Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Nancy Pike remembers that the FBI agents didn't even know the law. She had to tell them to come back with a court order from a state judge.
This was a few days after 9/11. The agents wanted Pike, director of the Sarasota County Library System, to turn over recent registration records of library users. The agents didn't say why they wanted the records. But two of the Arab men suspected in the attacks had attended a flight school elsewhere in Sarasota County, in Venice.
Once the agents served the order, the Sarasota library turned over the records. Pike was able to tell me about this because it happened before the adoption of the Patriot Act in October 2001. If the agents came knocking today, Pike wouldn't be allowed to say a word - not to you or me, not to the patron whose records were seized.
Although Pike and librarians like her know that agents could come knocking at any time, most library users probably don't realize that the federal law could affect them.
It permits federal investigators to get personal information - an address, for instance - and, if possible, to learn what people have been reading.
The American Library Association, the professional organization for librarians, has been up in arms about the law since its adoption. The Department of Justice dismisses the criticism. A spokesman calls it "entirely misplaced."
The department points to one fact: As of last September, the law was not used to seek library or other business records as part of a national security investigation. When I asked how often the law had been used since then, the Justice spokesman, Mark Corallo, said the information was classified.
Despite what investigators might want from the law, there are real limits to what they can get. For practical reasons, they cannot get the title of every book you've ever borrowed.
Most Florida libraries keep records of circulating books only while the books are on loan or when overdue fines kick in, according to John Szabo, the director of the Clearwater Public Library System and the president of the Florida Library Association. Even then, records are periodically purged.
Still, Szabo finds no comfort.
Even before the federal Patriot Act, Florida law permitted investigators, with orders from judges issued in open court, to seek library records. That's how agents were able to get Sarasota records in 2001. Even now, said Szabo, his library complies with such orders once or twice a year.
But under the Patriot Act, investigators get their power from a panel of federal judges, who meet in secret in Washington.
While the Justice Department contends the Patriot Act's rules are no different from those of criminal grand juries, critics say investigators only have to disclose that a terrorism investigation is under way. They don't have to name targets. And once agents lay out their claims, the judges cannot refuse them an order for records.
"It's scary," said Szabo, "because one of the wonderful things about public libraries is that people can come in and search for information and ... no one else has to know about it. And librarians believe that's a very good thing."
The Patriot Act has attracted critics far and wide. Scores of communities have adopted resolutions against it on grounds that it threatens basic civil rights. One such resolution will soon be presented to the Tampa City Council, according to Rochelle Reback, a criminal defense lawyer and one of the organizers of a group called Tampa: Safe AND Free.
The resolution is all fine and good, but it's hard to figure what difference it will make. It's hard to imagine a time when the Patriot Act will be overturned.
Do your own guessing. What books would be trouble enough to put you on some watch list?
Books on homosexuality?
Books on Islam and interpreting the Koran?
Or, someday, books objecting to the Patriot Act?
- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.