not so fast ,  the records are still availible ,  the agancy in question would have to follow the usual legal paths as they have to follow even with the patriot act in place , below is courtesy of the US FBI .

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Question: Can the FBI look at your library records any time they want?

Answer: No, they cannot. Access to library records is strictly governed by law.


A person's library records may be subpoenaed by a federal grand jury for a specific case. Special Agents of the FBI are also able to obtain records with a criminal search warrant in the course of an investigation. Now, under Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 (which does not single out library records, but applies to "books, records, papers, documents, and other items" from any source), the FBI may be granted authorization by the federal FISA court to access records in an investigation specific to international terrorism or foreign intelligence. In this last case, the FBI must certify to a judge that these records are sought "for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a U.S. person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution." In any investigation, of course, including those in which Section 215 is invoked, it is important to maintain secrecy both to protect the integrity of the case and to protect the reputation of the individual being investigated, in the event no charges are brought.

 

there is nothing unreasonable there ; nothing ;         so as i remember some of the bad guys in 9-11 were using library computers to communicate with ?    do you really want any possible future bad guys to have an easy way to communicate with their leadership that can not be traced or followed of intercepted  ?   

     i for one do not want to tie the hands of our law enforcement agencies .

The following is another example of the loss of personal privacy. The excerpt below is a small portion of an article writen by Professor Susan Herman of the Brooklyn Law School. If this is the price of freedom I must ask, how free are we?

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew40.htm

The USA Patriot Act allows surveillance of U.S. citizens under standards more like FISA than Title III, and allows powers permitted under Title III to be employed even where there is no probable cause and minimal judicial involvement, as in FISA. FISA warrants may now be used even if intelligence is not the primary purpose of an investigation. “Roving wiretaps” are a good example of how the powers under Title III have been extended. The Department of Justice argued to the public that revision of existing wiretap law was necessary to keep up with modern technology – to allow a roving wiretap that would allow a person’s conversations to be intercepted even if the person carried a cell phone, or moved from phone to phone. Why should an investigation be limited to wiretapping one particular telephone, the argument ran, when modern telephone users frequently have access to several phones? The authority to issue an order for a roving wiretap already existed under Title III, for investigations where probable cause has been demonstrated. (The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether this blanket permission to intercept a person’s conversations on any telephone is a refreshing modernization of an antiquated notion that a telephone is a physical place, or a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that any warrant describe the “place to be searched” with particularity.) The USA Patriot Act extends the roving wiretap authority to intelligence wiretaps, which are authorized secretly and are not based on probable cause. The authorization may be nation-wide. Once additional telephones that a target uses (perhaps in someone else’s home) are being monitored, other users of that telephone will also be subject to continuing surveillance

Since the PA's inception, Bush and his administration have abused it as much as possible. It grants them unprecedented power over other people, specifically, anyone who disagrees with him. They use it as a trump card whenever the normal storm of b.ss doesn't work. They cry "national security" and wave this document like a 5-year-old who just found his daddy's gun.

Phantom 

It seem we have found some common ground Phantom, go figure. At least you leave your own mark on your posts, but signing in does have some perks. Think about it, I don't think Scotts records have been confiscated yet.