Session 5
10.00 – 10.45 Plenary Session 5
"The Patriot Act to the Terrorism Act : A Look at US and UK Reactions in the Librarian Community to Terrorism Legislation"
Vanessa Gamet – King’s College London
Vanessa Gamet is the Information Specialist in Law at King’s College London. She previously worked at BPP Law School as the Collection Development Librarian and has recently completed the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL). She is a member of BIALL’s Web Board Committee and is currently working on the website’s archival policy. She is interested in information policy and law.
Outline:
Both the USA Patriot Act (and the ‘Patriot Act II’) and the UK Terrorism Acts will be examined. Vanessa will look at the fight to repeal the Patriot Act's sections that make it easier for federal agents to search library records and monitor library computer use, by the American Library Association as well as movements at the grassroots level. Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows government agencies armed with subpoenas - much more easily obtained than a court order - to demand that libraries turn over “any tangible things, including books, records, papers documents and other items to protect against international terrorism.” Ultimately this has resulted in a two-prong approach from the library community: one, to lobby the government to change the law; and two, to limit the kinds of information libraries keep in order to maintain the privacy of patrons and their records.
This will be juxtaposed with the UK library community’s response to the Government’s terrorism acts passed after ‘7/7’, especially the Terrorism Act 2006. Due to extensive lobbying from UUK, SCONUL, AUT and CILIP, this led to changes in the drafting of the Bill. However, its contents are still worth careful attention from an information professional’s point of view, especially those in higher education.
The implications of the law are serious; Section 2 of the Act makes it an offence to disseminate terrorist publications (dissemination includes circulating, transmitting electronically, even mere possession if it’s with a view to disseminate). While the threshold for mens rea (the mental element) is quite high due to lobbying of the information professional community, theoretically, a library could be guilty of disseminating terrorist publications.
Vanessa will explore what this means for information professionals as well as how (or if) it is possible to balance values of open access to information without government interference against the government’s need to search for terrorists.
