LIBERTY TOO QUICKLY GIVEN UP

In a perfect world, the government should never have cause to investigate
what its citizens read. The ability to think, accept or reject ideas, read,
write and speak are all basic components of the freedom that the rest of
the world envies.

But it's not a perfect world, and acts of terrorism on U.S. soil have
caused the U.S. Congress to write laws that restrict these basic liberties.
Bookstore and library records were, at one time, sacrosanct. Now, under the
USA Patriot Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can seek an order from
a secret spy court in order to go after these records.

While booksellers and librarians can appeal to the spy court about
incursions into these otherwise private records, they aren't permitted to
speak publicly about them, nor is it clear whether they can even attend the
court hearing. The public is never supposed to know that a demand for
private information has occurred.

If it is going to be necessary to violate the privacy of citizens and chill
the desire of people to explore any subject of their choice, then at the
very least hearings about these cases should be public.

The Patriot Act uses broad terms to define domestic terrorism. Among other
definitions, it includes acts that "appear to ... influence the policy of a
government by intimidation..." So while appearances of intimidation are
defined as terrorism when performed by private citizens, actual
intimidation at the hands of the FBI is permitted.

Even before the Patriot Act, police were increasingly attempting to get
access to records of libraries and booksellers. Two cases in Colorado, and
cases in Kansas City, Cleveland, Florida, California and Washington, D.C.,
were filed in the months prior to Sept. 11. These had nothing to do with
terrorism, but they did have to do with crimes and, in one case, political
matters that police were investigating. Courts, generally, are reluctant to
permit police to rampage through records that might indicate what people
read. In Colorado on Monday, the state Supreme Court determined that police
should not have access to customer records at the Tattered Cover bookstore.
The court said that "law enforcement need for the book purchase record in
this case was not sufficiently compelling to outweigh the harm that would
likely follow from execution of the search warrant..."

These are extraordinary times, which some would argue call for
extraordinary measures. Yet it is distressing that our elected leaders have
so quickly given up basic liberties in order to promote safety. The two -
liberty and safety - are not of equal weight.