Taking Liberties by Herman Susan N.;

Author:Herman, Susan N.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2011-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

Other Librarian Tales

How many other librarians have shared George Christian’s experience? We don’t know. The American Library Association, frustrated at the lack of information about the impact of surveillance measures on libraries, administered its own survey in June 2005. One hundred thirty-seven librarians responded that federal, state, or local law enforcement agents had asked them for information about their patrons between October 2001 and June 2005.24 In light of gag orders, respondents could not be asked for details. And it is possible that, because of gag orders, not all respondents who had received requests for information were willing to say so in response to the questionnaire. Have NSLs been served on librarians under the Obama Administration? We don’t know. But we do know that the law still empowers the FBI to use this method of compelling information in libraries and elsewhere and that Barack Obama’s Justice Department has been arguing for an extension of the NSL’s reach (to be discussed in the next chapter).25

A few other librarians have been able to tell their stories publicly. Joan Airoldi, director of the library district in Whatcom, Washington, tells of an FBI agent who stopped by the Deming branch of the Whatcom County Library System (in northeastern Washington) to ask for a list of everyone who had borrowed a particular biography of Osama bin Laden. Like George Christian, the Whatcom librarians consulted their attorney. They concluded that the request was probably a fishing expedition and certainly a problem under the First Amendment. It turned out that a library patron had sent the volume in question to the FBI after noticing words handwritten in the margin describing hostility toward America as “a religious duty.” The words were a quotation from a statement bin Laden had made in a news interview. The librarians decided not to turn over the patron records without a subpoena (which is issued by a court, grand jury, or prosecutor, rather than an investigating agency like the FBI).

The FBI returned to the Deming library with a subpoena. (In this case, of course, a National Security Letter would not have been adequate because the FBI was seeking information beyond the bounds of what the NSL statute authorizes—the actual content of library records.) The librarians decided to continue resisting, by asking the court to quash the subpoena on constitutional grounds if necessary. “Who would check out a biography of bin Laden knowing that this might attract the attention of the FBI?” asked Joan Airoldi. Two weeks later, the FBI withdrew the request. Airoldi recognized that she was fortunate that the FBI had gotten a subpoena rather than proceeding under any of the Patriot Act authorities that have gag orders attached, including Section 215 (under which the FBI would be able to seek the identity of someone who borrowed a specific book). “With a Patriot Act order in hand,” she said in an op-ed in USA Today, “I would have been forbidden to disclose even the fact that I had received it and would not have been able to tell this story.

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