Friday, January 17, 2003

How Would Your Librarian Answer? Wired has an article about a recent survey conducted by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign which found that almost fifty percent of librarians have voluntarily provided patron's records to law enforcement officials, without requiring a subpoena or a court order. Of course, under the "Patriot Act" (and yes, I use the quotes intentionally), librarians are bared from publicizing the fact that law enforcement has requested such materials. So now your video rental records and cable records are safer than your library records. So far, I haven't seen any legal challenges to these provisions of the Patriot Act.

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