Reader Privacy Campaign Faces Fall Challenge

As Congress heads toward its August recess, the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP) is preparing for the culmination of its efforts to ensure that protections for the privacy of bookstore and library records are included in the final version of the USA Patriot Act reauthorization bill. As part of that effort, ABA is strongly encouraging booksellers to continue to collect customer signatures on petitions supporting reader privacy. These petitions will be presented in the early fall when Congress reconvenes and will have to reconcile the two bills regarding Section 215 as adopted by the full House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

As it stands, the bills differ significantly in regard to the protection of Americans' First Amendment right to privacy. In the Senate Judiciary Committee's version of the USA Patriot Act, significant progress was made in correcting and clarifying Section 215. Meanwhile, the House Rules Committee rebuffed efforts to introduce Rep. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) amendment to restore reader privacy and went on to pass a reauthorization bill basically extending Section 215 in his current form. The maneuvering stood in stark contrast to the full House's June 15 approval of Sanders' Freedom to Read Amendment to a key appropriations bill by a vote of 238 - 187.

"It now appears that the critical fight will come during the House/Senate conference committee when Congress will look to take the two bills and make them one," said ABA COO Oren Teicher. "It is absolutely imperative that the final bill has the more stringent safeguards to reader privacy currently in the Senate committee version of the bill -- standards that are completely lacking in the House bill. Toward that end, we are asking booksellers to continue to collect signatures on petitions that will be presented to Congress to demonstrate that the readers of America are demanding the right to read freely." (The full Senate is expected to vote sometime when it reconvenes in September.)

Late last week, on behalf of ABA and independent booksellers, Teicher wrote a letter to both the New York Times and the Washington Post, in which he discussed House and Senate Patriot Act bills.

In Teicher's letter to the Times, he wrote: "We were outraged by the House leadership's refusal to allow consideration of Rep. Bernie Sanders' Freedom to Read Amendment, which restores the safeguards for the privacy of bookstore and library records that were eliminated by the Patriot Act. This measure was added to an appropriation bill by a 238 - 187 vote on June 15. To refuse to permit the House to consider adding it to the reauthorization bill was a terrible miscarriage.

"On the other hand, we were deeply gratified by the show of bipartisanship on the part of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who unanimously approved a reauthorization bill that provides a more stringent standard for bookstore and library searches as well as other provisions that restore the safeguards for readers' records that were eliminated by the Patriot Act." Teicher's letter to the Post expressed similar sentiments.

For more information about the Campaign for Reader Privacy, which is sponsored by ABA, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center, go to www.bookweb.org/read/7679.