Times are tense.

Our politicians trade strident accusations about everything from budget deficits to intelligence failures. Our troops face daily dangers overseas. And always, we live with the threat posed by terrorists who want to kill as many Americans as quickly as they can.

So let?s not go out of our way to worry needlessly, the way so many misguided souls who are hyperventilating over the USA Patriot Act are.

On its Web site, the American Library Association warns, ?sections of the USA Patriot Act are a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users.?

Michigan?s state librarian, Christie Pearson-Brandeau, told the Detroit Free Press, ?we worry about the FBI coming in and demanding to know who checked out what books and visited what sites on library computers.?

And on Jan. 16, the Concord Monitor reported the following exchange between Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and some elementary school students:

?If the FBI says, We want Jimmy Smith?s library list, then the librarian has to give them that list without telling Jimmy Smith. ?No way? a student hollered. ?Yes, way,? Kucinich replied.?
Well, not quite ?way.?

Kucinich should know the most important aspects of the USA Patriot Act only apply to terrorist investigations, which should put Jimmy Smith?s mind at ease.

Of course, before the Patriot Act, the government would have needed both to obtain a warrant and to show probable cause that a crime had been committed before it could look at most financial records, library records, phone logs, etc. Now, under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, if the government is involved in an authorized investigation of international terrorism?and only under such circumstances?it needs simply a judge?s warrant to see those records.

This makes sense. Before Sept. 11, there were too many restrictions on the FBI?s intelligence gathering. For example, federal agents wanted to search the laptop belonging to Zacarias Moussaoui after his arrest in August 2001. But their warrant was denied, based on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was then in effect. Continued...