Posted on: Tuesday, March 4, 2003

EDITORIAL
Patriot Act opens new door to official snoops

If you are an avid reader, you spend more time at your local library or bookstore than you do poring over obscure pieces of the Federal Record.

But you might want to reconsider.

Deep in the 340 pages of fine print that make up the USA Patriot Act is something known as Section 215.

We hadn't run across this section and might never have had not the Los Angeles Times come across it and commented in a recent editorial.

What Section 215 does — ominously — is make it quite simple for officials to secretly set in motion a process by which they can demand records of your reading and viewing habits from any bookstore, video rental store or public library.

You don't even have to be suspected of a crime. If agents feel it would be useful to know what you read or what you view, all they need do is obtain a warrant from a secret court and then go demand the materials.

Frightening.

It's true that agents could always get a court warrant for information of this sort. But traditionally, the warrant would be issued by a regular judge, not the secret court created in 1978 to rule on national security-related searches.

And there had to be probable cause that the records sought might tie directly to a crime or evidence of a crime.

That standard is not required under the Patriot Act. All an agent need do is assert that the records are "relevant" to an ongoing investigation.

This may sound fanciful, but consider this: Suppose agents were interested in finding out if there were any Islamic fundamentalists operating in Hawai'i. They might come to the conclusion that such people would have an interest in reading Islamic materials or watching Islamic videos.

So, they could launch a search of data bases in the local library or bookstores, asking who had checked such materials out.

Your most private reading and viewing habits would be open to inspection. And remember, once they are in there, they are free to look at everything.

The law even bars the librarian or bookstore from telling you someone was looking.

Naturally, in the war against terrorism, we will constantly have to balance our civil liberties against the need for security. But in this case, the balance has shifted too far in one direction.

U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders intends to introduce legislation that would repeal Section 215 and replace it with language much closer to that which existed before the Patriot Act.

Investigators would still be able to get at those library records, but only after meeting the higher standard of the previous law.

That is reasonable .