ALA Joins USA Patriot Act Challenge
“I might be a federal agent,” read a shirt someone wore to the dance.
“I can’t dance with you,” I joked, “because I’m a librarian.”
And now I sit at home reading about how the American Library Association filed an amicus brief with several other organizations supporting the American Civil Liberties Union’s emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court “for an order to allow a Connecticut library to speak out on potential abuses of portions of the USA Patriot Act.”
The ACLU has a press release about the situation.
This case is something I’ve been loosely following and meaning to post about, but just haven’t. It seems that a library received a request using the USA Patriot Act for some patron records, only they aren’t supposed to talk about it because of the law. Some of the supporting organizations argue that since library records are a controversial portion of the act and the House of Representatives and Senate are examining various versions of the law, it would be very helpful if librarians and libraries who have received summons via the USA Patriot Act could talk about what happened.
Wasn’t someone just saying something about how the ALA is too active politically …
