been a fishing expedition. If it
had returned with an order from a secret court under the Patriot Act, the
FBI might now know which residents in our part of Washington State had
simply tried to learn more about bin Laden.

"With a Patriot Act order in hand, I would have been forbidden to disclose
even the fact that I had received it and would not have been able to tell
this story."

In an e-mail praising Airoldi, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership warned of what it perceives as Patriot Act dangers.

"If somebody else's margin scribble in a library book is enough to put
you on the FBI's suspect list, then do you have more liberty or less?" the
group asks. "Secret courts with unreviewable court order powers - are these
more a feature of free countries or of police states?"

The firearms group, believing "conservative" commentators are too
supportive of the Patriot Act, concluded: "We salute Library Director Joan
Airoldi's courage, and that of her library's board, in standing up for the rights of Americans. We challenge the conservative media community to applaud Ms. Airoldi also. Regretfully, we expect the conservative media folks to
ignore the story totally, and that is a sad commentary indeed."

http://worldnetdaily.com/

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Apart from the fact that my curator's soul is *revolted* by the idea of marginal scribbles (*don't* do it, people, unless the book belongs to you) I'm not sure quite what I feel about this. On one hand, I find it quite alarming just how readily the administration is prepared to fling away hard won freedoms in the name of preserving freedom - a position which makes little logical sense to me. And it grieves me that very similar legislation exists over here. So one part of me applauds this woman and her organisation's stand against the erosion of personal privacy.

The corollary of this is, of course, that old chestnut, 'if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear'. Because we all know terrorism is an evil, right? And we all know that it's in our best interests to protect our society against it, and if that means a little steamrollering of the odd person or several's privacy then it's a price worth paying for the greater good.

I can almost appreciate the reasoning behind this position -- almost. The trouble is, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And I value my privacy. I have more than enough institutional interference in my affairs already for my liking. And I'm naturally suspicious of the powers that be.

I guess I'm coming down on the side of personal liberty and, by extension, the potential terrorists, in principle if not in fact. Which I don't really want to do because I deeply, deeply disapprove of violence as a means to a political end, even an end which I would consider 'right' and 'proper'.

It's all very brain-hurty for someone who basically just wants a quiet life amongst the stacks, to suddenly be thrust into the front line of a civil rights issue :-(