This was my part of the second group presentation, a debate on the USA PATRIOT Act. I argued on the pro-PATRIOT side, which was surprisingly enjoyable. Don't worry, I don't believe a word of this. It was a fun debate. I'd never participated in a debate before.
There have not been any substantiated claims of abuse of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act according to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most of the media hype against Section 215 has been simply exaggerated and inaccurate reporting. Most people don’t understand what Section 215 actually allows; my own husband thought that it made a national alert list where the FBI would get a notice whenever somebody checked out a book on bombs or terrorists or whatever. Popular misconceptions have only been fueled by the media, not corrected.
Representative James Sensenbrenner said in the Congressional Record that “the PATRIOT Act has been misused by some as a springboard to launch limitless allegations that are not only unsubstantiated but are false and irresponsible.”
The instances often cited of libraries being asked to provide patron records are not even Federal investigations, but state or local authorities using laws that were already in existence prior to the passage of the PATRIOT Act. All the PATRIOT Act did was extend those powers already available to local and state law enforcement to the FBI as well. They are really rather limited measures, and are only used against the guilty. Thus far the FISA court has modified but not denied any requests under Section 215, which shows that the requests have been reasonable and warranted. Based on the regular reports they have received since its passage, Congress has concluded that there is no evidence of the FBI abusing the PATRIOT Act measures.
Jeffrey Breinholt, the deputy chief of the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department, has said that data collection on the innocent does no harm unless "someone [decides] to act on the information, puts you on a no-fly list or something." This is extremely unlikely; it is much more likely that the data will sit in file cabinets accumulating dust. In fact, you would probably never even know you were under surveillance. If nothing happened to you, how would you know anyone had seen your library circulation records? It would take a very serious error on the part of the government to make them go after you in some way (freezing assets, criminal charges) based solely on a book you checked out from Nowhereville Public Library. In this day and age of tort-happy American citizens who sue at the drop of a hat, and rabid media who drool over the thought of a story about how evil the government is, the FBI is not going to be capricious about prosecuting someone. There are congressional oversight provisions in Section 215 for exactly this sort of reason.
Most opponents of the PATRIOT Act and Section 215 don’t thoroughly understand its provisions. George Vinson, former state homeland security director in California and a former FBI counterterrorism official, says that banks, hospitals, libraries etc. that could be issued administrative subpoenas under Section 215 can refuse them, which forces the FBI to gain judicial sanction through the old channels of going to a grand jury instead of the FISA court. Exempting libraries from Section 215 would add a huge loophole that terrorists could exploit, giving them an avenue to freely access information with the sure knowledge that no one will find out about it. The FBI has documented past cases where terrorists and spies used libraries to their advantage, and there is no actual legal precedence that provides library patrons with any special privacy privileges. After all this, the FBI has yet to even use Section 215 to acquire library records: according to the Justice Department, in the 35 instances that Section 215 has been invoked between 2001 and 2005, it has never been used to request records from a library.
So it’s a moot issue really; so many people are paranoid over nothing. The local authorities are more likely to be watching your library habits than the FBI is, and you don't hear any uproar over that. The media coverage of the PATRIOT Act has caused the general public to believe the FBI could be looking over their shoulder at any moment, and that they should constantly be on guard. We are already a paranoid society with all the identity theft that goes on, and a general mistrust of the government is fairly prevalent in most areas of society, and the media hype over Section 215 has blown the statutes all out of proportion. But you really don't need to worry.
The FBI isn’t going to bother watching you if you’re not doing anything wrong. The FBI does not have the funds, time, or personnel to put people under surveillance without grounds. Everyday people really don’t need to worry that the FBI is going to look at their library records. Quite frankly, the FBI does not give a damn about you. They’re not spying on you if you’re not a terrorist or linked to terrorists. If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
As Assistant FBI Director Michael Mason said, if the surveillance records "are never used against a person, if they're never used to put him in jail, or deprive him of a vote, et cetera, then what is the argument?"