http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030123/1/36s4p.html
US government surveillance of the books and newspapers its citizens
are reading, a practice launched after the September 11 attacks in the United States,
is a threat to freedom, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OSCE said.
Freimut Duve, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe’s expert on freedom of expression, criticized the FBI and the US
immigration service for carrying out surveillance of public library registers, newspaper
subscriptions and book purchases.
“This goes much too far,” Duve told a press briefing at the
55-member security body’s headquarters in Vienna, adding that he wrote to US Secretary
of State Colin Powell this week to demand an explanation.
Duve said the two agencies have been keeping tabs on citizens’
reading matter under the Patriot Act, adopted in 2001 to tighten security, and that
it was “being done in secrecy.”
“Governmental prerogatives are being used in a way that might
intimidate citizens from exercising their right to freedom of expression,” he
told a meeting of the OSCE’s permanent council in Vienna.
He added that the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service
may not have “recognized the significance of their steps for freedom of ideas.”
Duve told journalists the matter had been brought to light by
university libraries in the United States and the American Booksellers’
Association.
“Booksellers claim that book buyers’ names are listed and
booksellers are informed that they are not allowed to inform the buyers,” he
said.
“If you buy a book that is very critical of the government,
everything is listed if you pay by card and you can be identified.
“It is the first example in history where we have not only to look
at the untouchable right of the writer but of the reader.”
He said security agents were acting within the bounds of the Patriot
Act, which allows for such surveillance.
The US deputy chief of mission to the OSCE, Douglas Davidson, in a
letter to Duve seen by AFP, countered that the law was a “response to the new situation
in which we find ourselves” after the September 11 attacks.
He said the law allows the surveillance only of suspected terrorists
and spies.
“This legislation has a very narrow focus. ... (It) gives authorized
officials access to specific information only under the condition that the persons
to whom the records related were the subject of an investigation into
international terrorism or clandestine intelligence.”
Duve said the OSCE, which groups countries in North America, Europe
and central Asia, was looking into “similar situations” in some states in western
Europe.
He warned that there was a danger that “others may copy” the United
States and said there was “a lot of concern about Britain” at the OSCE.
But he said so far the body had not detected any attempts at “control of writers and readers” in Britain.