Customers Testify SAFE(ly) at Ninth Street

On Thursday, October 21, Common Cause of Delaware, a nonprofit citizens lobbying organization dedicated to government reform and accountability, held a citizen's public meeting on the Safety and Freedom Ensured Act (S. 1709, SAFE Act) at Ninth Street Book Store in Wilmington, Delaware. The SAFE Act seeks to amend provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including Section 215, which gives law enforcement officials broad authority to demand that libraries or bookstores turn over books, records, papers, and documents.

A citizen's public meeting held at Ninth Street Book Store in Wilmington, Delaware.

Jack Buckley, Ninth Street's co-owner; John Flaherty, a lobbyist for Common Cause; Drewry Fennell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware; and others, talked with the audience about the SAFE Act, which would also limit certain powers given to the FBI by the Patriot Act, including the power to conduct "roving" wire taps and to issue National Security Letters, which authorize searches of library computers and "sneak and peek" search warrants. The hearing was conducted as an open and informal discussion, said Buckley.

Buckley told BTW that one of the goals of the hearing was to bring the issue to the attention of Delaware's Congressional delegation, since none of the state's three delegates -- Democratic senators Joseph Biden and Thomas Carper and Republican representative Michael Castle -- have signed the SAFE Act. During the hearing, 14 audience members offered testimony advocating the implementation of SAFE. Their written testimonies, along with those of Common Cause, the ACLU, and Buckley, will be presented to the delegates after the November 2 elections.

Co-owner Gemma Buckley noted that many Ninth Street patrons signed the Campaign for Reader Privacy petition and were anxious about the threat to the privacy of bookstore and library records posed by the Patriot Act. Customer response, coupled with their own concerns, led the Buckleys to raise the issue at a meeting of the local chapter of Common Cause, which had been contacted by many people throughout Delaware who expressed similar concerns about the overreaching effects of the act. "Because there was a lot of interest in the whole issue of the Patriot Act and the SAFE Act, we wanted to offer the hearing as a public service, as an opportunity for people to express their opinions," said Buckley. "We weren't a huge group, but I think we'll have an impact."

Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced the SAFE Act in October 2003. The bill would limit searches under the Patriot Act to the records of people who are "foreign agents" engaged in acts of espionage or terrorism. The SAFE Act would require the FBI to have "specific and articulable facts" that show that the person it is targeting is a foreign agent before it may seek a search order from the secret FISA court. The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on SAFE on September 22.

For a previous article on the SAFE Act, which is endorsed by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, click here. --Karen Schechner