The new antiterrorism law gives the Federal Bureau of Investigation the right to look through Library computers and patron’s files. This act has caused an uproar from the left and the right since it passes, almost unanimously, just six weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. However librarians seem to be creating the most opposition, seeing this as much an assault on basic civil liberties as reading primacy and intellectual freedom.

FBI special agent David J. Beyer warns that another terrorist attack is “probable” and asked librarians not to destroy records that might help aid in an investigation one day. He pleaded by asking “How much protection do you want to give your patrons, and how much protection do you want to give your country?” Faced with this question, many librarians still feel the Act is an infringement of patron’s rights and plan to destroy records or at the very least warn patrons of their limited privacy.

Mr. Beyer, says the FBI is mainly interested in how suspicious people use the web, not the books they check out. The FBI concerns extends to email and internet searches. When searching the Internet ample volumes of information is at the finger tips, such as how to access websites and books that contain terrorist information.
Mr. Ashcoft announced that the FBI hadn’t requested any business records under the Patriot Act. “Section 215 has not been used Period. Zero times” However Leign Estabrook, director of the University of Illinois’s Library Research Center, conducted her own study and found incongruent results compared with the FBI reports.

She conducted a poll of 1,505 libraries that led her to conclude the FBI visited 178 libraries in the year after the 9/11 attacks. The visits were not under the Patriot Act, she assumes, because the law prohibits anyone served with a Patriot Act subpoena from reporting it. Although some librarians did not respond to Ms. Estabrook’s questions because of legal prohibitions, which she concludes means they receive FBI visits under the Patriot Act. She puts the number of those visits at 15.

Mr. Ashcroft still claims Patriot Act section 215 has never been used and even with all the controversy remains in affect. Mr. Beyer assures that section 215 will probably be used, “That’s why it’s on the books.”