By Walter Brasch
Between a diner and an empty store that once housed a shoe store, video
store, and tanning salon,
in a small strip mall in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, is Friends-in-Mind,
an independent bookstore.
On the first floor are more than 10,000 books on more than 1,200 running
feet of shelves that
create aisles only about three feet wide. On top of the shelves are stacks
of 10, 15, even 20 more
books. On the floor are hundreds more, stacked spine out three- or four-feet
high. There are
books in metal racks, drawers, and on counters. It's hard to walk through
the store without
bumping into a pile in the 1,000-square-foot store. In the basement, in
reserve, are 2,000 more
books.
"Sometimes I order four or five copies of a title, but often I only order
one copy, but I want to
have whatever my customers want," said owner Arline Johnson, who founded
the store in 1976
after working almost two decades as a clinical psychologist and teacher.
Unlike the chain stores
with magazine and newspaper racks, wide aisles, track lighting, and even
a coffee shop,
Friends-in-Mind has only books and some greeting cards. Also, unlike the
chain stores with large
budgets for space and promotion to attract hundreds of customers a day,
Johnson said she sees
"on a real good day" maybe 25 or 30 people; often she sees fewer than a
dozen.
In September 1984, she saw someone she didn't want to see. A week after
the Naval Institute
Press shipped three copies of Tom Clancy's cold war thriller The Hunt for
Red October, the FBI
showed up. The FBI, which apparently got the information from the publisher,
"wanted to know
where the books were and who purchased them," said Johnson. She said she
told the two men
that she couldn't remember to whom she sold two of the copies, but acknowledged
she sent one
copy to her cousin, who had served aboard a nuclear submarine "and had
all kinds of clearances."
Johnson said she wasn't pleased about the interrogation -- "and my cousin
certainly wasn't happy
about anyone checking on what he was reading."
The FBI never returned, but, occasionally, residents in this rural conservative
community will
complain about what's in the store. Johnson has been challenged for selling
books about Karl
Marx, gay rights, and even dinosaurs. She said she tells the "book police"
that "it's important that
people learn and read about everything, whether they believe it or not."
She also stocks copies of
the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Left-wing. Right-wing. Business.
Labor.
Anti-establishment. Everything's available in her store. "It's not the
government's job to tell me or
anyone what they can read," she said.
But, with the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the government has decided
that under the cloak of
"national security" it can abridge the rights of citizens. The base is
the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). Under that act's provisions, the government may
conduct covert
surveillance of individuals only after seeking an order from a special
government-created secret
court. However, that court, in its first two decades, granted every one
of the government's more
than 12,000 requests.
The most recent series of intrusions upon civil liberties began in 1998
when special prosecutor
Ken Starr demanded a bookstore to release records of what Monica Lewinsky
had purchased. It
was a sweeping move that had no reasonable basis of establishing any groundwork
in Starr's
attacks upon President Clinton. Since then, there have been several cases
in which police,
operating with warrants issued in state courts, have demanded a bookstore's
records.
In state actions, individuals have the right to ask local and state courts
to quash subpoenas for
records. If denied, they may appeal all the way to state supreme courts.
There is no such
protection under FISA. Not only can't individuals and businesses be represented
in that secret
court, they're bound by a federal gag order prohibiting any disclosure
that such an order was even
issued. There is no recourse. No appeal.
Then came the USA Patriot Act, drafted by the Bush administration, and
fine-tuned in secret by
the House and Senate leadership following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The Patriot Act,
which incorporates and significantly expands FISA to include American citizens,
was
overwhelmingly approved by the Congress, most of whom admit they read only
a few
paragraphs, if any at all, of the 342-page document. President Bush enthusiastically
signed the bill
on October 26.
Among its almost innumerable provisions, the act reduces judicial oversight
of telephone and
Internet surveillance and grants the FBI almost unlimited, and unchecked,
access to business
records without requiring it to show even minimal evidence of a crime.
The FBI doesn't even need
to give the individual time to call an attorney. Failure to comply immediately
could result in that
person's immediate detainment. The federal government can now require libraries
to divulge not
only who uses public computers but what books patrons check out, video
stores to reveal what
tapes or DVDs customers bought or rented, even grocery and drug stores
to disclose what
paperbacks shoppers bought.
The effect of the USA Patriot Act upon businesses that loan, rent, or sell
books, videos,
magazines, and music CDs is not to find and incarcerate terrorists -- there
are far more ways to
investigate threats to the nation than to check on a terrorist's reading
and listening habits -- but to
put a sweeping chilling effect upon Constitutional freedoms. The act butts
against the protections
of the First (free speech), Fourth (unreasonable searches), Fifth (right
against self-incrimination),
and Sixth (due process) amendments.
If the act is not modified, book publishers will take even fewer chances
on publishing works that,
like The Hunt for Red October, "might" result in government investigation;
bookstore owners
may not buy as many different titles; and people, fearing that whatever
they read might be subject
to Big Brother's scrutiny, may not buy controversial books or check books
out of the library.
Even worse, writers may not create the works that a free nation should
read. How ironic it is that a
president who said he wants everyone to read is the one who may be responsible
for giving the
people less choice in what they may read.
Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free
Expression, believes
"we've seen some shift" in the hard-core attitudes of the government's
position. He believes
public opinion will eventually shift "from the panic after September 11
to allow a reasonable
debate of the dangers" created by the USA Patriot Act. The act has a built-in
sunset provision --
several sections will expire, unless Congress renews them, on December
31, 2005.
Judith Krug of the American Library Association isn't as optimistic as
Finan. "It's going to be
used as long as they think they can get away with it," said Krug, one of
the nation's leading
experts in First Amendment rights and civil liberties. Krug said until
the people "start challenging
the act in the federal courts, we'll be lucky if we can 'sunset' out any
of it."
In the meantime, Arline Johnson said she doesn't keep computer records,
accept credit cards, or
even have a store newsletter, all of which can compromise the Constitutional
protections of her
customers. "I once visited Bulgaria after teaching in Egypt," says Johnson,
"and was taking
tourist pictures in Sofia when I was stopped, accused of being a spy, and
ordered to sign papers."
She says she refused to sign "anything in a language I didn't understand."
For the rest of her trip,
she says she was closely followed by Bulgarian state police. "I don't like
totalitarian regimes,"
says a defiant Johnson. "It makes no difference if it's a Balkan dictatorship
or one created out of
fear in a democracy. The Bush administration has put far more fear into
the American people than
any terrorist could."
As Benjamin Franklin once argued, a nation that gives up freedom to gain
security deserves
neither.
Walter Brasch, a former newspaper reporter and editor, is professor of
journalism at Bloomsburg
University. His most recent book is The Joy of Sax: America During the
Bill Clinton Era.