sept05c.indd


Ber nadette Murphy W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n e  

Library supporters infl uence dueling 
PATRIOT bills 
Both the House and Senate passed PATRIOT 
Reauthorization bills in July. The Senate bill 
adds to the USA PATRIOT Act many of the 
safeguards for library and reader privacy that 
have been sought by the library community, 
including tougher requirements for searching 
library records under Section 215. The two bills 
will now be reconciled by a Conference Com­
mittee. A comparison of the bills follows: 

•  Sunset provisions. Both bills reauthorize 
sections of the PATRIOT Act that would expire 
at the end of this year. The House bill extends 
the sunset period for Section 215 to 2015; the 
Senate to 2009. The shorter sunset is prefer­
able because it will result in more oversight 
by Congress. 

•  Section 215. The House legislation al­
lows the FBI to obtain library records when 
they are “relevant” to a counter­terrorism or 
counter­espionage investigation. The Senate 
bill requires the FBI to give facts showing the 
records sought are “relevant to” the counter­
terrorism or counter­intelligence investigation, 
and that items “pertain to” a foreign power, 
agent of a foreign power, or person in contact 
with a suspected agent or are “relevant to” 
the activities of a suspected agent who is the 
subject of the investigation. The Senate bill 
also requires records to be described with 
“sufficient particularity”—reducing the danger 
that the FBI will engage in fi shing expeditions 
in library or bookstore records. 

Both bills require the FBI director to per­
sonally approve any request for records from 
a library, and both bills allow the recipient of 
a Section 215 order to challenge the order. 

The Senate bill requires that the Depart­
ment of Justice report annually on the total 
number of applications made for Section 215 
orders that approve requests for the produc­
tion of tangible things. 

Bernadette Murphy is communications specialist at ALA’s 
Washington Offi  ce, e-mail: bmurphy@alawash.org 

•  Section 505. Both Senate and House 
versions allow a recipient of a National Secu­
rity Letter (NSL) to challenge the request in a 
U.S. District Court. The House version allows 
the court to set aside if it is “unreasonable” or 
“oppressive.” The Senate version permits the 
court to set it aside if “unreasonable” or “op­
pressive” or it would violate a constitutional 
or legal right. 

Library grassroots eff orts continue 
Your grassroots efforts have been essential in 
securing privacy safeguards in the PATRIOT 
reauthorization bills. Please continue to call 
members of Congress asking them to preserve 
provisions of the Senate bill. We are happy to 
report that our efforts have been recognized 
on the Senate floor by Senator Richard Durbin 
(D­IL). His remarks follow. 

“Let me say a word as I close. One of the 
most unlikely groups became so important in 
this debate—the American Library Association. 
I cannot recall a time in recent memory when 
this organization showed such leadership. 
Time and again, they came forward to tell us 
that they wanted to protect the privacy of their 
patrons at libraries across America who might 
come in and take out a magazine or book, 
and they certainly didn’t want to do that with 
the knowledge that the Government could 
sweep up all of the library records and sift 
through them to see if anybody had checked 
out a suspicious book. They sent us petitions 
gathered from libraries across the Nation, and 
I think they really did good work on behalf of 
our Constitution and our rights and liberties 
guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. 

“I wish to dedicate any success we have 
with this revision of the PATRIOT Act to the 
American Library Association and all those 
who stood with them in asking that we make 
meaningful changes to the act without elimi­
nating the important provisions that continue 
to make America safe.” 

Source: Congressional Record, July 29, 
2005, S 9561. 

C&RL News September 2005  602 

mailto:bmurphy@alawash.org