#75 Librarians miss the obvious danger.

The subheading on an ALA (American Library Association) page is taken from an article in the New York Times, “Ashcroft Mocks Librarians and Others Who Oppose Parts of Counterterrorism Law" (September 15, 2003)

So I went to the source. John Ashcroft speaking at a meeting of the National Restaurant Association presented a fictional hyperbolic scenario. His little story was no where near as hysterical as some I’ve read on the blogs of the pundit-left and library professionals who are offering Patriot Act workshops to worried library staff.

Ashcroft said: “If you were to listen to some in Washington, you might believe the hysteria behind this claim: "Your local library has been surrounded by the FBI." Agents are working round-the-clock. Like the X-Files, they are dressed in raincoats, dark suits, and sporting sunglasses. They stop patrons and librarians and interrogate everyone like Joe Friday. In a dull monotone they ask every person exiting the library, "Why were you at the library? What were you reading? Did you see anything suspicious?"

He continues: “According to these breathless reports and baseless hysteria, some have convinced the American Library Association that under the bipartisan Patriot Act, the FBI is not fighting terrorism. Instead, agents are checking how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.”

“Now you may have thought with all this hysteria and hyperbole, something had to be wrong. Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading? No. The law enforcement community has no interest in your reading habits. Tracking reading habits would betray our high regard for the First Amendment. And even if someone in the government wanted to do so, it would represent an impossible workload and a waste of law enforcement resources.”

Ashcroft never actually says the hysteria is from librarians, as the web page reports. He says “some in Washington.” He uses ALA's statistics of over a billion people visiting the libraries in a year to point out that it would be a poor use of manpower to focus his 11,000 agents on libraries.

After all the hysteria Ashcroft’s speech generated, librarians were “shocked” to find out 3 days later the Patriot Act had never been used in connection with a library. Zero, zip, nada. And here they’d been busy wasting tax dollars organizing opposition and destroying records. Somehow, I wasn’t shocked at all. I was pretty sure the Justice Department didn’t want to know that yesterday I checked out a book on American lighthouse inns and one on the China Burma India theater of WWII.

If libraries want to thwart the federal government, they might start by removing our social security numbers from our patron record! It would sure make me feel better about identity theft potential.