{"id":667,"date":"2026-07-21T05:07:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=667"},"modified":"2026-07-21T05:07:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:07:50","slug":"librarians-versus-the-nsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=667","title":{"rendered":"Librarians Versus the NSA"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Feature<\/li>\n<li>May 6, 2015<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>Librarians Versus the NSA<\/h1>\n<h1>Librarians Versus the NSA<\/h1>\n<h2>Your local library is on the front lines against government surveillance.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>May 6, 2015<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Alison Macrina had bad news for the 30 or so librarians in the darkened auditorium on a recent Friday. \u201cYour password is bad,\u201d she informed them. \u201cI\u2019m really sorry. Everything you\u2019ve learned about passwords is wrong. It\u2019s not your fault.\u201d\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Macrina was nearly an hour into a presentation on digital privacy. She and her colleagues had covered encrypted browsers, tracking, mobile security, surveillance laws, and what to do if federal agents show up with a letter from the government demanding library records. Many of the librarians were bent over their notebooks, scribbling frantically as Macrina whipped through her slides.<\/p>\n<p>Macrina, 30, is not your grandmother\u2019s librarian. She has a kaleidoscopic illustration from a Mother Goose book tattooed on her arm, occasionally poses for selfies in red lipstick, and wears a small piece of hardware called a security token around her neck like a pendant. Macrina has worked as a public librarian for nearly a decade, but she\u2019s not shelving books; she\u2019s fighting Big Brother.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike a lot of other librarians, I started thinking about privacy a lot more acutely, I think, right after Snowden,\u201d she told me. \u201cI didn\u2019t know just how much privacy was being violated, and what we weren\u2019t doing to address it.\u201d The American Library Association has counted privacy among its \u201ccore values\u201d since 1939, but Macrina thinks that now, in the age of dragnet data collection by intelligence agencies and corporations, librarians aren\u2019t taking enough concrete steps to protect their patrons, in many cases because they don\u2019t have the technical skills.<\/p>\n<p>Under the Patriot Act, the government can demand library records via a secret court order and without probable cause that the information is related to a suspected terrorist plot. It can also block the librarian from revealing that request to anyone. Nor does the term \u201crecords\u201d cover only the books you check out; it also includes search histories and hard drives from library computers. The Muslim-American who uses a library computer to correspond with family abroad, or the activist planning a demonstration against police brutality\u2014those digital trails are vulnerable to surveillance, along with everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The government\u2019s power to vacuum up our personal details seems unstoppable, but a lot of it depends on how much we give away. Macrina wants librarians and library users to be less complicit. She installed privacy-protection tools on computers at the library where she worked in Watertown, Massachusetts, and started teaching classes on digital privacy to patrons. Soon, she was leading workshops throughout New England, working with the American Civil Liberties Union to explain how the government collects data and about the various tools that librarians can use to protect their patrons. They started calling their partnership the Library Freedom Project, and in January they won a Knight Foundation grant to scale up the program.<\/p>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Popular<\/h2>\n<p><span><span>&#8220;swipe left below to view more authors&#8221;<\/span>Swipe \u2192<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Trump\u2019s Reverse Midas Touch Even Got the World Cup<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Trump\u2019s Reverse Midas Touch Even Got the World Cup<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nDave Zirin<span> and <\/span>Jules Boykoff <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>How Japan\u2019s Media Ecosystem Is Fighting Climate Change<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                How Japan\u2019s Media Ecosystem Is Fighting Climate Change<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nMark Hertsgaard <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Why Trump Was Found Liable for Sexual Assault but Not Rape<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Why Trump Was Found Liable for Sexual Assault but Not Rape<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nAlexis Grenell <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>New York City Makes It Easy to Cancel Subscriptions<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                New York City Makes It Easy to Cancel Subscriptions<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nPrajwal Bhat <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>Macrina\u2019s project is not just about bringing libraries up to speed. It\u2019s also about leveraging their unique position as community institutions to invigorate a pallid public dialogue about the surveillance state and civil liberties. Key sections of the Patriot Act are due to expire on June 1, but there has been little public scrutiny so far of the congressional debate about extending or reforming those provisions.<\/p>\n<p>Librarians have frequently been involved in the fight against government surveillance. The first librarian to be locked up for defending privacy and intellectual freedom was Zoia Horn, who spent three week in jail in 1972 for refusing to testify against anti\u2013Vietnam War activists. During the Cold War, librarians exposed the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s attempts to recruit library staffers to spy on foreigners, particularly Soviets, through a national effort called the Library Awareness Program.<\/p>\n<p>The post-Snowden Internet age is no different. In January, the District of Columbia Public Library presented a 10-day series called \u201cOrwellian America,\u201d which included an all-day reading of <em>1984<\/em>, a cyber-security workshop, and a panel discussion during which NSA whistleblower Kirk Wiebe informed the audience that \u201cThere\u2019s an assault on the United States Constitution, and it\u2019s real.\u201d The Brooklyn Public Library has hosted several \u201ccryptoparties\u201d to teach people how to use privacy software. The San Jose Public Library is launching a pilot program to teach privacy literacy to patrons of all ages. \u201cThere\u2019s a budding movement of librarians as privacy warriors,\u201d Macrina said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing each other pick this up and getting more confidence in what we know and what we can bring to the privacy conversation: Namely, our background and relationship with local communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>On June 5, 2013, <em>the Guardian<\/em> published the first in a series of stunning reports based on the Snowden documents: The National Security Agency was collecting the records of phone calls made by millions of Verizon customers on an \u201congoing, daily basis,\u201d according to a previously unknown order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Collecting and storing the \u201cmetadata\u201d from these calls allows the NSA \u201cto build\u2026a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively,\u201d Glenn Greenwald reported. The program itself was cause for alarm, but the bigger, more shocking story was how the government justified the bulk collection of this personal data: with a part of the Patriot Act known as Section 215.<\/p>\n<p>Long before Section 215 was associated with the Snowden disclosures, it was known as the \u201clibrary records\u201d provision. In the weeks after 9\/11, the FBI announced that some of the hijackers had used public libraries in Florida to plan and coordinate with one another. Although the bureau was able to collect the records of their visits by way of traditional subpoenas, there was a good bit of handwringing from the right about libraries becoming \u201csafe havens\u201d for terrorists, as a Justice Department spokesperson put it. \u201cWe put Americans\u2019 lives at risk if we foolishly provide sanctuaries\u2014even in our public libraries\u2014for terrorists to operate,\u201d argued Wisconsin Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., now a critic of the government\u2019s broad interpretation of the Patriot Act, during the debate about reauthorizing the law in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>Congress rushed to give law enforcement greater spying power in the stacks. Section 215 allows the FBI to request \u201cany tangible thing\u201d relevant to a terrorism investigation, without having to show probable cause that the \u201cthing\u201d is actually connected to a terrorism suspect. The provision applied to library circulation records, patron lists, Internet records, and hard drives, and it prohibited any library worker who received such a request from discussing it with anyone.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, reports that librarians were receiving requests from law enforcement began trickling out within months of the law\u2019s passage. In a survey conducted not long after by the University of Illinois, 85 libraries said that they had been asked by law enforcement about patron information related to September 11. \u201cThe FBI is poised to intrude once more on library confidentiality, this time with an arsenal of surveillance that even our library confidentiality laws may not be able to prevent,\u201d a retired librarian named Herbert Foerstel, who\u2019d helped to raise the alarm about the bureau\u2019s Library Awareness Program in the 1980s, warned in a <em>Baltimore Sun<\/em> op-ed in the spring of 2002.<\/p>\n<p>By 2003, librarians around the country had launched a revolt. Librarians in Paulding County, Ohio, among other places, posted signs warning computer users that \u201cdue to national security concerns,\u201d their \u201cInternet surfing habits, passwords and e-mail content\u201d might be monitored by law enforcement. Others distributed informational handouts or organized community hearings about the government\u2019s new surveillance powers. Libraries began to destroy computer-use wait-lists, hard- drive caches, and other records. \u201cIt used to be a librarian would be pictured with a book,\u201d a Santa Cruz librarian named Barbara Gail Snider remarked in <em>The New York Times<\/em>. \u201cNow it is a librarian with a shredder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><p>Audrey Evans, who was a college student in Arkansas at the time, had what she calls a \u201ccrystallizing moment\u201d when she heard about a library warning sign that read, \u201cThe FBI has not been here,\u201d and then, in smaller type below: \u201cWatch very closely for the removal of this sign.\u201d The subversive message intrigued her. \u201cIt was an effort of resistance, and of getting around something, and simultaneously making the public aware of what was going on,\u201d she told me recently. The conversation librarians were having about civil liberties \u201crevealed the values of the public library as an institution, and became a grounding spot for me as a political-consciousness moment. I started thinking that maybe I would want to be a librarian one day.\u201d She got an internship at the Clinton Presidential Library and, after college, went on to study law librarianship. Several other people that I spoke with for this story, including Alison Macrina, told me similar stories about how the activism of librarians after 9\/11 shaped their political perspective.<\/p>\n<p>The rebellion eventually attracted enough attention that in a September 2003 speech, Attorney General John Ashcroft attacked the librarians directly, accusing them of \u201cbaseless hysteria.\u201d Records had not been sought from libraries under Section 215, Ashcroft insisted, and the FBI had no interest in \u201cchecking how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.\u201d Ashcroft used the word \u201chysteria\u201d five other times throughout the speech, and then again a few days later during a speech in Memphis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a field dominated by women, to use the word \u2018hysterical\u2019 is pejorative in the extreme,\u201d said George Christian, the executive director of a Connecticut consortium called Library Connection. \u201cThat got my goat,\u201d he added. Nevertheless, Christian and many of his colleagues \u201ctook [Ashcroft] at his word that librarians were not being targeted.\u201d Christian took a few precautions\u2014establishing a policy that any information requests from law enforcement would go directly to him, for example\u2014and then he \u201cwent on to other priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, a pair of FBI agents served him a national-security letter demanding that he surrender \u201call subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person\u201d who had used a particular computer at one of the libraries he managed. The letter included a gag order forbidding Christian from discussing its contents with \u201cany person.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Christian refused to comply and called his lawyer. For almost a year, he and three colleagues, represented by the ACLU and identified in court documents only as John Does, fought the request and gag order. The identities of the Connecticut Four, as the plaintiffs came to be known, were eventually revealed by <em>The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Barton Gellman, who wrote that their case \u201caffords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the Patriot Act,\u201d which \u201ctransformed [national-security letters] by permitting clandestine scrutiny of US residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.\u201d The FBI was issuing some 30,000 NSLs each year, Gellman reported, with no review from a prosecutor, jury, or judge.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Congress was in the process of renewing the Patriot Act. Lawmakers reauthorized the law in March 2006 without adding significant new civil-liberties protections, and just weeks later, the government dropped its appeal of the Connecticut Four case, allowing the plaintiffs to speak openly for the first time. Christian and his colleagues were dismayed by the timing. \u201cWe wanted to let the world of librarians and Congress know that in point of fact this instrument was being used, but we were never allowed to talk about it because of the gag order,\u201d said Christian. By the time the order was lifted, it was too late.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, earlier that same week the FISA court broadened its interpretation of Section 215 so that a telephone company\u2019s entire call-records database could be considered a \u201ctangible thing,\u201d subject to collection and storage by the NSA. Of course, it did so in secret. For years the government continued to dismiss questions about what Section 215 really authorized, until the Snowden leaks revealed, at least in part, the \u201csignificant gap between what most Americans <em>think<\/em> the law allows and what the government <em>secretly claims<\/em> the law allows,\u201d as Senator Ron Wyden and former Senator Mark Udall wrote in a 2012 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think none of us dreamed that the government would really be engaged in violating privacy on the scope that Snowden revealed,\u201d Christian said. But then he also never expected to get a visit from two FBI agents. Because of the gag orders, it is impossible to know how many other libraries have received similar requests. At the very least, the case of the Connecticut Four, like the Snowden leaks, validated those who refused to take the government\u2019s assertions regarding Section 215 at face value. Adam Eisgrau, the managing director for the ALA\u2019s Office of Government Relations, told me that as a result, we know now that librarians \u201cwere not hysterical, but absolutely prescient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>I met Eisgrau at the Washington office of the ALA. Books, with call numbers affixed to their spines, line one wall in the lobby. The 21st-century library is still about books, Eisgrau said, but increasingly less so. The digital shift has increased the privacy challenges, but it has also made libraries a crucial bridge over the technology divide in underserved communities. More than 250 libraries in the US now offer public access to 3-D printers, for example. In Chicago, where 40 percent of residents don\u2019t have access to the Internet at home, the main library has robots and a \u201cmaker lab\u201d with 3-D printers and laser cutters, which entrepreneurs use to create jewelry and prototypes for guitars, among other things. As Eisgrau pointed out, \u201cLibrarians have not only been <em>on<\/em> the cutting edge of every kind of information technology to evolve\u2014they <em>are<\/em> the cutting edge. That\u2019s their job. That was true when technology meant tape recorders and typewriters\u2026. Librarians today have as much to do with people who say \u2018sssh\u2019 and wear high-neck blouses as a fish does to a bicycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The ALA, for its part, is active in debates about Internet-policy issues ranging from net neutrality to censorship and surveillance. Seeking to amplify the voices of librarians in policy-making, the organization has asked its members to devote one hour a week to advocacy. After the Snowden disclosures, the ALA joined other civil-liberties groups, technology companies, and activists in an aggressive push for legal reforms, including of the Patriot Act. One of the things that Eisgrau hopes to achieve is more freedom for the recipients of NSLs to challenge them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to talk about surveillance until something happens like the Edward Snowden revelations,\u201d said Barbara Jones, director of the ALA\u2019s Office of Intellectual Freedom. \u201cA lot of people had not thought about these things, but librarians tend to be thoughtful people. People assume we\u2019re protecting their privacy, and we have to tell them that has now been compromised. And that\u2019s very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Amy Sonnie, a librarian and activist in Oakland, told me that there\u2019s a debate within the profession about whether librarianship is, or should be, politically neutral. \u201cI can and should be an advocate around issues that impact our ability to fulfill our mission, and privacy is one of those issues,\u201d she said. Sonnie and Macrina both see privacy as not just an issue of intellectual freedom, but also of social justice. \u201cWe serve members of communities who have been historically under greater surveillance than the rest of the population: immigrants, Muslim-Americans, people of color, political dissidents,\u201d Macrina explained.<\/p>\n<p>Many advocates hope that the impending sunset of Section 215 and other provisions of the Patriot Act will force the intelligence community\u2019s allies and the Obama administration to choose between significant reforms and losing the statutes completely. But the bill being debated as this goes to press does not fully end bulk data collection and is at best a band-aid, as it imposes limited transparency and oversight measures. Even letting Section 215 expire won\u2019t correct the balance of power, which has slipped from Congress to the intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<p>To Macrina, that just makes her work to protect privacy even more urgent. \u201cPeople feel despair about the ability of legislation to make real change,\u201d she said, \u201cbut something about using technology is empowering. And once you empower them a little, they\u2019re more likely to go lobby for change at the legislative level.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=661\">Great War: The Climate of June 1914<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=663\">Emily LaBarge\u2019s Life Stories<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=665\">Trump\u2019s Reverse Midas Touch Even Got the World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Prajwal Bhat<\/span>Prajwal Bhat is a New York City\u2013based journalist.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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