Librarians Say Surveillance Bills Lack Adequate Oversight

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Washington Post

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A06

A little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance has provoked alarm among university and public librarians who say it could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight.

Draft House and Senate bills would allow the government to compel any "communications service provider" to provide access to e-mails and other electronic information within the United States as part of federal surveillance of non-U.S. citizens outside the country.

The Justice Department has previously said that "providers" may include libraries, causing three major university and library groups to worry that the government's ability to monitor people targeted for surveillance without a warrant would chill students' and faculty members' online research activities.

"It is fundamental that when a user enters the library, physically or electronically," said Jim Neal, the head librarian at Columbia University, "their use of the collections, print or electronic, their communications on library servers and computers, is not going to be subjected to surveillance unless the courts have authorized it."

Under the legislation, the government could monitor a non-U.S. citizen overseas participating in an online research project through a U.S. university library, and gain access to the communications of all the project participants with that surveillance target, said Al Gidari, a lawyer with the Perkins Coie firm who represents the Association of Research Libraries and the American Library Association....

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/01/AR2007110102233.html?hpid=moreheadlines

[FreeStateDemocrat]

1. Do lawmakers even read, understand the consequences or much care about what they are subjecting

Americans to? Fuck the ruling class.

[LostinVA]

2. The ALA and librarians and support staff are the shields of freedom in this country

Michael Moore had it right. You rather meet a really conservative librarian, and even when you do, the huge majority believe in freedom of info and protection of patrons. The ones that don't tend to work in libraries attached to certain religious schools, etc. VERY few approve of tracking patrons. I know some who actively make sure patrons can't be tracked.

Subversives and sometimes heroes lurk underneath the sweater vests and glasses (and oddly enough, usually quite a few tattoos).

[DeepModem Mom]

3. You're so right. Librarians rock. nt

[nealmhughes]

4. We break out the opium after we turn out the lights and check that the restrooms are empty.

No one has been to a convention unless they have been to an ALA convention!

Never been to a party until you've been to an academic libraian party. Somehow, we "know the most 'intersting' people" as attendees are wont to say.

I always say, "Why be afraid that I would think you odd for asking that question? You are talking about someone who wears Birkenstock clogs with an old school Izod crocodile emblem sweater and whose best friend has a studio with 17 rescue cats in it, and I don't think of myself or her as odd."

If you really want to piss off a whole bunch of people, just say the word censorship. We have a secret network (funded by Hugo Chavez and la Biblioteca National Cubana, I've heard) that gets all information out ASAP. Faster than a tornado warning in Oklahoma, I'd warrant. The next way to really piss off a bunch of people with MLS or MLIS after their names is to try to get access to records. I, personally, would have no qualms in "accidentally on purpose" dumping all circulation records before handing them over without a warrant, and then they would have to download them themselves, and I might not recall the password for admin tasks for the system for a long long time.