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The guise of security

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Eiregirl



Joined: 21 Jul 2005
Posts: 10230
Location: Chasing a pink bunny
The guise of security

I posted this on my blog and another that I frequent last year and thought maybe if more people came to understand how the government keeps trying to...well actually they are sticking their nose in our business they might want to do something about it.

Here it is...

Answer these questions before you read the following article then answer them again after reading it.

Just how much do you trust government on a scale of 0-10 with 10 being complete trust?
How many of you’re own and your neighbors freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution are you willing to put at risk in the name of national security?
Are you willing to let government seize more and more power over our daily lives using the guise of security?
How much of your privacy are you willing to give up?

This is just one of many incidents and one of the few that has made its way into the news.

I read this in USA TODAY
May 18, 2005

“On June 8, 2004, an FBI agent stopped at the Deming branch of the Whatcom County Library System in northwest Washington and requested a list of the people who had borrowed a biography of Osama bin Laden. We said no.
We did not take this step lightly. First, our attorney called the local FBI office and asked why the information was important. She was told that one of our patrons had sent the FBI the book after discovering these words written in the margin: "If the things I'm doing is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by God."
We told the FBI that it would have to follow legal channels before our board of trustees would address releasing the names of the borrowers. We also informed the FBI that, through a Google search, our attorney had discovered that the words in the margin were almost identical to a statement by bin Laden in a 1998 interview.
Undeterred, the FBI served a subpoena on the library a week later demanding a list of everyone who had borrowed the book since November 2001.
Our trustees faced a difficult decision. It is our job to protect the right of people to obtain the books and other materials they need to form and express ideas. If the government can easily obtain records of the books that our patrons are borrowing, they will not feel free to request the books they want. Who would check out a biography of bin Laden knowing that this might attract the attention of the FBI?
It is for this reason that libraries across the country have taken a strong stand against government intrusion. In the 1980s, it was revealed that the FBI had engaged in a secret "library awareness" program to track the books borrowed by patrons who had emigrated from communist countries. Determined to prevent such activities in the future, librarians helped pass laws in 48 states that bar the surrender of customer information except in compliance with a subpoena.
For our trustees, this sense of responsibility to protect libraries as institutions where people are free to explore any idea ran up against their desire to help their government fight terrorism. But they were resolute and voted unanimously to go to court to quash the FBI subpoena. Fifteen days later, the FBI withdrew its request.
But there is a shadow over our happy ending. Our experience taught us how easily the FBI could have discovered the names of the borrowers, how readily this could happen in any library in the USA. It also drove home for us the dangers that the USA Patriot Act poses to reader privacy.
Since the passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001, the FBI has the power to go to a secret court to request library and bookstore records considered relevant to a national security investigation. It does not have to show that the people whose records are sought are suspected of any crime or explain why they are being investigated. In addition, librarians and booksellers are forbidden to reveal that they have received an order to surrender customer data.
Our government has always possessed the power to obtain library records, but that power has been subject to safeguards. The Patriot Act eliminated those safeguards and made it impossible for people to ask a judge to rule whether the government needs the information it is after. In the current debate over extending or amending the Patriot Act, one of the key questions is whether a library or any other institution can seek an independent review of an order. Even the attorney general conceded in a recent oversight hearing that this is a problem with the law as written.
Fortunately for our patrons, we were able to mount a successful challenge to what seems to have been a fishing expedition. If it had returned with an order from a secret court under the Patriot Act, the FBI might now know which residents in our part of Washington State had simply tried to learn more about bin Laden.
With a Patriot Act order in hand, 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.”

If you support the Patriot Act I would be very interested in knowing why and would love to discuss it with you.

Now go back and answer the questions again.

Post Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:35 am 
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Eiregirl



Joined: 21 Jul 2005
Posts: 10230
Location: Chasing a pink bunny


WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO Judges deal Patriot Act a blow!!!

Yet another blow has been dealt to the Patriot Act Very Happy

keep them coming Smile

Judge Ann Aiken surveillance provisions a right hook

Federal Judge Victor Marrero wrote in his ruling that Patriot Act provisions related to NSLs are “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.”
Giving the NSLs an uppercut


http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/jurist_search.php?q=ruling%20patriot%20act

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/nsldecision.pdf

http://www.ord.uscourts.gov/rulings/04-cv-1427Opinion.pdf
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All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.

Post Wed Nov 07, 2007 9:25 am 
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