BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Friday, September 19, 2003
Big Brother's contemptible
sneer. John Ashcroft is a pathetic
bully. Yesterday he
denounced the "hysteria" of those who criticize Section 215 of the
USA Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to examine library and
bookstore records (among other things) without a grand-jury warrant
and without probable cause.
(The Patriot Act, and especially
Section 215, is the subject of a piece I wrote for this
week's Phoenix.)
Ashcroft wants us to believe that
Section 215 is nothing to worry about because it hasn't actually been
used. But if he had no intention of using it, why did the White House
stick it in there in the first place? Besides, one of the prime uses
of a repressive law such as the Patriot Act is not to spy on people
directly, but to create an aura of suspicion -- to make you wonder
whether you're being watched, whether your reading habits are of
interest to the government.
And it's not as though the
government never actually snoops on people's reading
lists.
A few years ago, Monica Lewinsky's
interest in the phone-sex novel Vox became the subject of a
subpoena by Clinton persecutor Ken Starr.
The Tattered Cover, a well-known
independent bookstore in Denver, barely beat back attempts by a local
prosecutor to turn over purchase records related to a drug
case.
Here's part of a statement issued
by the American
Library Association earlier
this week:
Attorney General John
Ashcroft says the FBI has no interest in Americans' reading
records. While this may be true, librarians have a history with
law enforcement dating back to the McCarthy era that gives us
pause. For decades, and as late as the 1980s, the FBI's Library
Awareness Program sought information on the reading habits of
people from "hostile foreign countries," as well as U.S. citizens
who held unpopular political views.
The fears of librarians and
bookstore owners are well-founded. John Ashcroft's making fun of them
only deepens those fears.
Johnny Cash overview. Ted
Drozdowski has a fine look back at Johnny
Cash's career in this
week's Phoenix.
posted at 11:26 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
