LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

President Obama recently signed into law the re-authorization of three contentious provisions of the Patriot Act. Shane Harris, author of The Watchers, returns this week to discuss the implications for the future of American surveillance. Transcript here.

The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.

In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to the act in order to protect civil liberties.

“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.

It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions, which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Full article at Wired.com

Libraries are involved with patron's personal information, we all know that. We know who has what book checked out, and in many system there is a record of who has read what, used which computer, etc. Even when there are no physical records, this information can still exist in the form of logs, computer related information that is carried over for a period of time (cookies, etc.), and when books are checked out of a State libraries the records may exist outside the library where the materials were accessed even if that library does not keep records itself once the materials have been returned. It's just a fact of life.

There are laws in place to protect us, the public, from abuse of those in power when it comes to these records. And, while they are certainly not perfect, from from so since 2001, they are still the law, and this is a land of law and order based on those laws - or so we are told. In certain circumstances, people in positions of authority know that if they use their influence to coerce members of the public to abandon their rights, they will often get compliance despite their request being illegal. It happens all the time.

It may be too soon to know how high libraries will fare on President-elect Barack Obama’s agenda, but it’s safe to say that the profession has a special place in the heart of the next president of the United States.

Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington office, says she’s confident that Obama will recognize the “importance of what we do” because he has a track record of supporting libraries in the past. Take, for instance, his address to ALA in June 2005.

“The library has always been a window to a larger world—a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward,” he told the audience. More from this article at SLJ.

Is the privacy of your patrons a sacred trust? According to Nate Anderson, "Librarians want to turn us all into privacy fiends."

Blogging in ars technica, Anderson reports on the ALA's new program to preserve and defend a patrons privacy: ""Law enforcement agencies at every level are exploiting fears about terrorism and child safety to encourage lawmakers to strip away statutory privacy protections for library records. This eliminates anonymity in the library, and encourages the mind set that 'good' people should have nothing to hide."

Anderson adds, "Librarians are well suited to mount such a campaign. US public libraries have more locations than McDonalds, and 62 percent of American adults hold library cards. That gives ALA members a natural place to educate the public about these issues and channel that education into public discourse and, hopefully, a new consensus on privacy and its importance."

Here we go again.

The Internet Archive protested the receipt of a National Security Letter from the FBI back in November. Today it won its case.

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced this morning.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.

Wired reports on the story.

Wired reports that the FBI issued back dated blanket subpoenas to telcos to cover their acquisition of telco records.

While I find the Patriot Act necessary, I also find its abuse repugnant.

The DOJ's IG found:

Top officials at the FBI's counter-terrorism division signed the blanket subpoenas "retroactively to justify the FBI's acquisition of data through the exigent letters or or other informal requests."

Either do it as laws and regulations allow or don't do it at all.

Oral arguments before the US Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States and the disclosure of two standard operating procedures manuals used at Guantanamo's Camp Delta have kept Law Librarian Blog editors pretty busy lately. For quick reference, a compilation of recent posts to source materials and analysis has been produced. See This Post.

Kelly writes "Amazing accounts from writer Naomi Wolf, who is finding out that, in her travels throughout the US, people are waking up to the encroaching darkness. Here's her book-related observations, "Someone else says that his friend opened his luggage to find a letter from the TSA saying that they did not appreciate his reading material. Before I go into the security lines, I find myself editing my possessions. In New York'a La Guardia, I reluctantly found myself putting a hardcover copy of Tara McKelvey's excellent Monstering, an expose of CIA interrogation practices, in a garbage can before I get in the security line; it is based on classified information. This morning at my hotel, before going to the airport, I threw away a very nice black T-shirt that said "We Will Not be Silenced" — with an Arabic translation — that someone had given me, along with a copy of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo." More here: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/12/450 2/"

mdoneil writes "A United States District Court Judge has ruled that parts of the USA PATRIOT Act unconstitutional. The parts which amend the FISA were reviewed by the Oregon District Court Judge in the Mayfield et al case.
You may recall Mayfield as the lawyer who was arrested because his fingerprints were found in Spain after the bombings of the Metro in Madrid before their last national elections. Well, in case you were wondering it was a mistake — neither he nor his fingers were there.
Read the order here
It will be interesting to see how this plays out."