This one’s gonna be all over the library blogosphere today:
Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users [NY Times]
The worst part about the Patriot Act in libraries issue, to me, is the inability (under penalty of law) to even tell anybody the library received a request to reveal information.
But even this slightly muddy data the ALA was able to collect is shocking. The possibility of 600 requests for patron reading lists since October 2001? That’s a few more than the zero the government claims. I’m sure that not all of them were Patriot Act related, but some probably were, whether or not the request was submitted officially.
Worth a read.