No subject

[Seebach, Linda]

        We have a local independent bookstore that is fighting a subpoena
asking for customer records (law enforcement wants to find out who ordered
two books on running a clandestine meth lab).

        Recently, there has been added to the mix comment about the Patriot
Act, saying booksellers can no longer refuse such requests (if they're
related to allegations of terrorist activity, I assume but don't know), and
moreover are prohibited from telling anyone they were asked to provide the
information.

        Has our reporter correctly characterized the new law? If so, does
the ban on revealing the request have First Amendment implications?

        --linda seebach (researching editorial possibilities)




        (relevant paragraphs)
> Less than two months later, Congress passed new anti-terrorist
> legislation. It gives police more power to
> see booksellers' records, and it prohibits the sellers from telling anyone
> about the search request.
>
> Finan says he doesn't believe the law bans booksellers from calling
> lawyers. But he said they can't
> necessarily get their cause before a judge, because the legislation puts
> such issues before special "spy
> courts," not open to the public -- and not open even to the owners.
>
(complete story)
> Bookstore's privacy fight revs up
>
> Tattered Cover owner, booksellers nationwide, support their readers' 1st
> Amendment rights
>
> By Karen Abbott, News Staff Writer
> April 1, 2002
>
> It began with Monica Lewinsky. Booksellers hope it will end with Denver's
> Tattered Cover and owner
> Joyce Meskis.
>
> But since Sept. 11, they've grown even more worried about government
> attempts to find out who reads
> what.
>
> Bookstores nationwide, large and small, have chipped in about $30,000 to
> help pay Meskis' legal fees as
> she defends reader privacy in a battle now before the Colorado Supreme
> Court. Meskis doesn't know
> what she has spent on the fight.
>
> She is resisting Thornton police efforts to see the store's records of
> what was inside a large Tattered
> Cover envelope found in the trash at an illegal methamphetamine lab in a
> trailer in Thornton.
>
> "The police certainly have an important and difficult job to do, and we
> support them," Meskis said. "But
> part of their job also is protecting our constitutional guarantees."
>
> Meskis, a soft-spoken 60-year-old, has owned the Tattered Cover since
> 1974. The store is recognized as
> among the nation's best, and Meskis has been honored for her previous
> fights in defense of the First
> Amendment.
>
> In 1981 she filed a lawsuit that eventually struck down a state law
> barring some books with sexual
> content from display in stores open to children. She founded Colorado
> Citizens Against Censorship in
> 1994 to lead a successful campaign against a proposed state constitutional
> amendment that would have
> made it easier for communities to label materials obscene.
>
> She believes fiercely that readers are entitled to be exposed to ideas of
> all sorts, whether or not anyone
> else -- or even the readers themselves -- agree with those ideas.
>
> "We don't think that meth labs are a good idea at all," Meskis said. 'We
> do want the authorities to do
> their best to eradicate them.
>
> "On the other side of it, though, is to be protective of the importance of
> the freedom to read."
>
> It's the first such case in the nation to reach a court that can set
> precedent for other cases, according to
> Meskis' lawyer, Dan Recht. A ruling is expected by June.
>
> "No matter what decision they make, it will have national importance,"
> Recht said.
>
> "If there is a bad decision for us, I fear it will have a chilling effect
> on book buyers," Recht said. "People
> will be afraid to buy and read controversial books, out of fear that the
> government might get access to
> what books they read."
>
> In spring 1998, special prosecutor Ken Starr subpoenaed Lewinsky's
> bookstore purchase records while
> investigating her relationship with President Clinton. Booksellers
> nationwide were alarmed.
>
> "Frankly, it was a surprise to us," said Chris Finan, president of the
> American Booksellers Foundation for
> Free Expression. Meskis was a founder of the organization.
>
> "We didn't pay enough attention to the fact that our computer inventory
> systems were capturing
> information that could compromise our customers' privacy," he said.
>
> Police are accustomed to seeking purchase records from other kinds of
> businesses -- hardware stores, for
> instance, when they wanted to know who bought an ax used in a murder, or
> the Kansas farm store
> where Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols got the fertilizer they used in
> the bomb that blew up Oklahoma
> City's federal building.
>
> But booksellers insist they aren't like hardware stores.
>
> They deal in thoughts, opinions, ideas, information -- all protected by
> the First Amendment, and they
> insist that means the police must have extraordinary reasons to look at
> customer records.
>
> "There is a higher standard when it's not a hardware store," Meskis said.
>
> J. Andrew Nathan, a lawyer representing the city of Thornton, said one
> judge already has ruled that the
> police do have an extraordinary reason to see the Tattered Cover records:
> to identify who among several
> people in the trailer ran the meth lab.
>
> "The crime hasn't been solved and it's still under investigation," Nathan
> said. "We haven't identified the
> primary suspect."
>
> In the Lewinsky case, a federal judge issued a preliminary ruling that
> Starr couldn't have her bookstore
> records without proving he had an extraordinary reason to see them. Then
> Lewinsky and the government
> made a deal, and her book purchases no longer mattered.
>
> But booksellers were on alert. The American Booksellers Foundation for
> Free Expression produced a
> brochure telling bookstores what to do if the police subpoena their
> records: Call a lawyer and get the
> issue before a judge.
>
> Two years later, the police came to the Tattered Cover with a search
> warrant. They had found a large
> Tattered Cover envelope, with an invoice number on its label, in the trash
> at a trailer housing an illegal
> meth lab.
>
> In a bedroom of the trailer, the police also found two books about making
> illegal drugs. They don't know if
> those books were in the Tattered Cover envelope. They want to find out.
>
> Meskis knows, but she isn't telling.
>
> "It could be books about how to create landscaped gardens," said Recht.
>
> Meskis called a lawyer and got the issue before a judge.
>
> Popular children's author Lemony Snicket spearheaded a fund raiser for
> Meskis' fight at a San Francisco
> bookstore that raised $10,000. TV and press coverage of the battle spread
> the word.
>
> And across the country, more police began asking to see booksellers'
> records.
>
> Recht said he has represented another Colorado bookstore in a similar
> case, resolved out of court when
> the authorities dropped their records request.
>
> "It kind of leapt like a fire from one policeman to another," Finan, of
> the booksellers' foundation, said.
> "They have been trying ever since.
>
> "We've seen a number of fishing expeditions in which the police simply
> went in and tried to find out
> everything they could about what a particular person was reading."
>
> Among the incidents:
>
>        In the summer of 2000, investigators in Kansas City asked Borders
> Books and Music for customers'
>        records in a drug case. A judge quashed the subpoena.
>
>        Early in 2001, Cleveland police trying to track down who was
> mailing sexually explicit audio CDs
>        and other items deemed sexually harassing, asked Amazon.com for its
> records of all purchasers in
>        northeastern Ohio.
>
> They wanted a list of people to investigate, "without realizing that, in
> the process, they'd be invading the
> records of thousands and thousands of people," Finan said. Judges in two
> states approved search
> warrants, but the online bookstore persuaded the government to back off,
> he said.
>
>        In August of 2001, three independent bookstores in Florida,
> California and Washington, D.C., were
>        subpoenaed by investigators looking into alleged campaign finance
> violations by New Jersey Sen.
>        Robert Torricelli. The investigators wanted all the records
> relating to Torricelli and some of his
>        associates over a long period. When the bookstores said they would
> fight in court, the
>        investigators dropped the request, Finan said.
>
> But then came Sept. 11.
>
> Less than two months later, Congress passed new anti-terrorist
> legislation. It gives police more power to
> see booksellers' records, and it prohibits the sellers from telling anyone
> about the search request.
>
> Finan says he doesn't believe the law bans booksellers from calling
> lawyers. But he said they can't
> necessarily get their cause before a judge, because the legislation puts
> such issues before special "spy
> courts," not open to the public -- and not open even to the owners.
>
> "And of course it's all justified as necessary to protect us from
> terrorists," Finan said.
>
> Now, he said, booksellers are working to remind the public of how
> important their freedoms are.
>
> "Even in times of great stress like these," he said. "Especially in times
> of great stress like these."
>
>
> Contact Karen Abbott at (303) 892-5188 or abbottk at RockyMountainNews.com.
>
>