Big Brother isn't just fiction

Hat tip to The Boston Progressive, who points us to this alarming article in this weekend's New Bedford Standard-Times.

Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.


The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.


The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.


"My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think," he said.


Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.


"I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."

We aren't quite to the point where we're burning books... yet. But we're certainly monitoring them. God help anyone who goes and orders a copy of the anarchists cookbook from their library. I seem to recall the Justice Department saying that, while the Patriot Act allowed them to monitor library records, they weren't actually doing it. Do you recall that? I wonder how they came up with this young man's name and wound up at his house?