Government Drops Pursuit of Online Used-Book Buyers

Federal prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of some people who bought used books through Amazon.com, newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled that the customers have a First Amendment right to keep their reading habits from the government.

The subpoena's "chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America," U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker wrote in a June ruling.

"Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon's customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases," the judge wrote in a ruling he unsealed last week.

Amazon, based in Seattle, said in court documents that it hopes Crocker's decision will make it more difficult for prosecutors to obtain records involving book purchases. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Vaudreuil said yesterday that he doubted that the ruling would hamper legitimate investigations.

Crocker, who unsealed documents against prosecutors' wishes, said he believed prosecutors were seeking the information for a legitimate purpose. But he said First Amendment concerns were justified and outweighed the subpoena's law enforcement purpose.

"The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else."

Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last year as part of a grand jury investigation into a former official in Madison, Wis., who was a prolific seller of used books on Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D'Angelo, was indicted last month on fraud, money-laundering and tax-evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a used-book business out of his city office and did not report the income. He has pleaded not guilty.

D'Angelo sold books through the Amazon Marketplace feature, and Amazon took a commission from the sales.

"We didn't care about the content of what anybody read. We just wanted to know what these business transactions were," Vaudreuil said yesterday. "These were simply business records we were seeking to prove the case of fraud and tax crimes against Mr. D'Angelo."

The initial subpoena sought records of 24,000 transactions dating to 1999. The company turned over many records but refused to identify the book buyers, citing a First Amendment right to keep their reading choices private.

Prosecutors later narrowed the subpoena, asking the company to identify a sample of 120 customers.

Crocker brokered a compromise in which the company would send a letter to the 24,000 customers describing the investigation and asking them to voluntarily contact prosecutors if they were interested in testifying.

Prosecutors said they obtained the customer information they needed from one of D'Angelo's computers, which they seized early in the investigation. Vaudreuil said computer analysts initially failed to recover the information.