Posted on 06/21/2005 7:58:19 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The U.S. House of Representatives dealt a blow to Big Brother last week.
The House voted 238-187 to protect our library records and bookstore receipts from willy-nilly government perusal.
The bipartisan vote sent a clear message to the U.S. Senate and to President Bush that the privacy rights of law-abiding American citizens must be respected even as the hard work of fighting and preventing terrorism continues.
Congress and the president are preparing to extend the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law quickly approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The president has threatened to veto the measure if Congress makes changes. The Senate should call the president's bluff by accepting the House change.
Libraries and bookstores are not havens for terrorists. They are learning centers for vast numbers of Americans who shouldn't have to worry about which titles or authors they happen to be reading.
Quirky taste in reading material shouldn't prompt or prop up bogus investigations of innocent bookworms. If the Justice Department or the FBI has good reason to suspect someone of terrorism, they should be able to convince a judge that a search warrant for library and bookstore records is warranted. The House change wouldn't prevent that.
A majority of Wisconsin's House members, including all four Democrats and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Petri of Fond du Lac, voted to block easy government access to our reading records. Those favoring broad government power to peruse our library and bookstore records were U.S. Reps. Mark Green, R-Green Bay - who wants to be Wisconsin's next governor - Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, and James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls.
The federal government hasn't even used the provision to obtain library or bookstore records, according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. If that's the case, why leave this broad, invasive power in place? By the government's own admission, it hasn't done any good and hasn't been needed despite significant and numerous terrorism warnings issued by the government in recent years.
In all likelihood, a potential terrorist would use the Internet to find information for their plot - not the public library or a Borders. And accessing the Internet takes little more than a cheap computer plugged into a phone line at a motel.
Adding to the uselessness of government snooping powers at libraries is the fact that many libraries regularly purge from their computers everything but overdue items.
Even if staunch proponents of a sweeping Patriot Act remain unconvinced, the House threw them a bone. The House version of the Patriot Act carves out permission for government to seek records on Internet use at libraries.
We doubt that power will be any help in terrorism prevention and prosecution, either. But it's less offensive because many libraries limit access to certain Web sites, such as those devoted to pornography.
The Patriot Act may still be needed to make sure our nation is adequately protected. But it's continuation must be coupled with careful thought and concern for the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.
The House vote last week was a welcome step toward protecting people's lives and their liberty.
So internet records are public property?
A PUBLIC library is niether a "person, houses, papers, or effects,"......IT'S PUBLIC!!!!
Hoe does anybody know we all didn't have a microchip inserted under our skin at birth at and that everything we do isn't controlled by some giant being as part of an intergalactical board game that only takes 15 minutes in his time to play?????????? HHHHMMMMMM??????????
Good point!
People should have free access to information without fear of government reprisals. Do you disagree?
One group of terrorists in New York went to the municipal library and studied the plans of the Lincoln Tunnel, etc., in order to plan how to place their bombs. These plans weren't the terrorists personal property; they belonged to the taxpayers.
Another case, if you believe the ACLU and the NYTimes, involved an attempt to discover who wrote a threat in the margins of a bio of Bin Laden. A later reader reported the writing and the FBI tried to find out who had borrowed the book. I'm not sure that people have a right to make terrorist threats, in library books or elsewhere.
It seems to me, that the general public had no right to know which videos Clarence Thomas rented.
As far as the internet goes. If it's an account generated on a "PUBLIC" terminal, in a "PUBLIC" library payed for with "PUBLIC" tax dollars....YES!!
If it's done with your own "PERSONAL" and "PRIVATE" computer.....no
Get it?? PUBLIC versus PRIVATE
I'm not convinced that a library, even a public one, is
a venue devoid of the expectation of privacy. Since the
issue is not all that clear to me, the error should be
on the side of the BoR.
Let them convince a judge of probable cause, get a warrant,
then conduct the search.
This was a stupid provision, giving ammo to liberals far
in excess of its actual investigative value.
And they do as long as it's not information on bomb making being attained by some guy here on a student visa who's not going to school, has been here for a month, and who's last name Alhashani.
It's amazing to me that you can support this just because your party is in power.
And on top of that, they don't have to tell you that they searched your records, and the librarian can be PROSECUTED for telling you. Who can possibly support that?
I used to lurk here in the late '90s, so yes. And I remember Ashcroft wrote a long article about not sacrificing liberty to the federal government around then. But for the life of me, I can't find it now.
I support this because I am a husband and father who wants people who would like to do harm to my family simply because we are American to be hunted down and killed by whatever means possible by my government....not because my party is in power.
If you did nothing wrong, than you have nothing to hide.
/sarcasm
But they say they are more secure now, yet they have lost the freedom to think and act for themselves.
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