Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to be saying this, but the vigilante librarians have gone too far.

Since that fateful day Oct. 26, 2001 when President Bush first signed the USA Patriot Act into law, the American Library Association has made its position known with little ambiguity. Claiming a clear and present danger to the constitutional rights of library patrons, the organization has opposed the law at every turn via a bevy of resolutions released by their Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Well, fair enough. After all, summoning the power of institutional voice against government legislation remains an entitlement of all groups functioning in a democratic republic. Obstructing justice, however, can prove a perilous course, particularly in times with so much at stake. Unfortunately, the ALA and affiliated groups stand poised to walk that path.

In the beginning, librarians aired their grievances through proper channels, begrudgingly following the terms set forth by the controversial legislation. After a while, however, they began to fold under the incessant badgering of radical pundits deriding the librarians for taking too little action. By early 2003, library employees started resisting certain provisions of the Patriot Act, jamming the cogs of justice with their misguided actions.

Yet, this state of affairs is not the creation of the librarians themselves. Lobbyists and activists — with an arsenal of euphemisms at their disposal — managed to construct the illusion of vigilante librarians serving the greater social good. But if one strips down the romantic illusions of social justice, the true nature of the vigilante librarian reveals itself.

Euphemistic billing: Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act is an unconstitutional piece of legislation that also strongly contradicts preexisting state privacy laws, which, if unchecked at the community level, will allow investigations to run rampant.

Stripped down: It’s next to impossible to know exactly how extensively federal investigators have summoned Section 215 due to a provision prohibiting the disclosure of investigative actions. Reactionaries say never, radicals say occasionally — either way, after well over three years, reports remain sporadic and universally unsubstantiated.

As it stands, ardent opponents can do little but wax theoretical. Since the advent of the law, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold has stated on numerous occasions the law makes citizens afraid to use the library. Yet this claim couldn’t possibly rely more heavily on anecdotal evidence — no data yet exists to support the theory that library usage is down as a result of public paranoia.

Recently, the ALA announced plans to sponsor a study conducted by Florida State University looking to gauge these effects. If the increasingly subdued buzz is any indication, the organization leaders might have enough egg on their faces afterward to open a House of Pancakes.

In terms of contradicting existing laws — not the least of which is the U.S. Constitution — the infamous Section 215 proves rather innocuous. There’s a reason why it’s front page news when an activist judge denounces a provision of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional — it doesn’t happen often. For the most reviled provision of all, the upheld challenges are all but nonexistent.

Euphemistic billing: For a librarian recently served with a warrant, automatic compliance is absolutely unnecessary. In fact librarians, as denizens of free information, owe it to the public to serve their privacy interests to the best of their ability. While the law prohibits the withholding of information, there are ways to protect the public that aren’t technically illegal.

Stripped down: Where I come from, we call this obstruction of justice. To begin with, it’s a common misconception that the Patriot Act actually monitors the activity of library patrons. In reality, any investigator seeking information on a specific person needs a standing bench warrant to access library records, which already exist. In theory, a librarian could simply destroy these records on a regular basis to prevent future requests.

Sound like a good idea? Apparently some people think so. Unfortunately, it’s an inconvenience to the records and a dangerous practice for librarians, since it becomes illegal to destroy records the instant a warrant is issued for them.

Additionally, the ALA has urged librarians to consult legal council if presented with a warrant. Naturally, there’s a catch. They can’t actually inform the organization’s pool of sharks of the warrant until one of them appears to speak on their legal behalf. Furthermore, if these efforts were actually yielding results, then court documentation would exist when, if ever, these warrants are found as unconstitutional.

Since tangible evidence remains scarce on the matter, we can take a step closer to at least one conclusion in this sordid affair: These alleged abuses have proved — for the most part, at least — nothing more than vulgar fictions propagated by opportunist lawyers of the ACLU stripe.

Euphemistic billing: Librarians constitute the first and only line of defense from a civil liberties breakdown of Orwellian magnitude.

Stripped down: Liberal pundits and committed Patriot Act opponents just love to spew forth the sacred “1984” analogy. And why not? It’s potent, universal, thought-provoking (even if merely pseudo-intellectual) and, most importantly, frightening — the ultimate tool of the water-cooler demagogue.

Yet, there’s nothing groundbreaking about the Patriot Act. Although the legal standard for warrants issued under Section 215 are relatively low compared to the more traditional search and seizure warrants, the information acquired is of considerably lesser consequence.

While an FBI agent, speaking theoretically, could use library records to focus in on specific activities, no court of law would ever convict a man of a capital crime based on something so inconclusive. It sounds foolishly obvious, but as we so often forget, that is the point of the Fifth Amendment — not to protect our modern understanding of personal privacy.

By no means will I assert the Patriot Act is perfect — certainly a few provisions could conceivably prove troublesome. Regardless, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about pursuing a change, and stifling federal investigations for trivial reasons definitely constitutes the latter. Keep in mind, by the end of the year, certain provisions of the Patriot Act will enter the sunset phase and could pass into history.

Whatever happens, it shouldn’t happen in the local stacks, but in the halls of Congress. There are many fine books at your local library open to creative interpretation, but the letter of the law certainly isn’t.

Patrick Klemz ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism.