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Patriot Abuse
By Janet Nocek
The Hartford Courant
Sunday 22 July 2007
I was gagged by the Patriot Act while the
attorney
general was free to tell falsehoods about it.
When the USA Patriot Act was being reauthorized in 2005, Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales claimed that not one single abuse of the
"national security letters" provision had been reported.
It must be his poor memory that caused Mr. Gonzales to tell Congress
that no abuse had been reported. What else would explain why he did not
mention the reports that described abuses and mismanagement of NSLs -
which we now discover were in his possession before his testimony?
I was one of four library colleagues who challenged an NSL in the courts
around the time of its reauthorization. We were under a gag order
because of the nondisclosure provision of the NSL section of the Patriot
Act. This happened even though a judge with high-level security
clearance had declared that there was no risk in identifying us as
recipients of an NSL.
We were therefore not allowed to testify to Congress about our
experience with the letters - which seek information, without court
review, on people like library users.
It is more than irksome to now discover that the attorney general was
giving Congress false information - at the same time that we recipients
of NSLs were not allowed to express our concerns. My colleagues and I
were lucky to have our gag order lifted eventually, with the help of
lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, after the federal
District Court found constitutional problems with that section of the
Patriot Act. Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the
public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after
the Patriot Act was reauthorized.
A gag order is very difficult to deal with. A person cannot tell her
family or friends she has received a demand from the government to turn
in information on another person. Whether you agree with the
security-letter provision or not, receiving such a letter is an
emotionally wrenching experience.
And if the government requires you to compromise your professional and
personal ethics, it can be an intensely disturbing experience. You feel
like a character in an Orwellian book. You feel trapped in a world that
others like you may inhabit, but you cannot reach outside of that world
to find out.
Reportedly hundreds of thousands of security letters have been sent out.
The recipients remain gagged and can never speak about their experience,
under threat of a five-year prison sentence. They can never describe the
scope and nature of the information they give to the FBI.
Therefore, it is laughable to assume that no abuse has been made of the
security-letter provision. The secrecy under which the provision is
administered guarantees a lack of oversight.
The act was reauthorized without significant change to the nondisclosure
provision, which prevents anyone who receives an national security
letter from talking about the experience, to anyone, ever.
I don't believe the FBI is to blame for its reported mismanagement of
NSLs. The Patriot Act does not effectively address court and
congressional oversight. It follows that abuse and mismanagement are
practically a given.
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Janet Nocek is director of the Portland library and a member of the
Executive Board of Library Connection, a Greater Hartford library
consortium that received a national security letter in June 2005.
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