Patriot Act at NYC PL? Ashcroft Cites Intercepted Al Qaeda Plot

-- Library Journal, 1/26/2005

In a farewell interview with Newsweek, departing Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the use of the USA PATRIOT Act at a public library in New York City to gain intelligence on Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen who acknowledged participating in a plot to blow up London pubs and train stations. Babar pleaded guilty last year to providing "material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization," including equipment and money to Al Qaeda officials in Pakistan. It was unclear which of the three city library systems Babar used, and inquiries were met with a reminder that the Patriot Act includes a gag order.

Last September 22, Deputy Attorney General James Comey described the case before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We recently had an Al Qaeda associate that we were tracking in New York, very concerned about, who had a computer at home that we were monitoring, and he kept going to a library to use the computer... To make a long story short, we found out after we locked this guy up that he was going there because that library's hard drives were scrubbed after each user was done, and he was using that library to e- mail other Al Qaeda associates around the world. He knew that that was a sanctuary." Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows searches of business records, including library records, without requiring probable cause that a crime has been committed. Critics say that law enforcement agencies can use existing tools--including search warrants--to investigate.

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