Terror hunt may end privacy at the library
By DANIEL de VISE
ddevise@herald.com
miami.com
It is called the USA Patriot Act, and the very name implies duty -- duty, in this case, to tell FBI agents what certain people are reading and writing at the local library.
Federal investigators want to strip away the cloak of anonymity that helped Sept. 11 suspects communicate on public library computers without detection. A provision buried within the 342-page Patriot Act, which took effect in October, allows agents to demand records from librarians and booksellers with unprecedented ease.
Many in the library community fear an intrusion by Big Brother into the sacrosanct privacy rights of library patrons. The Patriot Act trumps laws in 48 states, including Florida, that specifically protect library records as confidential.
''You can't make decent people pay for what bad people do,'' said Mary Schmit, a print-shop worker from Pompano Beach who spent part of Thursday evening on a public-access computer at the main Broward County library in Fort Lauderdale. ``They're going to have to find another way.''
In the past, law enforcers seeking confidential library records had to meet the substantial legal standard of ''probable cause.'' Librarians and booksellers went to court to protect the records and often prevailed, sometimes by showing other ways to find the same information without risking an infringement of First Amendment rights.
HOW FBI PROCEEDS
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can make its case in a special ''spy court'' -- a secret, closed proceeding -- and needs only to convince a judge that the patron in question may be linked to a known terrorist or terror plot. Once contacted by agents, a librarian can't tell anyone about the records request.
''Our rights have been taken away. We're being forced to go against our professional ethics,'' said Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's office for intellectual freedom. ``But the only way to overcome this is to act illegally. It's awful.''
FBI agents already have visited libraries in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs, hauling computers away from a Delray Beach library to seek Internet records of dead hijackers.
Investigators say they need the new powers to keep pace with the modern terrorist.
German prosecutors last week underscored the central role of libraries in the unfinished Sept. 11-attack probe, announcing that a suspect had bragged about a potential attack to a Hamburg librarian more than a year earlier.
''There will be thousands of dead,'' suspected suicide pilot Marwan al-Shehhi told the librarian, according to German officials. ``You will think of me.''
Half a world away, Delray Beach librarian Kathleen Hensman believes that she spoke with the same al-Shehhi and two other men in July or August last year. They used public-access computers and asked about good places to eat. FBI agents seized two computers from that library Sept. 19.
Hensman's actions have become part of the evolving privacy debate. Krug, the American Library Association official, contends that Hensman may have broken the law. She contacted the FBI before the Patriot Act took effect, at a time that state privacy laws still prevailed.
Delray Beach library officials disagree. All that Hensman did, they say, was tell agents what she saw and heard in a public place. She divulged no library records.
The FBI also served a wide-ranging subpoena on the Broward library director, seeking any information, including computer log-ins, on several terror suspects living in the Hollywood area.
Investigators were looking for possible e-mail transmissions from library computer terminals in downtown Hollywood and from a smaller reading room on the beach. Other clues led to Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs.
Did they find anything?
''Highly unlikely,'' said Sam Morrison, the Broward library director. ``They've never told us, one way or another, if they were able to find anything. [But] we don't believe there's anything there.''
Morrison said he understands the need for the Patriot Act but sees the potential for abuse. ''And I don't know what we're going to do about it,'' he said. ``The law is there.''
Law enforcers have battled librarians for records before.
In the late 1980s, Broward's West Regional branch in Plantation was one of 13 libraries nationwide reportedly asked to participate in the FBI's Library Awareness Program: Librarians were to report suspicious-looking readers who might be Soviet spies. The program drew criticism.
SEEN AS `SAFE HAVENS'
''The libraries, by constitutional and cultural custom, were sort of safe havens,'' said Milton Hirsch, a Miami lawyer well versed in constitutional law. ``They were oases of First Amendment values. They were places into which the king's writ runneth not.''
Leaders in the library community believe the new effort brings the king's writ to their door. A University of Illinois study this year concluded that federal agents have sought records from about 220 libraries nationwide since September.
''That was by December or January, so what we can assume is that a lot more have been contacted by now,'' said Leigh Estabrook, a professor at the university's Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Federal officials say their intent is not to single out librarians and booksellers, whose ranks are also rallying against the Patriot Act. The statutory passage in question focuses not on them but on the need to gain access to ''books, records, papers, documents and other items'' that could protect the nation against an act of international terrorism.
''This provision is generally applicable to all businesses, and it specifically protects First Amendment rights,'' said Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice.
``In order for a court to grant a warrant under the provision, there must be some other evidence linking the person to the crime of terrorism. The act cannot be used against U.S. citizens just because of what they read or what websites they have been visiting.''
Some librarians and library customers are comfortable with the new investigative powers. Hensman, the Delray Beach librarian, acted on her own initiative to call the FBI about her suspicious patrons. She said she has no regrets.
Of like mind is Courtney Rollins, a 21-year-old Pompano Beach man who surfed an Internet chat room Thursday at the main Broward library.
There's every reason, he says, that investigators may need to know what sort of messages are going out from those sleepless terminals. ''If they don't do that,'' Rollins said, ``they won't know who's a terrorist and who's not.'' |
