One month earlier, a federal appeals court lifted the gag order that prevented the four, known collectively as John Doe up until that time, from revealing that they were the ones who filed a lawsuit, Doe v. Gonzales, through the American Civil Liberties Union that objected to the government’s request for records and challenged the constitutionality of the gag order.
The gag order prevented them from receiving the 2005 Robert Downs Intellectual Freedom Award presented by the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The award was accepted on their behalf in January by Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio.
The four John Does of the Library Connection— Executive Director George Christian, President Barbara Bailey, Vice-president Peter Chase, and Secretary Janet Nocek—got another chance June 26 at ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, where they received the award to a standing ovation by some 200 attendees.
Before the presentation, Chase explained that the FBI dropped the case “largely because of the avalanche of publicity, most of it complimentary to us. . . . The FBI saw the situation as grim,” he added, “because the next time we’d meet in court, they would not be able to shuffle us off to a locked room 16 miles away” as they had during the appeals court proceedings in August 2005. During a later hearing, the four had to agree not to enter the building together, not to speak or sit next to each other, and not to speak or even have eye contact with their ACLU attorneys.
Attorneys for the ACLU are currently negotiating with the federal appeals court about which evidence can be released to the public. However, Christian could reveal that the National Security Letter, dated May 19, 2005, directed the Library Connection to provide all “subscriber information, billing information, and access logs of any person or entity related to” a specific internet protocol address for a 45-minute period on February 15, 2005. He did not receive the NSL until July 8, when two FBI agents (who “played good cop, bad cop”) arrived in his office. Christian could not say, for privacy reasons, which of the 27 libraries in the consortium housed the computer in question.
The government has revealed that its interest was in a threatening e-mail message. FBI Assistant Director John Miller told the Times that “Somebody got on a library’s computer and sent a message to a government agency, saying ‘I’m telling you about this terrorist threat.’” However, the agency was ultimately able to discount the threat using other means and has pronounced the investigation complete.
Each of the four Library Connection members said the most frustrating thing for them was not being able to speak up about the Patriot Act when it was reauthorized in March by Congress. Chase said at the award presentation that one frightening aspect of the Patriot Act is that “it does not have to be aimed at criminals or terrorists; it can be aimed at anyone for any reason.”
Posted June 27, 2006.