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CounterPunch
March 5,
2003
Prostrate to the Patriot
Act
Librarians as
FBI Extension Agents
By DAVID H. PRICE
The FBI is back in our libraries, and librarians
and their professional associations are doing nothing to directly
obstruct their access to private records of what we read. As
American librarians' choose to not resist the FBI's intrusion
into our private lives this choice necessarily transforms their
functional position from that of ally to suspect FBI minion.
The Patriot Act's Section 215 requires
American bookstores and public libraries to surrender to the
FBI lists of books or other materials that customers or patrons
have accessed. As with past FBI library watch campaigns, libraries
are instructed under order of law to not disclose the FBI's presence
or interest in the reading habits of particular patrons. Alerting
patrons, or the public of the occurrence of an FBI library visit
brings threats of arrest. Some library's have adopted a policy
of hanging signs in library entry ways declaring "The FBI
has not visited here today," with community understandings
that these signs will be removed upon an FBI visit.
The American
Library Association's (ALA) Code of Ethics explicitly calls
for the protection of intellectual freedom and instructs librarians
to "resist all efforts to censor library resources,"
and to "protect each library user's right to privacy and
confidentiality with respect to information sought or received
and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted".
Over a year ago governmental repository libraries quietly began
complying with censorial governmental demands to remove specific
materials that were thought to be of possible use to terrorists.
Today we find the FBI resurrecting its old discredited Library
Watch Program in the name of fighting terrorism with only words
of complain, not acts of defiance from American librarians.
In my Research Methods courses I teach
anthropology, sociology and psychology students about the importance
of professional codes of ethical conduct. Fundamental to understanding
the difference between ethical and legal codes is the principle
that ethical and legal considerations are by necessity independent
undertakings. Ethical codes of conduct in the social sciences
trace their roots to the declarations at the Nuremberg Tribunals
that human beings have inalienable human rights and they must
give their voluntary, informed consent before becoming subjects
of (medical) research-the importance of the codes deriving from
this and other sources is that these are fundamental rights that
must be protected by scientists regardless of a given regime's
political practices. If ethical codes were meant to be tied
to legal processes, there would be no need for ethical codes
of conduct: we could simply just be instructed to comply with
the laws we encounter in our professional lives. Ethical codes
must therefore function independently from legal codes.
While the legal issues involved in the
FBI's latest invasion of patrons' privacy may be complex, the
ethical issues are quite simple. My interpretation of the ethical
dilemma faced by librarians when given the obvious contradictions
between the American Library Association's ethical commitment
to protecting the privacy of patrons and the FBI's reckless quest
for information on the reading preferences and thought processes
of American citizens is that the ALA code of ethics demands that
librarians refuse to comply with FBI request for patron records.
Ethical librarians have no choice but to engage in civil disobedience
and thus must refuse to comply with the FBI's (temporally) legal,
but unethical request. Librarians have an ethical duty to protect
their patrons that trumps the legal issues confronting them.
Period. If they are not prepared to uphold their own basic
ethical principles of patron advocacy then they should be prepared
to reap the scorn and suspicions of scholars and other patrons.
While American Library Association President,
Mitch Freedman and the ALA have consistently protested these
developments, they have stopped far short of using their ethical
code as a moral justification for refusing to cooperate with
the FBI. While some librarians and some members of the American
Library Association have expressed discomfort in assisting the
FBI's invasion of our privacy-as yet there is no articulated
public voice advocating librarians to undertake acts of civil
disobedience when the FBI comes to call.
There is a rapidly growing movement of
scholars (very rapid indeed: five minutes ago there was only
one person in it, but I just called three friends and now the
movement has quadrupled in size) calling for the resignation
of ALA President Mitch Freedman because he has not advised American
librarians of their ethical duty to refuse to comply with FBI
efforts to access patron library records. I personally call
for Mitch Freedman's resignation not as a member of the ALA (I'm
not a member), but as a library patron who might be victimized
by overly aggressive law enforcement officials. If he and his
organization won't protect my rights, he should resign and let
someone take over who will.
Mitch Freedman is by most reports a nice
guy. He is a hipster who has done some great things (Amy Goodman
was his choice for the ALA's President's Program Speaker) who
took office by storm as a write in candidate seizing power to
address librarian compensation inequities. But in the post 9-11
world --with new levels of budget cuts, and revitalized domestic
surveillance campaigns--Freedman has been forced to all but abandon
his key issue, and instead has scrambled to weakly "oppose"
the principles (but not the practices) of the Patriot Act's invasion
of libraries while telling librarians how to comply with the
demands of these new secret library police. The ALA's recommendations
to librarians is fundamentally that they need to be informed
of the laws and policies in play when the FBI flashes badges
and asks to see records. Freedman clearly understands that,
"the attack on the World Trade Center is now resulting in
attacks on basic American values of liberty, privacy, and fairness,"
but he is unwilling to use his clout to lead an opposition to
the FBI's library invasion.
There is some small hope coming from
Congress with Representative Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) planning
to introduce the "Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003"
that would specifically negate Patriot Act Section 215. But
the fate of such a bill is less than certain without a vocal
outcry from citizens-or acts of civil disobedience from librarians.
We may be entering an age where we will
view librarians as the equivalent of FBI extension agents, serving
at the beck and call of John Ashcroft and other intellectual
descendants of J. Edgar Hoover. It may well be that there are
hordes of dissident librarians who are even now lying to the
FBI, or secretly contacting patrons on the QT after being visited
by the FBI. Perhaps. But I wouldn't count on it with such weak
ALA ethical leadership.
At an international conference a few months ago I heard a group
of senior scholars bemoaning the ALA's decision to comply with
FBI requests. One well-known scholar at a major research university
admitted that he had caught himself engaging in doublethink as
he rephrased a query made to a reference librarian who might
report something suspicious in the nature of the data he was
seeking. Another scholar working on a large scale ecological
project said that over the years he had accessed numerous documents
relating to urban water supplies that were now unavailable due
to security concerns-he added that if the FBI had been to his
campus his librarians would have surely informed the FBI of his
reading habits. When I asked if the FBI's current intrusions
on campuses had altered his current library behaviors and he
replied that in the last few months he had "removed several
maps and other documents from the library without checking them
out." The group of us laughed about this and then moved
on to other topics, but his anecdote revealed how librarians
are grudgingly embracing their new role of FBI informer.
Whimpering about FBI intrusions is not
enough, if librarians want patrons' trust they need to evolve
ethical backbones that will support them in protecting what has
been an assumed trust between patrons and libraries-if they cannot
do this, then they should resign their posts and find (better
paying from my understanding) work as records administrators
or librarians within the NSA, FBI, CIA or local police agencies.
David H. Price
is an anthropologist at St. Martin's College (where some of his
best friends are librarians), who works in the Middle East and
studies interactions between anthropologists and the intelligence
community. His latest book Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism
and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists, will
be published by Duke University Press this fall. He can be reached
at: dprice@stmartin.edu
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