ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 14, Number 71 July 25, 2005 In This Issue: Contact your Senators and Urge them to support additional changes to S 1389 (USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act) that would protect patron privacy. Background: On July 21, 2005 the Senate Judiciary Committtee approved S. 1389. The bill was passed unanimously by the Committee that morning. There is some possibility that the bill may be considered by Congress this week before the August recess. We will alert you if we learn it is going to the Floor this week. Action Needed: Call your Senators and urge them to support additional changes to S. 1389 that will further ensure the privacy of library patrons' If the bill does not go to the Floor this week, during the August recess visit your district office and approach your Senators at any public event to urge them to support privacy for library patron records. Write a letter or opinion piece to your local newspaper describing the changes that need to be made to S. 1389 to strengthen the protection of library patron privacy. Talking Points: Sunset provisions ensure that the area covered by those provisions are forced onto the congressional agenda and ensure the frequent review required to safeguard civil liberties. Therefore we urge Congress to oppose any effort to lengthen the 4 -year sunset provision currently in the legislation. We support section 7 which raises the standard for Section 215 orders beyond that currently in the USA PATRIOT Act. Section 7 requires: 1. A factual basis for a request to the FISA Court that shows the records sought pertain to a foreign power or agent of a foreign power (spy or terrorist); are relevant to the activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of an authorized investigation; or pertain to an individual in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power. The records must be described "with sufficient particularity to permit them to be fairly defined." The bill requires the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI to give prior written approval to a FISA Court request for library circulation records and library patron lists. 2. Grants recipients of the FISA order the right to consult an attorney and to disclose the order to "any person necessary to produce the tangible things" 3. Grants recipients of Section 215 orders the right to challenge them and their gag orders in the FISA Court by filing a petition. This provision is not everything we would want: the only grounds for setting aside or modifying the order would be its "lawfulness." 4. Provides for unclassified reporting on the use of Section 215 orders including the number of requests for orders, the number of orders granted, and when the application or order involved the production of tangible things from a library. We support strengthening the basis for setting aside the Section 215 orders (e.g. scope) and their gag orders. We support strengthening the grounds for issuance of a Section 215 order to say that the FBI is required to show reason to believe that the person whose record are sought is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power. Finally, we are very concerned about the use of National Security Letters. Section 8 of this bill would give recipients the right to challenge the gag order in an appropriate U.S. District Court. However, there is still no "reason to believe" standard for the issuance of these orders - the FBI can issue them internally and does not even need to demonstrate that the person who is the subject of the Letter is "a foreign power or agent of a foreign power." We support strengthening the standard for issuance. ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. 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; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Don Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Erin Haggerty, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.