I Was Gagged By The Patriot Act While The AG Was Free To Tell Falsehoods About It

[babylonsister]

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-commentarypatriot0722.artjul22,0,730398.story

Patriot Abuse

I Was Gagged By The Patriot Act While The Attorney General Was Free To Tell Falsehoods About It.

By JANET NOCEK
July 22, 2007


When the USA Patriot Act was being reauthorized in 2005, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales claimed that not one single abuse of the "national security letters" provision had been reported.

It must be his poor memory that caused Mr. Gonzales to tell Congress that no abuse had been reported. What else would explain why he did not mention the reports that described abuses and mismanagement of NSLs - which we now discover were in his possession before his testimony?

I was one of four library colleagues who challenged an NSL in the courts around the time of its reauthorization. We were under a gag order because of the nondisclosure provision of the NSL section of the Patriot Act. This happened even though a judge with high-level security clearance had declared that there was no risk in identifying us as recipients of an NSL.

We were therefore not allowed to testify to Congress about our experience with the letters - which seek information, without court review, on people like library users.

It is more than irksome to now discover that the attorney general was giving Congress false information - at the same time that we recipients of NSLs were not allowed to express our concerns. My colleagues and I were lucky to have our gag order lifted eventually, with the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, after the federal District Court found constitutional problems with that section of the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

A gag order is very difficult to deal with. A person cannot tell her family or friends she has received a demand from the government to turn in information on another person. Whether you agree with the security-letter provision or not, receiving such a letter is an emotionally wrenching experience.

And if the government requires you to compromise your professional and personal ethics, it can be an intensely disturbing experience. You feel like a character in an Orwellian book. You feel trapped in a world that others like you may inhabit, but you cannot reach outside of that world to find out.

more...

[annabanana]

1. k&r. . . . .(speachless)

[rodeodance]

2. the ACLU helped them get the gag order lifted.---after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

It is more than irksome to now discover that the attorney general was giving Congress false information - at the same time that we recipients of NSLs were not allowed to express our concerns. My colleagues and I were lucky to have our gag order lifted eventually, with the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, after the federal District Court found constitutional problems with that section of the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

[Canuckistanian]

6. That's the most disturbing part to me

That a court would hold it's judgment until a piece of legislation passed.

That is wrong on so many levels.

It suggests that the court is being unduly influenced by the government. That judge KNEW that if the gag order was revealed, it might cause the failure of the PATRIOT act's passage in Congress.

It's denying EXISTING Constitutional rights until a law could be changed.

This is what third world dictatorships do all the time.

[rfranklin]

3. Straight out of the playbook of totalitarian regimes throughout...

history. We are not dealing with people who believe in the Constitution. Their loyalty is to each other and their ideology. Therefore, they are not Americans as most of us recognize the term. They are traitors.

[blondeatlast]

4. The day they closed the branch library: my own indirect, but disturbing experience.

My supervisor was scheduled to be at one of the branches that day (our office is located in the main building), hardly unusual. Early afternoon, her neighbor called needing to get hold of her for a minor emergency. I told the neighbor I would reach her and have her call back ASAP. Long story shortened: no answer at any of the branch library's phones, no answer on the cell. No call waiting, no message--nothing.

I can't fully explain how unusual that would be. No alarms yet, it was just puzzling.

Long about three hours into this the library administration walks throughout the various public service desks and offices to let us know that if we are asked to allow access to our work areas that we were to direct the askers to our branch supervisor or to the library director, that no matter what happens, the library and city will back up if there are problems as long as we do what library admin is advising. "Please don't ask us, we cannot tell you what's happening." Does this concern "C" branch, I asked? "Yes, but that's all I can say."

It's a very weird feeling to be under a gag order, even when you hardly know anything about the reason for the gag. It's like taking tiny detours to another reality. You really end up in a different place when you confront it. I was in a position to know more than my colleagues, yet I still knew virtually nothing, yet I couldn't even talk about the nothing I did know.

The irony of being a librarian and being subject to a gag is difficult to deal with. I'm aware of the incident Ms. Nocek refers to and it's just appalling--information regarding the investigation should absolutely be public knowledge--but your life could be ruined if you follow your ethics.

I wonder how well Gonzo sleeps at night? Considering he apparently has no professional or personal ethics, I suppose very well. :mad:

K&R

[babylonsister]

5. Thanks for sharing, blondeatlast. I hope the judiciary committee

sees this story and others like it.

[Blackhatjack]

7. And how far is it from the Govt demanding children 'turn in their parents?"

Honestly, when the government tells a citizen they must reveal information on another citizen and they may not disclose the government order with any other individual, how much more powerful does the government have to be before we classify it as 'authoritarian?"

[MattSh]

8. What's a "falsehood"?

Is that anything like a lie???

[glitch]

9. This is no longer Orwell. It's Kafka, people. nt

[Senator]

10. K&R

[DemReadingDU]

11. morning kick

[Judi Lynn]

12. C-Span has featured a couple of male librarians who discussed some of these same points.

They seemed as deeply affected and angry and stunned by the enormity of what they had been through as the author of your article. They almost seemed still to not be able to completely believe it, in some ways.

One of them said that at some point he had to fly to Washington for meetings concerning what was happening, but he was not allowed to tell his grown daughter, with whom he was living, what he was doing, or even where he was going.

People who ignore what has been happening are people I don't want to know. I believe they are seriously mentally unwell, as well as stupid.

Thanks for your article.