• Congressman Sanders is the sponsor of H.R. 1157, the Freedom to Read Protection Act which is cosponsored by 129 bipartisan cosponsors and would reinstate legal standards for investigations of libraries and bookstores which were in place before the passage of section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.  The bill has the support of 20 newspapers editorial boards and over 40 library, book, publishing industry, and civil liberty groups.  Three State Legislatures, 44 State Library Associations and 137 Cities and Towns (representing 16 million people) have passed resolutions expressing their concerns with certain provisions of the Patriot Act including Section 215.

• Congressman Sanders, along with Congressman C.L. “Butch” Otter R-ID and Congressman John Conyers Jr. D-MI, is offering a version of his bill, H.R. 1157, as an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary Appropriations bill of 2004 which prohibit any funds in the bill from being used to do a Section 215 search of a library or bookstore.  This amendment would restore and protect the privacy and First Amendment rights of library and bookstore patrons which were in place before the USA Patriot Act.  Passage of this amendment would still allow the FBI to use all other legal authorities at their disposal, including search warrants and criminal subpoenas, to get library and bookstore records.

• Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which was signed into law on October 26, 2001, severely expands the scope of materials which the FBI can access with a warrant from the government’s secret “FISA” court.  Previously the FBI could only obtain records from a limited group of businesses.  Now, after showing minimal justification, the FBI has the power to search for any “tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)” in any location.  This broad language has swept-up bookstores and libraries, which traditionally enjoy special First Amendment protections, into this area of government surveillance.

• Under the Patriot Act the FBI could go after materials such as library circulation records, Internet use records, book purchasing records, floppy disks, data tapes, and computers with hard drives.  In addition, this section of the bill prevents a librarian or bookseller, under penalty of law, from informing patrons that the library is under investigation or that a patron’s records have been searched.  Librarians and booksellers across the country fear that this is causing a “chilling effect” and making users self-censor their reading choices.

• The Sanders-Otter-Conyers amendment would return protections and warrant procedures which were in place for libraries and bookstores before the passage of the USA Patriot Act.  Librarians and booksellers want to protect Americans from terrorist attacks but at the same time they must protect the right of every citizen to read, learn, and purchase books without undue government interference.  This amendment would allow the FBI to follow procedures already in current law to get warrants to retrieve records for terrorist related or criminal investigations.

Read the text of the Freedom to Read Protection Act.