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House Reintroduces Freedom to Read Protection Act
March 10, 2005
Representative Bernard Sanders (I-VT) reintroduced the “Freedom to Read Protection Act” (H.R.1157) to the House yesterday.
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The bill was first introduced by Congressman Sanders in 2003, but it never went to a vote. He was joined at a press conference announcing the move by Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and Tom Udall (D-NM). Also on Capital Hill that morning were representatives of supporting organizations, including the American Library Association, American Civil Liberties Union, and American PEN.
The bill seeks to restrict some of the power the FBI was given in the USA PATRIOT Act. The official Title in Congress defines the bill as follows: “To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to exempt bookstores and libraries from orders requiring the production of any tangible things for certain foreign intelligence investigations, and for other purposes.”
The bill would exempt libraries and bookstores from personal record searches by the FBI. Currently, the government can search anyone’s library record and book-buying history without a search warrant or any probable cause.
According to the ACLU website, a University of Illinois survey shows libraries were targeted at least 175 times in the year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the FBI will not explain why.
PEN USA applauds Congressman Sanders and the other sponsors and co-sponsors of H.R. 1157. Please see the Book and Library Community Statement Supporting The Freedom to Read Protection Act (H.R. 1157) of May 15, 2003, of which PEN USA is a signatory: http://www.penusa.org/penusa/ftw/FTWFTP/community.htm
The following is a statement the Congressman from Vermont made, in
Washington, D.C., that deals with Section 215 of The Patriot Act.
Statement of Congressman Sanders on 3/10/2005 regarding:
Civil Liberties
“Good morning. I’d like to thank you all for coming this morning as we
announce the reintroduction of the Freedom to Read Protection Act,
which would amend Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Joining me today are
Representative Barbara Lee of California; Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas;
Jerrold Nadler of New York; and Tom Udall of New Mexico. We will also
hear from Pat Schroeder, a former Member of Congress and President of
the American Association of Publishers; Francine Prose, author and
Vice President of the PEN American Center; Lynne Bradley from the
American Library Association; and Linda Ramsdell of the Galaxy
Bookstore in Hardwick, Vermont.
The legislation we are introducing with 108 cosponsors that would
amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and restore protections to
Americans’ reading records at libraries and bookstores. As you know,
the USA Patriot was hastily passed in the weeks after the horrific
attacks of September 11, 2001. The Patriot Act expanded the power of
government agents in a number of areas, removing critical
Constitutional protections that Americans enjoyed. In the case of
Section 215, federal agents were empowered to get orders from a secret
court that would all them to view, among other things, the reading
records of Americans in both libraries and bookstores. Because these
orders are granted by a secret court, the persons whose records are
sought does not even get an opportunity to oppose the order. In most
cases, the person whose records are acquired by the government will
never know it because the law itself makes it a criminal offense for
the librarian or bookseller who is served with order to tell anyone
about it.
Section 215 and the USA Patriot Act have to be seen in the context of
a creeping erosion of our rights that little by little, bit by bit, is
making us a less free nation – a nation where Big Brother is
exercising more and more power over the average person.
In America today, we have the most secretive Administration in
American history. In America today, we have well-known reporters who
are threatened with jail for refusing to give up their sources. In
America today, we have award winning films, like Saving Private Ryan,
kept off from 55 ABC affiliates because they feared government
sanction; where PBS withdrew national distribution of a cartoon
dealing with maple syrup because the farm couple involved was gay. And
there are members of Congress now who want to extend their indecency
laws to cable TV and satellite radio. In America today, we have an
Attorney General who issued policy positions justifying torture of
prisoners in Guantanamo and Iraq. In America today, we spirit away
prisoners to former dictatorships for the purpose of torturing them
during interrogation.
Giving any Administration the powers granted under the Patriot Act is
a dangerous thing to liberty of the American people. But this
Administration in particular has produced a record that shows it
cannot be trusted. Whether it is secretly paying journalists and
commentators to propagandize in favor of Administration positions,
misleading the American people about the existence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, or forcing Administration officials to hide the
true cost of the Administration’s so-called “Medicare” prescription
drug program; the Bush Administration has repeatedly demonstrated its
contempt for the basic tenets of honesty and transparency in
government that people in a free society expect and deserve.
The Patriot Act is a very controversial law. Librarians, booksellers
and publishers are deeply concerned, as are civil liberties
organizations like the ACLU. And it has been criticized by many
leading conservatives, like Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax
Reform, by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, by the Rutherford
Institute, by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, by former House
member Bob Barr, by David Keene, chair of the American Conservative
Union, and by Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, to name a
few.
In the face of the growing drumbeat calling for reform of the Section
215 and other sections of the Patriot, the Administration has had to
defend its unpopular position.
Let me just go over a couple of the tired arguments that the
proponents of Section 215 use in an attempt to justify giving the
government access to American’s reading records. The first thing they
say is that these powers are needed to give them access to valuable
information. But what they do not say is that they could always get
library records if they had probable cause to believe that the
information being sought was connected to a crime. The last time I
looked, terrorism was indeed a crime. What they really object to is
that these other methods for getting library and bookstore records –
namely, search warrants and grand jury subpoenas – both come with
significant protections of the Constitutional rights of innocent
Americans. In the case of a search warrant, the government has to
demonstrate probable cause to a federal judge. In the case of a grand
jury subpoena, the recipient can go before a federal judge and contest
it. Section 215 offers neither of these protections.
With a Section 215 order, the law only requires that the government
allege that the information sought is in connection with an
investigation concerning international terrorism. If that allegation
is made, the judge in the secret court has no discretion to deny the
order. There is no requirement of a showing of probable cause of
criminal wrongdoing and the request can even be based in part on the
exercise of a person’s First Amendment rights.
The other defense the Bush Administration raises is that it will only
go after the “bad guys” with these new powers so no innocent American
should be alarmed. Let us not forget that Martin Luther King, Jr., one
of our greatest citizens and a true champion of equal rights for
people of all races, was once considered a “bad guy” by some in the
government. Let us not forget that McCarthyism in the 1950s destroyed
the lives of many innocent people. We will not be dissuaded from
protecting Americans’ Constitutional rights by the Administration’s
plea to just “trust us and everything will be all right.”
We fully intend to push for a vote on this legislation in the Congress
and we expect to win. As you may remember, an amendment I offered to
the last year’s Justice Department spending bill would have protected
American’s reading records from the reach of Section 215. That
amendment won with 219 members of the House in support until the
Republican leadership kept the vote open for an additional 20 minutes
so they could force enough of their members to change their vote so we
lost on a 210 to 210 tie. We intend to redouble our efforts at the
grassroots level to make sure that the White House and the Republican
leadership cannot force members to flip-flop on their support for
reader privacy.
In that regard, we already start from a strong position. Over 200,000
Americans, through the Campaign for Reader Privacy, have written their
Representative in Congress to express opposition to the Patriot Act
and Section 215, and encouraged them to cosponsor the Freedom to Read
Protection Act. Four state legislatures, including my own state of
Vermont, and 368 municipalities across the country, conservative and
progressive, have gone on record by passing resolutions expressing
their concerns regarding the Patriot Act.
So, today, we take the first step toward securing Americans’
Constitutional right to read without Big Brother looking over our
collective shoulder by reintroducing the Freedom to Read Protection
Act. At the end of this year, Section 215 and certain other sections
of the Patriot Act are set to expire. President Bush and Attorney
General Gonzales have already stated their desire to make Section 215
permanent. That sets us up for a showdown over this critically
important issue that goes to the heart of who we are as a people and a
nation.
Let us be very clear. Terrorism is a serious threat and the United
States government should do all that it can to protect our citizens
from another terrorist attack. However, we do not have to sacrifice
our basic civil liberties and Constitutional rights to do that. We can
protect the American people from terrorism while, at the same time, we
uphold the United States’ Constitution and Bill of Rights – that
extraordinary document that has made us a free nation and the envy of
the world.
Thank you”
Links:
ACLU’s Freedom to Read page
www.readerprivacy.org