Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation’s Librarians

Lee Hadden writes: “The Wall Street Journal has a front page article on librarians and
their response to the Patriot Act in their October 28, 2003 issue.
“Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation’s Librarians: Fears About
Terrorism Clash With Principles of Privacy As Online Searches Surge.” By June Kronholz.

Read more about it in the paper copy at your library, or at their
website at: www.wsj.com (subscription required), or on many library access
sites such as ProQuest.”

Lee Hadden writes: “The Wall Street Journal has a front page article on librarians and
their response to the Patriot Act in their October 28, 2003 issue.
“Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation’s Librarians: Fears About
Terrorism Clash With Principles of Privacy As Online Searches Surge.” By June Kronholz.

Read more about it in the paper copy at your library, or at their
website at: www.wsj.com (subscription required), or on many library access
sites such as ProQuest.“Here’s A Bit:

The new antiterrorism law gives the Federal Bureau of Investigation the
power to rummage through their computers and patron files, yet “never once
in my career” had an investigation led him into a library, Mr. Beyer said.
Still, he warned that another terrorist attack is “probable,” flashed a
slide show of the crumbling World Trade Center to drive home his point and
begged the librarians not to destroy any records that might help
investigators some day. After all, he asked, “How much protection do you
want to give to your patrons, and how much protection do you want to give
to your country?”

Martha Jane Proctor, her silver hair combed into stiff spikes, was having
none of it. An adviser to the libraries in eight counties in eastern
Kentucky’s coal-field region, Ms. Proctor pronounced the very notion of a
library search “an abomination.” And destroy records? “Of course. I tell
the [library] directors to do it. That’s pretty much my opinion,” she
declared.

“The only vocal concerns I’ve ever heard” about the Patriot Act “are from
the librarians,” Mr. Beyer sighed as he left the Kentucky Library
Association’s annual convention.

The Patriot Act has generated protests from the left and the right since it
passed, almost unanimously, six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But few critics are more stubborn than the librarians, who see it as an
assault on such basic civil liberties as reading privacy and intellectual
freedom.