Edrie

And a very nice letter to the editor which I HOPE gets published!


Dear Colleagues,

This is the letter to the editor I sent to the NY Times in response to
Ashcroft's attack on ALA and librarians. The full title of the Ashcroft
article in the NY Times was "Aschcroft Mocks Librarians and Others Who
Oppose Parts of Counterterrorism Law." What the NY Times printed in
today's edition was a letter from Congressman Bernie Sanders. The limit
of 150 words is a nasty constraint.

All the best,

mitch

To the editor:

In "Ashcroft Mocks Librarians..." (16 Sept 2003), the Attorney General
ignores what the American Library Association, concerned librarians, and
countless others have said about the USA PATRIOT Act. We decry the
PATRIOT Act's overriding of the Fourth Amendment guarantee of the
demonstration of "probable cause" that was established in 49 of 50
states as the legal basis for requiring libraries to disclose
confidential patron records. The PATRIOT Act simply asks the FBI to
claim relevance to an ongoing terrorist investigation in a secret
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceeding--no demonstration of
probable cause is required. We are not dupes of the ACLU, as alleged in
the article. We support the war against terrorism, but oppose
Ashcroft's trampling on constitutionally protected rights of America's
library users based on his all-too-recurrent and far-too-rarely, if
ever, justified claim that the PATRIOT Act's abuses are needed to catch
terrorists.


Maurice J. Freedman
Director, Westchester Library System