News Slant	News Slant Archive

Because the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to know what books you read, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001-- the "USA Patriot Act"-- is designed in part to help federal investigators learn which volumes you've been checking out of your local library, buying at your local bookstore, or ordering online.

The law, whose principal architect was US Attorney General John Ashcroft, hurtled through Congress last October in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. In addition to abridging due process, broadening eavesdropping powers, and tightening controls on immigration, the USA Patriot Act facilitates government access to medical, legal, business, and educational records once accorded an almost sacrosanct degree of confidentiality.

View our poll archive

A Patriot Act amendment, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows government agents to delve into library and bookstore records, both written and electronic, in search of information that reveals which library resources a particular individual has used, or which books he or she has bought. It expedites glimpses into the borrowing histories of both targeted library patrons and their associates. Warrants for such searches are sought through secret sessions in federal court, and routinely granted.

Since terrorism need only be a "significant" facet of the investigation, not necessarily its primary point, the mechanism created to pinpoint the literary interests of suspected terrorists can easily be applied to investigations of crimes involving computers, alleged obscenity, and "deviant" sexual behavior. This is a boon to agents trawling for material useful in prosecuting or simply discrediting any person who happens to attract their interest.

The provision is in direct conflict with Article III of the 65,000-member American Library Association's (ALA) Code of Ethics, which holds librarians responsible for protecting "each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received, and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired, or transmitted." In all but two of the 50 states, library records are held confidential by law. The Attorneys General of Hawaii and Kentucky, the two exceptions, have determined that such records are not to be regarded as freely accessible. Nevertheless, the USA Patriot Act not only demands that librarians open their stacks to snooping expeditions, its Section 215 imposes a gag order on library workers, forbidding them to reveal the details of an investigation-- or that an investigation is even taking place.

In January and February 2002, the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois conducted a study that found that within three months of the September 11 attacks, FBI agents and other law enforcement officials visited 85 libraries out of a nationwide sample of 1,020. Most of the libraries were in major cities; a number of them were in Florida, New Jersey, and other areas where the 9/11 terrorists had attended flight school. Since the investigations remain shrouded in secrecy, it is not known exactly what or whom the agents were pursuing, or why.

Snooping between the covers

The FBI's interest in people's reading habits isn't new. In the 1940s and '50s, the agency tried to keep tabs on the reading matter of putative communists, frequently targeting left-wing scholars through libraries at colleges and universities. In Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom of Expression, Natalie Robins cites an incident where, in the 1950s, a Russian history professor at Oberlin College decided not to put a certain book on reserve when he discovered that "the FBI was keeping track of who used it." In the 1960s, 54 faculty members at the University of California's Berkeley campus came under surveillance because their families subscribed to "subversive" periodicals like The Daily Worker. In 1990, when the FBI joined San Francisco police in raiding Jock Sturges's home and studio, agents seized the photographer's copy of Lolita to support its contention that the internationally acclaimed artist was a child pornographer.

Since federal agents are not known for academic breadth or literary sophistication, one can only guess what an FBI investigator might conclude about a library user who recently borrowed The Communist Manifesto, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, Madison Smartt Bell's slave-revolt novel All Souls Rising, Karen Armstrong's Islam, and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

The FBI's present interest in libraries seems to be a reawakening of its Reagan-era Library Awareness Program. Beginning in 1987, the FBI launched an effort to monitor the reading habits of Eastern Europeans visiting American technical libraries, including the UCLA Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Library, the University of Houston Library, the Columbia University Mathematics and Science Library, and the New York Public Library. When the American Library Association protested the program, calling it an "unconscionable and unconstitutional invasion of the right of privacy of library users," the initiative was evidently dropped.

"The FBI would say the current program is different," says Judith Krug, Director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom, "but there are many similarities." Krug's efforts to expose the USA Patriot Act's library incursions have elicited angry public responses. Her recent mail has included a wish that she had been "on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center" last September 11, and an offer of "a one-way ticket to any Muslim country."

"These people are reacting out of stupidity and fear," says Krug, "overwhelming fear, fear without thought. They pay no attention to what is at stake. But if, for example, people know that when they purchase books by credit card, it becomes part of the haystack of FBI information, they might think about the implications."

"When you go into a public library, what you read is your business and yours alone," she insists. "If you use your knowledge to commit an illegal act, there are laws to address that." ALA guidelines for responding to law enforcement visits, which Krug helped formulate, advise against creating and retaining unnecessary records.

Most public libraries comply with those guidelines. In the Cambridge, Massachusetts, library system, for example, head librarian Susan Flannery notes, "Our records are completely obliterated when an item is returned. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't provide more than a snapshot of what someone has at the moment." Recently the Cambridge Public Library began discarding its computer sign-up sheets daily. Some libraries avoid using sign-up sheets at all.

Even minimal records can yield results. Eight overdue videotapes borrowed from the Boston Public Library provided grounds for holding Saleh Ali Almari, 24, a Saudi Arabian resident of Falls Church, Virginia, on charges of grand larceny. As he remains in detention awaiting probable deportation, Almari has been found to have no traceable connections to any terrorist organization, a status he shares with virtually all 1100 foreign nationals detained in the aftermath of 9/11.

American citizens are, at least in theory, better legally equipped than non-citizens to hold their own against the USA Patriot Act. "As challenges to aspects of the Patriot Act start making their way through the judicial system," says Susan Flannery, "my hope is that judges will point out, 'Golly gee, you can't violate the Constitution.'" But a court challenge is difficult when most library patrons who are being investigated have no idea the investigation is taking place, and librarians are forbidden to divulge any information.

"Freedom of information, freedom of inquiry, freedom of dissent-- these are essential to our democracy," says Judith Krug. "We are a self-governing people. If we don't have information available-- cold hard facts, unfettered speculation, opinions freely expressed-- we can't govern ourselves."

The ALA's "Resolution Reaffirming the Principles of Intellectual Freedom in the Aftermath of Terrorist Attacks" begins by quoting Benjamin Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."