A new survey by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows that librarians are sharply divided over how to respond to law-enforcement requests for patron records. Released in mid-January, “Public Libraries and Civil Liberties: A Profession Divided” shows that only 49% of the 444 libraries asked by law enforcement to voluntarily provide information about patron reading habits and Internet preferences cooperated; the remainder did not.
Only 10% of the 906 libraries that responded to the survey have changed patron Internet-use policies in response to USA Patriot Act provisions that simplify the process that allows agents to gain access to library records.
The survey also revealed that in the past year federal and local law-enforcement agents visited 545 libraries to ask for patron records; of these, 178 were visits from the FBI. However, these numbers may be low because the act makes it illegal for anyone to disclose that a search warrant was served. Almost 60% of those polled said they thought this secrecy provision was an abridgement of First Amendment rights.
LRC Director Leigh Estabrook said in the January 16 online Wired news, “What surprised me most was real tension between personal beliefs and concern about what librarians are obligated to do under the law. . . . There’s so much emphasis in the media of needing to be fearful of terrorist activity. It’s no wonder that some librarians have bought into those fears.”
Some librarians consider Internet sign-up sheets to be public records that do not require a search warrant. An FBI agent walked into the Carpenter branch of the St. Louis Public Library January 14 asking for sign-up sheets since December 28 and walked out with the records later that day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported January 22. SLPL Executive Director Glen Holt said that, unlike circulation or Web-surfing records, the sheets were public.
Others disagree, among them George Durnell, assistant director of the St. Louis County Library, who told the Post-Dispatch that patron records of any type would only be released under a court order.
Posted January 27, 2003.