CRP Urges Booksellers to Contact Senate Conferees

There is still time for participants in the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP) to garner support for the Senate version of the Patriot Act reauthorization bill, which provides more stringent safeguards to reader privacy than its House counterpart.

CRP sponsors -- ABA, the Association of American Publishers, the American Library Association, and PEN American Center, are urging supporters to contact Senate conferees to ask them to push for Senate bill, S. 1389, which restricts bookstore and library searches under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to the records of people who are suspected terrorists or people who are in contact with them.

Senate conferees are Arlen Specter (R-PA), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Michael DeWine (R-OH), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Carl Levin (D-MI). (Contact information is available on the Senate website".)

Participants in the Campaign for Reader Privacy are also urged to ask their representatives in the House to sign a letter that Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is circulating, which calls on the conferees who will reconcile the House and Senate versions of the reauthorization bill to adopt the provisions of S. 1389. For a list of House members who voted for the Freedom to Read Amendment, but who have yet to sign Sanders' letter to conferees, click here."

More information about CRP and Section 215 of the Patriot Act is available on BookWeb.org.