The private organizations are seeking information about how the government is carrying out record gathering at libraries, bookstores and ISPs. The lawsuit comes almost a year after President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act, which widened the government's surveillance power as part of the effort to prevent further terrorist attacks.
The case filed in U.S. District Court alleges that the Justice Department has provided no information on parts of the Patriot Act that have "obvious and serious implications for individual privacy and the freedom of speech."
The groups on Aug. 21 asked for all policy directives and other guidance that the Justice Department and the FBI issued to their employees on obtaining circulation records from libraries, purchase records from bookstores or e-mail records from ISPs and the expanded use of pen registers and trap and trace devices.
Pen registers capture phone numbers dialed on outgoing calls; trap-and-trace devices capture numbers identifying incoming phone calls.
The groups also are demanding information about the number of times the Justice Department has engaged in various types of surveillance in the past year. The Justice Department says such data is classified.
"The Justice Department conceded in early September that the information is of exceeding importance to the American public, but it nonetheless continues to stonewall," ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.
Other groups joining the suit were the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Freedom to Read Foundation.
Copyright 2002. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
