CDT on The PATRIOT Act and Libraries
DOJ Says It Has Never Used Key PATRIOT Provision, September 23, 2003. The PATRIOT Act and librarians’ response to it are in the news a lot this week. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been excoriating librarians; Former Attorney General Edwin Meese has weighed in as well. Tirades from conservatives have begun appearing on op-ed pages. And now,
The Center For Democracy & Technology notes that
the Department of Justice, after defending the appropriateness of the Act and the rich resource that library records will give to fighting terrorism, has announced “that it had never once used a contentious provision of the USA PATRIOT Act authorizing the FBI to obtain access to business records containing personal information… What gives?”