Marines Are Tough, But So Are Librarians

Yep, I said librarians. Another answer to How Would a Patriot Act?*.

After preventing a group of librarians from telling Congress about the FBI’s attempt to access patrons’ computer records, the federal government has dropped its request for the data.

The librarians who received the subpoena from the FBI fought a long court battle to avoid complying with the request and to remove a gag order that prohibited them from telling the public about the request. The federal government eventually released them from their mandatory silence, but only after lawmakers had renewed the USA Patriot Act provisions dealing with national security letters – the internally issued subpoenas the FBI can use to request records without a court order. The librarians had hoped to testify before Congress against the very policy that gagged them.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which litigated the case on behalf of the four librarians, announced Monday that the government had finally dropped its request for the records entirely, allowing the group to disclose the scope of the probe.

The FBI’s letter, which the ACLU posted to its website, demands that the Library Connection, a consortium of 26 Connecticut libraries, hand over “all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person or entity related to” a certain IP address during a 45-minute period on February 15, 2005. An IP address is a unique identifier of a computer or computer network.

Come to think of it, Laura Bush was a librarian. No wonder the moron keeps trying to prove he's macho. He has to prove he's tougher than she.

(source) Courtesy link. I've posted the whole item here.

* Glenn Greenwald's book. Buy it at Amazon.com.