The law allows the FBI to gain access to the library records of individuals who checked out books. The cops have only to submit a request for a search warrant to a secret court. To qualify for the warrant, the FBI is required to say simply that it suspects an individual is involved with a terrorist individual or plot. Agents do not need "probable cause," usually required for search warrants, or proof beyond a "reasonable doubt," necessary for convictions, to be granted the warrant.

In a move that has outraged many librarians, the law bars them for saying anything about their conversations with FBI agents, under threat of prosecution.

Sam Morrison, the library director of Broward County, Florida, said the FBI had recently contacted his office and specifically instructed him not to reveal any information about the request. "We’ve heard from them and that’s all I can tell you," he said.

A survey conducted earlier this year by the University of Illinois found that federal or local cops had requested information about patrons from at least 85 libraries nationwide.

Kari Hanson, director of the Bridgeview Public Library in Chicago, told the press that an FBI agent had requested information about a person. The library had no record of the individual.

"These records and this information can be had with so little reason or explanation," said Judith Krug, the American Library Association’s director for intellectual freedom. "It’s super secret and anyone who wants to talk about what the FBI did at their library faces prosecution. That has nothing to do with patriotism."

Krug said that she has received hate mail after speaking out against the Patriot Act. People "think that by giving up their rights, especially their right to privacy, they will be safe," she said, adding that "it wasn’t the right to privacy" that caused the attacks on the World Trade Center. "It had nothing to do with libraries or library records."

To defend against this government intrusion Krug encourages librarians to keep only the records they need and eliminate records that show which person checked out a book and for how long.  
 
Court holds off open hearings
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on June 28 put a stay on a federal court ruling that declared unconstitutional the Justice Department’s secret hearings for immigrants detained since September 11.

U.S. District Judge John Bissell in Newark, New Jersey, had ruled that secret hearings were unconstitutional, and ordered that the government could only have them closed on a case-by-case basis.

More than 1,200 immigrants have been rounded up and secretly jailed, allegedly in connection with the investigations around the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Claiming an "urgent threat to national security," the Bush administration’s solicitor general Theodore Olson said the hearings should remain off-limits to reporters, family members, and others. He is seeking to have Bissell’s order permanently overturned on appeal.

Olson said that if the hearings are opened, "terrorist organizations will have direct access to information about the government’s ongoing investigation." None of the post-September 11 detainees have been charged with terrorism-related crimes.

The closed hearings were challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights in a lawsuit filed on behalf of the New Jersey Law Journal and the New Jersey Media Group.

"More people will be tried in secret," said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney handling the suit. "They’re appearing all by themselves in front of a judge, facing a trained INS prosecutor in secret. There’s no public scrutiny of the process."
 
 
Related article:
Oppose FBI snooping in libraries  
 
 
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