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Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, June 19 - Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 
formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading 
material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new 
study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the 
government's counterterrorism powers.

In some cases, agents used subpoenas or other formal demands to obtain 
information like lists of users checking out a book on Osama bin Laden. 
Other requests were informal - and were sometimes turned down by
librarians 
who chafed at the notion of turning over such material, said the American 
Library Association, which commissioned the study.

The association, which is pushing to scale back the government's powers to 
gain information from libraries, said its $300,000 study was the first to 
examine a question that was central to a House vote last week on the USA 
Patriot Act: how frequently federal, state and local agents are demanding 
records from libraries.

The Bush administration says that while it is important for law
enforcement 
officials to get information from libraries if needed in terrorism 
investigations, officials have yet to actually use their power under the 
Patriot Act to demand records from libraries or bookstores.

The library issue has become the most divisive in the debate on whether 
Congress should expand or curtail government powers under the Patriot Act, 
and it was at the center of last week's vote in the House approving a 
measure to restrict investigators' access to libraries.

The study does not directly answer how or whether the Patriot Act has been 
used to search libraries. The association said it decided it was 
constrained from asking direct questions on the law because of secrecy 
provisions that could make it a crime for a librarian to respond. Federal 
intelligence law bans those who receive certain types of demands for 
records from challenging the order or even telling anyone they have 
received it.

As a result, the study sought to determine the frequency of law
enforcement 
inquiries at all levels without detailing their nature. Even so,
organizers 
said the data suggested that investigators were seeking information from 
libraries far more frequently than Bush administration officials had 
acknowledged.

"What this says to us," said Emily Sheketoff, the executive director of
the 
library association's Washington office, "is that agents are coming to 
libraries and they are asking for information at a level that is 
significant, and the findings are completely contrary to what the Justice 
Department has been trying to convince the public."

Kevin Madden, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the department had 
not yet seen the findings and that he could not comment specifically on 
them. But Mr. Madden questioned the relevance of the data to the debate 
over the Patriot Act, noting that the types of inquiries found in the 
survey could relate to a wide range of law enforcement investigations 
unconnected to terrorism or intelligence.

"Any conclusion that federal law enforcement has an extraordinary interest 
in libraries is wholly manufactured as a result of misinformation," Mr. 
Madden said.

The study, which surveyed 1,500 public libraries and 4,000 academic 
libraries, used anonymous responses to address legal concerns. A large 
majority of those who responded to the survey said they had not been 
contacted by any law enforcement agencies since October 2001, when the 
Patriot Act was passed.

But there were 137 formal requests or demands for information in that
time, 
49 from federal officials and the remainder from state or local 
investigators. Federal officials have sometimes used local investigators
on 
joint terrorism task forces to conduct library inquiries.

In addition, the survey found that 66 libraries had received informal law 
enforcement requests without an official legal order, including 24 federal 
requests. Association officials said the survey results, if extrapolated 
from the 500 public libraries that responded, would amount to a total of 
some 600 formal inquires since 2001.

One library reporting that it had received a records demand was the
Whatcom 
County system in a rural area of northwest Washington.

Last June, a library user who took out a book there, "Bin Laden: The Man 
Who Declared War on America," noticed a handwritten note in the margin 
remarking that "Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope
to 
be rewarded by God," and went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 
Agents, in turn, went to the library seeking names and information on 
anyone checking out the biography since 2001.

The library's lawyers turned down the request, and agents went back with a 
subpoena. Joan Airoldi, who runs the library, said in an interview that
she 
was particularly alarmed after a Google search revealed that the 
handwritten line was an often-cited quotation from Mr. bin Laden that was 
included in the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.

The library fought the subpoena, and the F.B.I. withdrew its demand.

"A fishing expedition like this just seems so un-American to me," Ms. 
Airoldi said. "The question is, how many basic liberties are we willing to 
give up in the war on terrorism, and who are the real victims?"

The survey also found what library association officials described as a 
"chilling effect" caused by public concerns about the government's powers. 
Nearly 40 percent of the libraries responding reported that users had
asked 
about changes in practices related to the Patriot Act, and about 5 percent 
said they had altered their professional activities over the issues; for 
instance, by reviewing the types of books they bought.

Representative Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who sponsored the 
House measure to curtail the power to demand library records, said he was 
struck by the 40 percent response.

"What this demonstrates is that there is widespread concern among the 
American people about the government having the power to monitor what they 
are reading," Mr. Sanders said.

The margin of the vote on Mr. Sanders's measure, which passed 238 to 187, 
with support from 38 Republicans, surprised even some backers, but Bush 
administration officials say they are hopeful the decision will be
reversed 
and have threatened a veto of any measure that would limit powers under
the 
Patriot Act.

Carol Brey-Casiano, who runs the library system in El Paso and is
president 
of the library association, said she, too, sensed a public unease.

"We're concerned about protecting people's privacy," she said. "People
will 
say to me, 'I've read about the Patriot Act, and does that mean the 
government can come in and ask you what I'm reading?' And my answer to
them 
has to be, 'Yes, they can,' and quite frankly, I can't even tell anyone if 
that happened, because there's a gag order."

Investigators have long had the ability to seek out library records in 
tracking leads in criminal inquiries. In two of the most noted cases, 
investigators in the 1990's used library records to search for the 
Unabomber, who wrote detailed and unusual academic treatises in his string 
of bombings over almost two decades, and for New York's "Zodiac Killer," 
who had cited the writing of an obscure occult poet.

Government officials say that while they have no interest in using their 
expanded powers under the Patriot Act to monitor Americans' reading
habits, 
they do not believe that libraries should be safe havens for terrorists. 
They point to several cases in which Sept. 11 hijackers and other terror 
suspects used library computers to send e-mail messages.

Perhaps the fiercest counterattack from the Bush administration on the 
issue came in 2003 from John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, who said 
in a speech in Washington that groups like the American Library
Association 
had bought into "breathless reports and baseless hysteria" about the 
government's interest in libraries.

"Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading?" Mr. 
Ashcroft asked. "No."

Ms. Sheketoff at the library association acknowledged that critics of the 
study may accuse the group of having a stake in the outcome of the Patriot 
Act debate. "Sure, we have a dog in this fight, but the other side has
been 
mocking us for four years over our 'baseless hysteria,' and saying we have 
no reason to be concerned," she said. "Well, these findings say that we do 
have reason to be concerned."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/politics/20patriot.html?th&emc=th