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Patriot Act Renewed
By Gwendolyn Bradley
Congress voted in March to renew the USA Patriot Act, with a few minor changes intended to help protect civil liberties. The vote ended months of negotiations over reauthorization of the act, which was passed shortly after September 11, 2001, and which is asserted to be a necessary antiterrorist tool. The act has raised concerns because it allows unprecedented surveillance of American citizens who are not suspected of any crime or connected to any terrorist suspect.
Under the new provisions, legal challenges to government demands for materials will be permitted. Only libraries that offer an “electronic communication service” can now receive a national-security letter, a type of subpoena that permits the Federal Bureau of Investigation to demand records of Web-site visits, e-mail addresses, and library use. Critics point out that almost all libraries meet this standard. National-security letters are particularly problematic for their critics because they include a gag order that prohibits recipients from disclosing that they have received them. Under new rules, recipients can challenge the gag after one year.
The president of the American Library Association, Michael Gorman, issued a statement calling the legislation “deeply flawed” and saying that the new provisions address “almost none of the major reforms the library community has striven for since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, hurriedly and without due consideration of Constitutional liberties
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