The Connecticut Four: Just Doing their Jobs

There they were, this morning at breakfast, four of my colleagues on the front page of the Hartford Courant, and above the fold--George Christian, Peter Chase, Jan Nocek, and Barbara Bailey. (Leslie Burger and Alice Knapp were also in the picture in the New York Times Metro section, but were cropped from the Courant, probably because they aren’t local, even though Leslie is president of the American Library Association, and Alice is president of the Connecticut Library Association.)

They are the Connecticut Four. They didn’t set out to make the papers. They were just doing their jobs as librarians. Three of them are directors of public libraries in small towns around Hartford—Plainville, Portland, and Glastonbury. Last summer they happened to be serving as the Vice President, Secretary, and President of Library Connection, a cooperative of 27 libraries in the Hartford area that share an automated library system. Then the FBI sent a national security letter demanding records of patron Internet use to Library Connection’s Executive Director, George Christian.

Exactly what happened then, they still cannot say, but these four people, now known collectively as John Doe, did their jobs. They refused to give up any of the records sought by the FBI, and they are the first in the country to challenge a national security letter, 30,000 of which are estimated to have been issued this year.

Unlike search and arrest warrants, a national security letter can be issued by the FBI without judicial review, and the recipients are bound by a perpetual gag order to refrain from telling anyone they have received a letter. Anyone means friends, family, colleagues, their own library boards, even the other librarians on Library Connection’s Board of Directors.

I was lucky enough to have a previously scheduled meeting at Library Connection’s office in Windsor this afternoon. I drove up hoping to get some inside information, but George and the Library Connection officers still cannot talk about who was targeted in the letter or what records were sought. And, although they were above the fold today at ACLU headquarters in Manhattan, my colleagues still face a legal battle over other portions of the demand, and they still are prohibited from discussing details of the letter and its delivery.

But at least today, and maybe for a few days, they were there—in the New York Times and the Hartford Courant and on TV and radio, and attention is being paid to the importance of protecting the privacy of public library patrons. Now, thanks to the Connecticut Four, all those audiences (as well as our own friends and family) know something about the job of a librarian.

As George said this afternoon, (before he had to leave to be flown to Washington DC for an interview with NPR,) “Who ever heard of such a thing—no probable cause, no subpoena, just a letter demanding information about people who use the public library?”

Who gives up that information? Not the library!