In this era of “Big Data,” we know that our location, our phone calls, our purchases, our Facebook posts and our web site visits are being monitored, recorded, collected, and stored.  But too often we can’t tell who’s collecting our data, or how they’re making use of our personal information.

During Choose Privacy Week, May 1-7, 2013,  we invite everyone to answer the critical question, “Who’s tracking you?”  We believe everyone should have the right to know who’s collecting their information and choose how their private data is used.

“People who understand how personal data is generated, collected, stored, and used are better equipped to take control of their personal data and demand accountability from the agencies and corporations that store and use their information,” says Barbara Jones, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

This year’s Choose Privacy Week observance will feature a week-long online forum that will include an introduction by Barbara Jones and guest commentaries by academics, librarians, and civil liberties experts that discuss current threats to personal privacy and how each threat impacts personal freedoms and civil liberties.  The commentaries will be presented on the newly redesigned website hosted at www.chooseprivacyweek.org, the online hub for Choose Privacy Week activities.

The social media hashtag for Choose Privacy Week is #chooseprivacy.

Scheduled guest commentators include Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; Shaun Dakin, Privacy Camp; Mitra Ebadolahi, the ACLU National Security Project; Rachel Levinson-Waldman, NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice; Deborah Peel, MD, Patient Privacy Rights; Chip Pitts, Stanford Law School; Lew Maltby, National Workrights Institute; and J. Douglas Archer, Librarian at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the ALA-IFC privacy subcommittee.

If you’re a librarian looking for programming ideas, the recording of OIF’s April 9 Choose Privacy Week programming webinar is now available as a free webcast, featuring librarians and privacy experts discussing ideas and tools for privacy-related programming and outreach in the library.

Posters, buttons, and privacy-protecting RFID sleeves are available in the ALA Store at http://www.alastore.ala.org/cpw

For more information on Choose Privacy Week, visit www.chooseprivacyweek.org or contact Deborah Caldwell-Stone in the Office for Intellectual Freedom at 312-280-4224 or dstone@ala.org.