Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after Patriot Act was rea

Patriot Abuse I Was Gagged By The Patriot Act While The Attorney General Was Free To Tell Falsehoods About It. By JANET NOCEK July 22, 2007

When the USA Patriot Act was being reauthorized in 2005, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales claimed that not one single abuse of the "national security letters" provision had been reported.It must be his poor memory that caused Mr. Gonzales to tell Congress that no abuse had been reported. What else would explain why he did not mention the reports that described abuses and mismanagement of NSLs - which we now discover were in his possession before his testimony?

I was one of four library colleagues who challenged an NSL in the courts around the time of its reauthorization. We were under a gag order because of the nondisclosure provision of the NSL section of the Patriot Act. This happened even though a judge with high-level security clearance had declared that there was no risk in identifying us as recipients of an NSL.

We were therefore not allowed to testify to Congress about our experience with the letters - which seek information, without court review, on people like library users.It is more than irksome to now discover that the attorney general was giving Congress false information - at the same time that we recipients of NSLs were not allowed to express our concerns.

My colleagues and I were lucky to have our gag order lifted eventually, with the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, after the federal District Court found constitutional problems with that section of the Patriot Act.

Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.