U.S. Patriot Act: Reader Privacy Fight Resumes In Congress

Last week, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the reauthorization of a bill that would restore protections for reader privacy that were formerly eliminated by 2001's Patriot Act.

Leahy's bill was approved in 2009 by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but it never received a vote by the full Senate. According to a press release, the bill "provides important safeguards for library records, limiting FBI searches to the records of people who are 'agents of a foreign power,' including suspected terrorists, and people known to them...The Patriot Act currently authorizes the FBI to search any records that are 'relevant' to a terrorist investigation, including the records of people who are not suspected of criminal conduct."

However, though the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011 protects readers at libraries, it fails to do the same for those in bookstores.

In the press release, Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, said that she believes Congress should take note that the privacy of reader records at bookstores is equally important to that at libraries:

We appreciate the heightened protection afforded library records for those Americans who borrow books. The next logical step would be to safeguard the First Amendment rights of Americans who purchase books in a bookstore. In both instances, reader privacy must be maintained.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy, representing librarians, booksellers, authors, and publishers, supports the act, but believes that reader privacy should continue to be strengthened. They noted that in a letter to Leahy, Attorney General Eric Holder had stressed the importance of strengthening reader privacy as well. He wrote:

Taken together, I believe these measures will advance the goals of....enhancing the privacy and civil liberties our citizens enjoy without compromising our ability to keep our nation safe and secure.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy was created in 2004 by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center. Its primary aim is to ensure that citizens can buy and borrow books without having to worry about being watched by the government.

Comments

[Marla Thurman]

01:36 AM on 02/05/2011

You go, Senator Leahy! Anything done to get us back to pre-Patriot Act is a good thing.

[revko]

02:29 AM on 02/03/2011

Kindle Kops

[raker]

08:16 PM on 02/02/2011

The entire Patriot Act is corrupt, so pecking around the edges too little, too late.

[GraceNotes]

05:45 PM on 02/02/2011

About once a month a library patron will ask one of us, "Do you keep a record of everything I have read?"
My answer is always, "No, and you really don't want us to."

[Nix 007]

02:19 PM on 02/02/2011

If library readers are protected then it makes sense that bookstores would be as well. Sometimes I don't understand the lack of logic in this land.

[neverdeadned]

01:25 PM on 02/02/2011

I just want to point out why go to the library when you have the internet right there. Just saying

[ecotopian]

01:34 PM on 02/02/2011

Because not everything is available on the internet. Just sayin'.

[naschkatze]

06:39 PM on 02/02/2011

You think they are not looking over your shoulder on the internet too?

[Donkan]

11:57 AM on 02/02/2011

If this law is intended to keep the FBI and other agencies from going on "fishing expeditions" in libraries and bookstores, it is a very good thing. The article doesn't really say, but I assume that the law would not prevent police from looking at a suspect's library record if they obtain a search warrant from the courts.

[progressiveconnie]

11:48 AM on 02/02/2011

GOOD MORNING!!! MY FELLOW HOMO SAPIENS WHICH MEANS THE SPECIES WHO IS WISE. SHORT TAKES:
The U.S. Patriot Acts are Nazi Acts and these Acts must be abolished!!!
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Wall Street swindlers are rigging the oil and food markets again and it was the high cost of food that was one of the reasons for the riots in the Mideast.
If Americans had really cared about what these swindlers have been doing they would have marched on Wall Street after the financial meltdown and made citizens arrests of everyone of these swindlers, tried them and hungum high right on Wall Street!!! since America's legal systems have become totally corrupt and useless.
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The U.S. Congress passed sensible automatic handgun laws decades ago but has never provided funding to enforce these laws which is really a cruel, sadistic joke on those 34 Americans that will either be killed or maimed by these killing machines today and everyday of the year.

[Spiral Architect]

03:16 PM on 02/02/2011

HOOPLA, CONSPIRACY N#T, L1B L00N

[Twinz48]

10:54 AM on 02/03/2011

Americans are a complacent lot. The "bread and circus" mentality is alive and well across the land.