Library records

Maybe your library can now tell you when it's asked to hand over your records, but maybe it can't. It all depends on the whim of the Justice Department.

After fighting ferociously for months, federal prosecutors relented yesterday and agreed to allow a Connecticut library group to identify itself as the recipient of a secret F.B.I. demand for records in a counterterrorism investigation.

The decision ended a dispute over whether the broad provisions for secrecy in the USA Patriot Act, the antiterror law, trumped the free speech rights of library officials. The librarians had gone to federal court to gain permission to identify themselves as the recipients of the secret subpoena, known as a national security letter, ordering them to turn over patron records and e-mail messages.

It was unclear what impact the government's decision would have on the approximately 30,000 other such letters that are issued each year. Changes in the Patriot Act now allow the government discretion over whether to enforce or relax what had been a blanket secrecy requirement concerning the letters.

Lawyers for the group, the Library Connection of Windsor, Conn., argued that their client was eager to participate freely in the debate last year over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. But federal prosecutors asserted that the Patriot Act required that the group's identity remain secret and that the government would suffer irreparable harm if any information about its investigations became known.

...Kevin J. O'Connor, the United States attorney in Connecticut, said yesterday that the government decided drop its case largely because the Patriot Act's secrecy provisions concerning national security subpoenas were changed to give the Federal Bureau of Investigation discretion in allowing recipients to identify themselves.

The government was also under pressure to drop its fight after mistakenly disclosing in court records the very information it was fighting to keep secret. Government lawyers failed to redact all of their references to the Library Connection in court filings, leading to the disclosure of the group's identity in The New York Times and other newspapers.