Well, trembling librarians everywhere must be feeling good right now. Who knew they had such influence?
The House voted today to block the FBI and the Justice Department from using the Patriot Act to search library and book store records.Despite a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 238-187 to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.
The vote reversed a narrow loss last year by lawmakers complaining about threats to privacy rights. They narrowed the proposal this year to permit the government to continue to seek out records of Internet use at libraries.
Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law gives the FBI too much leeway to go on "fishing expeditions" on people's reading habits and that innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based on what they check out from a library.
That's 99.99% nonsense with only the tiniest likelihood of occuring. What's much more likely is this:
Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules on reading records are a potentially useful tool in finding terrorists and argued that the House was voting to make libraries safe havens for them.Posted by Alan at June 16, 2005 12:34 AM