ABA Defends Campaign for Reader Privacy in "NY Times Book Review"

Booksellers have every reason to be concerned by the USA PATRIOT Act, Mitchell Kaplan, the president of the American Booksellers Association, writes in a letter published in Sunday's "New York Times Book Review" on Januaru 9. Kaplan is responding to a December 19 article by Rachel Donadio, an editor of the "Book Review." In the article--"Is There Censorship?"--Donadio says that "the very mention of the PATRIOT Act" drives booksellers, librarians and others into "a near-paranoid frenzy at the idea that the government is intruding into their personal business." Yet, "few can cite specific instances in which that is the case." Click here for the Donadio article.

Kaplan acknowledges that critics of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act cannot point to specific abuses of the government's expanded power to search bookstore and library records. "But Ms. Donadio misses the point," Kaplan writes. "Searches under Section 215 are secret. The Justice Department refuses to say whether it is searching bookstore and library records, and the PATRIOT Act forbids booksellers and librarians to reveal the fact that a search has occurred." ABA has helped launch the Campaign for Reader Privacy in an effort to amend Section 215.

Kaplan adds that booksellers' concerns about government searches arise in part from the growing number of attempts to obtain bookstore records in non-PATRIOT Act cases. Kaplan himself received an FBI subpoena in 2001 in an investigation of former U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli as did the owners of Arundel Books in Los Angeles and Olsson's Books and Music in Washington. The stores refused to turn over the information and the FBI dropped its demand. Since 1998, Tattered Cover Book Store, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.com have also successfully resisted police efforts to search their records.


Tresury Department Retreats in Conflict With Publishers

In her article, Donadio also expressed skepticism over a lawsuit filed in September challenging a Treasury Department regulation that requires publishers to obtain a license from the government before they can publish a book by an author living in a country that has been banned from trading with the United States. In April, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) joined other free expression groups in condemning the regulation, which affects authors in Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Libya and Sudan. Donadio suggests that restriction is not really as significant as the plaintiffs claim. The plaintiffs are the Association of American University Presses, the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, PEN American Center and Arcade Publishing. A second suit was filed by Iranian author Shirin Ebadi and her agent, the Strothman Agency.

However, the government apparently believes that plaintiffs have a good chance of winning. On December 15, the Treasury Department issued new regulations that remove many of the restrictions that were challenged in the suit. While reserving the right to demand further changes after they have studied the new regulations more carefully, the plaintiffs called the government's action "clearly a step in the right direction." To read the plaintiffs' statement, click here.


Alabama Legislator Seeks Library Purge of Books on Homosexuality

 A member of the Alabama legislature has drafted a bill that makes it a crime for a state employee who works in a library, school or university to purchase books and other material that "recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Rep. Gerald Allen, a Republican representative from the Tuscaloosa area, denies that his bill violates the First Amendment because it only places restrictions on government purchases. Individuals would be free to buy any books they want, he said. Critics argue that the measure could lead to the purging libraries of all books that deal with the subject of homosexuality, including books that portray homosexual characters or are written by gay authors. "Not only is the bill unworkable, it is discriminatory and unconstitutional," the American Library Association said in a statement.

ABFFE will join ALA in fighting the Allen bill when the Alabama legislature convenes in February.