Campaign for Reader Privacy Deadline Just Days Away

Booksellers participating in the Campaign for Reader Privacy petition drive should note that the deadline to submit signed petitions is only five days away. In order for all collected signatures to be counted, booksellers must send all petitions by September 20 to ABA, Restore Reader Privacy, Attn.: Oren Teicher, 828 S. Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591. Until that time, ABA is urging booksellers to keep collecting signatures.

The petitions, calling on Congress to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and bearing thousands of signatures gathered at hundreds of bookstores and libraries across the country, will be presented to members of Congress by representatives from the campaign's four sponsoring organizations -- ABA, the American Library Association, Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center -- on September 29, as part of Banned Books Week (September 25 - October 2) celebrations.

On another front, on Tuesday, September 14, the Board of Legislators of Westchester County, New York, which is home to the American Booksellers Association, voted 11 - 6 to join some 352 cities and counties and four states that have passed resolutions urging Congress to repeal provisions of the USA Patriot Act, as reported by the Journal News. Before the vote, ABA COO Oren Teicher appeared before the board and urged them to approve the resolution.

"While I understand that the resolution before you deals with the Patriot Act as a whole, bookstores are particularly concerned with Section 215 -- that grants extraordinary super powers to the FBI to ascertain information about what we are reading -- even if we are not suspected of any terrorist activity, or for that matter, of any other crime," Teicher said. "We recognize that there may be unusual circumstances when appropriate law enforcement authorities may be able to convince a court of law -- in an open hearing -- to issue a search warrant to a bookstore and/or library. But Section 215 mandates that a bookseller or librarian turn over information about specific titles that an individual may have bought from a store or borrowed from a library -- without the benefit of any due process whatsoever."

Teicher continued, "Many of us believe that the best tribute we can pay to those who died on September 11 is to do whatever we can to preserve what it is that America is all about -- and the worst thing we could do would be to cave into the terrorists and allow them to dictate how we behave as Americans. Star chamber proceedings, where the rights of the reading public are trampled upon, and any right to due process is cavalierly discarded, is not the kind of America most of us want.

"Over the past months, bookstores across the country have been collecting signatures from the reading public urging Congress to repeal Section 215, and I can tell you that hundreds and hundreds of thousands of those petitions have flooded our offices in Tarrytown. Two weeks from tomorrow, we'll be presenting those petitions to members of Congress in Washington. I thought it best not to bring those petitions over tonight to add to your already tall pile of papers but wanted you to know that -- on their way to Washington -- those signatures have made a stop here in Westchester County. And I'd dearly love to report to the stores who have collected all those signatures that ABA is proudly located in one of the many jurisdictions throughout the U.S. that recognizes that the Patriot Act goes too far."

To read Teicher's speech in full, click here.

Booksellers can order additional petition pads by calling ABA's Information Department at (800) 637-0037, ext. 1292 or 1293, or for a downloadable PDF of the petition, click here.

For more about the Campaign for Reader Privacy, visit www.readerprivacy.com/. To learn more about Banned Books Week, order products, and download the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression Banned Books Week campaign plan, click here.