Re: DOWN & OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 01:10:25 MST

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    >According to my librarian wife, the Fed's have *always* been able to
    >snoop into your reading habits...the threshold is just a little
    >lower, but this is nothing new.

    >For this reason, indeed, the vast majority of libraries *do not
    >keep* historical records. Once you return a book, there is no record
    >of you ever having had it (a small exception may be rare book
    >collections). They have done this for a very long time, purely to
    >protect your privacy, since historical records would be useful in
    >some situations. But American librarians take intellectual freedom
    >very seriously.

    Steve, do you (more: your wife) know how the Feds plan implement this
    provision of the Patriot Act, then? If the librarians regularly
    destroy the borrowing records, then this provision seems rather empty.

    [to Spike: Generally I think it's none of the government's business
    what I like to read, ingest, listen to, play with, travel to, spend
    my money on, spend my time with, keep on my hard disk, and so on.
    As time passes, it looks to me like it is easier, not hardier to
    form a dossier on anyone that they want for the sparsest of reasons.
    The direction that the 'War on Terrorism' is following seems to be
    a carbon copy of the 'War on Drugs', but with the amplification factor
    cranked up a few orders of magnitude. Assumed Guilty, the individual
    must prove their Innocence. This is not the kind of political climate
    that supports intelligent people.]

    Amara

    ------

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/10/MN14634.DTL

    [...]
    "Section 215 of the act allows FBI agents to obtain a warrant from a
    secret federal court for library or bookstore records of anyone
    connected to an investigation of international terrorism or spying.

    Unlike conventional search warrants, there is no need for agents to
    show that the target is suspected of a crime or possesses evidence
    of a crime. As the Santa Cruz signs indicate, the law prohibits
    libraries and bookstores from telling their patrons, or anyone else,
    that the FBI has sought the records.

    The provision was virtually unnoticed when the Patriot Act, a major
    expansion of government search and surveillance authority, was
    passed by Congress six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But
    in the last year, Section 215 has roused organizations of librarians
    and booksellers into a burst of political activity, and is being
    cited increasingly by critics as an example of the new law's
    intrusiveness. "



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