One More Reason To Love Librarians: The American Library Association Wants To Protect Your Privacy From The Government
I have been grateful to librarians (to whom I put an acknowledgement in my last book, I See Rude People, my whole life.

They don't disappoint now.

Here's an article on CommonDreams, "Nation's Libraries Warn of NSA's 'Ravenous Hunger' for Data," by Andrea Germanos.

It includes this letter to American Libraries Association members from ALA President Barbara Stripling. An excerpt:

When we spoke out in 2001 against the passage of the PATRIOT Act, we were concerned about Section 215, a provision of the law that allowed the government powers to obtain "business records and other tangible things" from suspected terrorists. We were fearful that the government would come into libraries without warning and take library records on individual patrons without reasonable suspicion. Libraries were one of the first groups to publicly oppose the bill, and many legislators and privacy experts have noted that Congress would not have understood the chilling impact on privacy if librarians had not brought it to the nation's attention. Librarians were so vocal in their opposition to the law that Section 215 was called the "library provision." We could not have imagined then what is happening today. Today, in spite of the leak allegations, the government continues to use the "library provision" to vacuum up private communication records of Americans on a massive scale.

Even the most cynical among us could not have predicted that the Obama Administration--an administration that campaigned on the promise of greater government transparency and openness--would allow a massive surveillance program to infringe upon the basic civil liberties of innocent, unsuspecting people. We understand the responsibility of the government to investigate terrorism and other harmful acts. But the need to protect the public does not mean that Americans have to relinquish their Fourth Amendment privacy rights in the process. ALA has already joined other civil liberties groups to call for more legal review, judicial oversight, transparency and public accountability. Our country needs to find the right balance.

We need to restore the balance between individual rights and terrorism prevention, and libraries are one of the few trusted American institutions that can lead true public engagement on our nation's surveillance laws and procedures.

via Lisa Simeone