PATRIOT Act Petition Campaign Ends September 29
The Campaign for Reader Privacy petition drive to amend the USA
PATRIOT Act will come to an end at a Washington press conference on
Sept. 29. Representatives of the CRP sponsors--the American
Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the
Association of American Publishers and PEN American Center, will
present petitions bearing more than 170,000 names to Congressman
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and other members of Congress who are fighting
to restore protections for the privacy of bookstore and library
records that were eliminated by Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.
Following the press conference, which will coincide with the
national celebration of Banned Books Week, the representatives of
the four groups will meet with members of Congress to continue to
build support in anticipation of the fight over reauthorizing
Section 215, which is set to expire next year. Booksellers who are
collecting signatures should send them to Oren Teicher at ABA by
Sept. 20.
ABFFE, Justice Department Settle FOIA
Case
ABFFE and the ALA have settled the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
that ACLU filed on their behalf in 2002 in an effort to force the
Justice Department to reveal how many times it had used Section 215 to
search bookstore and library records. Although a judge upheld the
government's right to keep this information secret, the Justice
Department did release a number of documents, including one that
revealed the FBI has attempted to use Section 215 in at least one case.
The FBI requested a Section 215 order shortly after Attorney General
John Ashcroft asserted last year that the section had not been used. The
details of the request and its outcome remain secret.
As part of the settlement of the case, the Justice Department also
released the rules of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
that issues Section 215 orders. The rules make clear that there is no
opportunity for booksellers or librarians to object to Section 215
searches. The government has maintained on several occasions that
appeals are possible. Some of the documents released by the government
have been posted on the ACLU Web site. Click
here to see them.
ABFFE Protests Customs Seizure of
Children's Book
U.S. Customs has seized 3,000 copies of a children's book, "Tong Ting
Finds A Family," that was being shipped from a printer in China to the
author, Elizabeth Cooke, an assistant professor of English at the
University of Maine at Farmington. The Bush administration has barred
the shipper from doing business in the United States because its parent
company, China North Industries, is suspected of having shipped missile
parts to Iran. In a letter to Customs officials, ABFFE and the Freedom
to Read Foundation argued that the seizure was an act of censorship,
whether it was intended or not. "Any effort to confiscate books not
judged to be obscene constitutes an act of prior restraint," they said.
They called for the immediate release of the books.
Groups
Call on Congress to Reduce Government Secrecy
ABFFE has joined other free expression groups in urging the House
Committee on Intelligence to take steps to limit government secrecy,
which has grown rapidly since 9/11. While acknowledging the necessity
for secrecy, the groups said in a letter to committee chair, Porter
Goss, that unnecessary secrets undermine public trust and government
accountability. The letter cites a number of abuses of secrecy that have
recently come to light, including the Central Intelligence Agency's
effort to classify almost half of the Senate Intelligence Committee's
report on pre-war intelligence about Iraq and the classification of
documents in an attempt to coverup the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The
groups called for the creation of a classification review board with the
power to declassify documents as well as the establishment of a
government office to monitor classification procedures throughout the
federal government.
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