Library Leader Questions Patriot Act

[cal04]

The president of the American Library Association has one word for the USA Patriot Act's so-called library clause -- ``Kafkaesque.'' ``It's very reminiscent of the '50s and the 'red scare' where people showed up at libraries trying to find which political books professors had read, because they were going to be put on a communist list or something,'' said Michael Gorman, a British-born librarian who heads the U.S. library group. `Where it doesn't seem sinister, it seems comic.''
Alluding to writers George Orwell and Franz Kafka, Gorman said of the Patriot Act, ``I'm much too fond of Orwell to call it Orwellian, but it's Kafkaesque.''

Where Orwell's novel ``1984'' foresaw a future where the government spied on everyone and Kafka's ``The Trial'' told of one man's futile battle against unnamed government charges, Gorman said the Patriot Act intrudes on privacy but has little chance of accomplishing its aim of protecting against terrorism.

Enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Patriot Act lets U.S. authorities get approval from a special court to search personal records of terror suspects from bookstores, businesses, hospitals and libraries, in a provision known as the library clause.

'JUST IN CASE'
Gorman seemed almost amused as he detailed what he saw as the government's rationale for this, noting the irony in a Justice Department statement that it has never used the provision, but still needs it ``just in case.''
``It's so important that we have to do these things under cloak of darkness and the populace can't know about it, and by the way, we've never done it,'' Gorman said in an interview with Reuters last week as the Patriot Act was discussed on Capitol Hill.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-07-24T131435Z_01_N24344664_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-SECURITY-LIBRARIES-DC.XML