ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 12, Number 46
May 28, 2003

In This Issue: Senate Library and Bookseller Protection Bill Introduced

Senate cosponsors are being sought for S. 1158, the "Library and Bookseller Protection Act."  On Friday, May 23rd, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced S.1158 to ensure that libraries and bookstores are subjected only to the regular system of court-ordered warrants.  S. 1158 has some similarities to H.R. 1157 in the House, the Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003.  

S. 1158 would:

1) exempt bookstores and libraries from FISA court orders (Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act] requiring the production of tangible things for foreign intelligence investigations; and
 
2) exempt libraries from being considered "wire or electronic communication service providers" under Section 2709 of Title 18 of the US Code, which provides for counterintelligence access to certain records. 

Section 2709 of Title 18 of the US Code relates to the "National Security letters", a legal tool that has been increasingly used by law enforcement to obtain many kinds of records from a broad range of organizations. These are a type of administrative letter requesting information for an investigation. The FBI can issue these "letters" internally, without going to any judge. The FBI has indicated to Congress that is is more likely to use its authority under Title 18, Section 2709 to get at the electronic transactional records that a library may have (e.g., e-mail, Web usage) than its authority under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.   Section 215 is the business records provisions that covers intelligence investigations related to library records.

Though there are no co-sponsors to date, library advocates are encouraged to ask their respective U.S. Senators to contact Sen. Boxer's office about cosponsoring H.R. 1158.  The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

For further information, contact Lynne Bradley or Patrice McDermott at the ALA Office of Government Relations at 800-941-8478.



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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.