Patriot Act Once Again Renewed

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will retain its present level of access to patron records at libraries—including Harvard’s—until March 10, after Congress voted to temporarily renew the U.S.A. Patriot Act Thursday.

This second short-term renewal signals lawmakers’ reluctance to reauthorize the legislation over the long-term without changing the extent of the government’s access to library records.

Harvard officials have argued that the FBI’s ability to demand patron information could have a chilling effect on academic freedom.

“There is really a very serious principle here having to do with people’s rights to read whatever they want to read without anyone else knowing what they’re reading,” Director of the Harvard University Library Sidney Verba ’53 said in an interview with The Crimson in December.

President Bush, who asked Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act in his State of the Union address Tuesday, has repeatedly asserted that the act gives law enforcement officers crucial tools they need to protect Americans.

Passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act was originally set to expire Dec. 31 of last year, and Congress prepared to revise and renew the legislation in early December. But a bipartisan group of senators has continued to block long-term reauthorization until their civil liberties concerns have been addressed. Rather than allow the act to lapse entirely, Congress has opted to temporarily extend the current law first until February, and now until March.

“The need for extensions provides something for both sides to find encouraging,” Harvard’s Senior Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

According to Casey, critics of the act hope the extensions signal that their concerns about privacy are being addressed. On the other hand, he wrote, supporters of the act are pleased that law enforcement officials can still operate under the provisions of the original act.

Several Harvard students interviewed in Lamont Library last night said they thought the extent of the FBI’s access to library information was troublesome.

“I think it’s an invasion of people’s privacy,” Endria Richardson ’08 said.

Under current law, the FBI can demand that libraries release a patron’s borrowing record, as well as library internet and e-mail records, if the information is relevant to an ongoing terrorism or intelligence investigation.

Senators who have attacked these measures want to specify a more stringent standard under which the FBI can demand these records, as well as address what they see as the lack of meaningful judicial review of the provisions.

But some students said they were most preoccupied with the broader trend of increasing government access to personal information.

“People who are concerned about the Patriot Act aren’t as concerned about the implications now as they are for what it might mean about the direction America is taking,” Eric D. Lang ’09 said.

—Staff writer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.