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Justice Department Responds to Information Request
The American Civil Liberties Union announced in January that it was "disappointed but not surprised" at the U.S. Department of Justice's limited response to a request for information about how the USA Patriot Act, a sweeping antiterrorist law, is being used to monitor such things as personal communications between citizens and library and bookstore records. The civil liberties group and other public interest organizations, including the Freedom to Read Foundation, a group established by the American Library Association to defend First Amendment rights, sued the administration after an initial request for information was ignored. In November a judge ordered the administration to respond by January 15.
The administration complied by issuing more than two hundred pages of material, but the public interest organizations characterized the response as almost meaningless because, they said, none of the pages addressed their concerns. The groups plan to continue pursuing the issue in court.
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