Patriot Act renewed

For our presentation for the class my partner and I will be talking about the Patriot Act, focusing on its relation to libraries. The presentation is more timely than I thought it would be as certain portions of the Patriot Act that were due to sunset have just been renewed for another year.

Doing this presentation has been a good reminder of what all is in the Patriot Act and how it changed the legal landscape for law enforcement to pursue and acquire information. One book I've been reading, Refuge of a Scoundrel, places the Patriot Act nicely in the larger context of a shift to greater government power and also greater government secrecy.

These two movements both affect libraries. Government power comes into play in new powers to request library records including circulation information and computer access logs. Simultaneously government secrecy has impacted the ability of people to do research by restricting the information available to the people from the government. In many cases this was apparently innocuous information that was unclassified or had been declassified for a long time.

It appears that these forces are on the wane a bit. At least this time the sunsetting Patriot Act provisions were renewed for only a year, and that after some debate and an emergency two month extension. Here's hoping for a better result next February! Don't forget you can write your representative and senators to make your opinion known!