Reply #5: Part IV

[Gabi Hayes]

Like so many others, the library community believes that secrecy is a threat to open government and a free society. It is the secrecy surrounding the issuance of NSLs that permits their misuse. Because of the fact that all recipients of NSLs are perpetually gagged, no one knew the FBI was issuing so many. No one knew there was no public examination of the practice. No one could ask if over 143,000 National Security Letters in two years are necessary. No one could ask if the FBI could follow up on so many or whether it was the best use of their resources. These questions cannot be asked if gag orders and other forms of secrecy prevent even Congress from knowing what the FBI is doing with its powers. Secrecy that prevents oversight and public debate is a danger to a free and open society.

We urge Congress to re-consider the PATRIOT Act. Restore basic civil liberties. Restore constitutional checks and balances by requiring judicial reviews of NSL requests for information, especially in libraries and bookstores where a higher standard of review should be considered. National security letters are very powerful investigative tools that can be used to obtain very sensitive records. The FBI should not be allowed to issue them willy-nilly. It shouldn’t be allowed to issue NSLs unless a court has approved it and found that the records it seeks are really about a suspected terrorist. We believe that terrorists win when fear of them induces us to destroy the rights that make our country free.

The details of our story support my request to you. On July 8, 2005, an FBI agent phoned Ken Sutton, our systems and telecommunications manager, and informed him that Library Connection would be served with a national security letter, and asked to whom it should be addressed. Ken said it should be addressed to myself as the Executive Director.

While I had been aware of the cautions raised by the ALA, ACLU, and others, until Ken related this phone conversation to me, I had not really thought about the term “national security letter.” Nor are all attorneys familiar with the term. This is not surprising, since every recipient of a NSL is prohibited by a perpetual gag order from mentioning receipt of the letter or anything associated with it.