Remember when the Patriot Act came up for renewal recently and an amendment to delete the provision for secret investigations of library records was defeated because the Bush administration made repeated assurances that the provision had never been used?
Oh yeah? Try telling the Connecticut Library Association and the American Library Association that.
In a victory for privacy and civil liberties advocates, the federal judge overseeing a challenge to expanded law enforcement search powers under the Patriot Act ordered a number of court documents unsealed Wednesday.
According to the newly-released court filing, the plaintiff – a librarian referred to in court documents as "John Doe" – contacted the ACLU after being served with a special type of subpoena called a "national security letter" (NSL) which is issued without oversight from a judge. Doe was hoping to explore what legal options the library had to defy or fight a court order to release records on library user activity. That request apparently sparked the current case.
You see, NSLs carry a strict "gag order" with them, prohibiting the person who receives it from telling anyone about the search – hence the anonymity of the plaintiff - which has always given the administration plausible deniability about such orders. Until now. The ACLU was approached by "John Doe" hoping to explore what legal options the library had and ACLU lawyers are now asking the court to lift the gag order. This will enable the plaintiff and the ACLU to testify to Congress and the public over the extent to which the government is using NSLs to compel information from libraries.
Yet again, we and Congress are lied to by this administration. Liberals and libertarians will be appallled. So should conservatives but many are too deeply invested in Bush-worship to ever accept that his administration can do wrong.
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