FBI to monitor libraries

[Robyn Barker]

Exactly!

It's profiling that lead to the detention of Japanese Americans, many of
them citizens, during World War II absent any evidence of their
complicity in any conspiracy or acts of sabotage.  Detention was not
seen as necessary for German Americans despite their natural camouflage
which would presumably shield suspicious activities.  Profiling
individuals of apparent Middle Eastern descent is racist and ignorant --
and ultimately will be ineffective in preventing terrorism.  Gotten any
anthrax letters lately?

Furthermore, when did librarians get to be experts at detecting
terrorist activities?  As was pointed out earlier, our expertise is at
providing information -- and our ethical obligation is to do so equally,
to everybody.  It's not our place to decide what information should be
protected and classified -- they have experts for that.  In fact, it's
our duty to resist making information inaccessible -- an open and free
society requires people to act on all sides of the argument.  If the
librarians don't stand up for libraries, who will?

Robyn Barker
Systems Librarian
California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission St.
San Francisco, CA  94103


-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew I. Mutch [mailto:amutch at waterford.lib.mi.us] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 10:09 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: FBI to monitor libraries

Mark,

Do you also profile young white men who express interest in government
buildings and who seem to be sympathetic to anti-government
organizations?
If we are going to keep tabs on patrons of Middle Eastern descent,
ignoring for the moment that many of them are not even Muslims and some
have been in the country for several generations, we should also be
watching out for the next Timothy McVeigh, right?  

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI