Librarian Terrorists

Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.

After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.
source

A threat to national security? It should be clear now that anyone...anyone... who defies and disagrees with this government will be labeled a "terrorist". The government eventually backed off (and in doing so withdrew the case from scrutiny) but as you read this keep in mind that the president has the authority to label any American a "terrorist" and treat them accordingly.

As an aside, please note that it is the ACLU defending these people... and you. I hear people bitch about the ACLU often but they don't seem to realize how much effort these people put into protecting all of us.