Intellectual Freedom News 1/22/2021
Highlights
Censorship
- After Finding Controversial Novel On School’s Summer Reading List, Teenage Twins Push For Change In State Law | CBS 2 Chicago
Privacy & Cybersecurity
- How Smartphones Are Beefing Up Their Security Efforts | Nasdaq
- How law enforcement gets around your smartphone’s encryption | Ars Technica
- Worcester school standing committee keeps self-harm web filter turned off, seeks legal opinion | Telegram & Gazette (MA)
- Ransomware is now the biggest cybersecurity concern for CISOs | ZDNet
- Proposed ban on use of facial recognition technology by police advances in Minneapolis | Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- Fertility-Tracking App Flo Settles With FTC Over Misrepresentation of Data Sharing Practices; Warning for All Health Apps | CPO Magazine
- Senator Wiener Introduces License Plate Privacy Act | East County Today
More privacy news is available at the Choose Privacy Every Day blog.
First Amendment, Free Speech, & Civil Liberties
- Justice Department Abandons Request that Supreme Court Hear Case Relating to Trump’s Now-Defunct Twitter Account | Knight First Amendment Institute
- Biden issues executive order expanding LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections | NBC News
- Is There a Free Speech Defense to an Impeachment? | Law Fare
- Rep. Boebert Sued For Violating 1st Amendment By Blocking Critic On Twitter | MediaPost
- Violence at Capitol and beyond reignites a debate over America’s long-held defense of extremist speech | CNN
- Response To Capitol Riot Could Hurt Minorities, Civil Libertarians Say | NPR
Net Neutrality & Broadband Access
- Connecting the Last Mile: Libraries Find Innovative Solutions for Broadband Access | Library Journal
- Two Yale students want to make it easier for people in prison to talk to their loved ones | Yale Alumni Magazine
- Kentucky launches free Statewide speed test to give Kentuckians better internet access | WYMT-TV CBS
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
- A College Warned a Professor About Her Tweet. She Says That’s Retaliation. | The Chronicle of Higher Education
Social Media
- Beyond Platforms: Private Censorship, Parler, and the Stack | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Should we celebrate Trump’s Twitter ban? Five free speech experts weigh in | The Guardian
- Republicans Love De-Platforming—Just Ask Sex Workers | Vice Motherboard
- Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump and some allies | The Washington Post
- Kicking people off social media isn’t about free speech | Vox
- Parler’s attempt to get back on Amazon Web Services rejected by judge | Ars Technica
- California plaintiffs sue Chinese tech giant Tencent, alleging WeChat app is censoring and surveilling them | The Washington Post
- Republicans and Democrats both want to repeal part of a digital content law, but experts say that will be extremely tough | Texas Tribune
Copyright
- Google, French publishers sign copyright news payment deal | NBC News
- Bitcoin Websites Asked to Remove White Paper After Craig Wright Claims Copyright Infringement | Bitcoin.com
Journalism, Media, & Disinformation
- Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week | Library Journal INFOdocket
- At Voice of America, a sweeping ouster of Trump officials on Biden’s first full day | Washington Post
- Media Literacy Standards to Counter Truth Decay | Rand
International News
- Sudan schoolbook picture sparks angry reform debate | France 24
- Taking A Closer Look At Media Censorship Using China And The Uyghur Population As A Case Study | The Organization for World Peace
- Jared Savage’s book Gangland banned from prisons by Corrections | New Zealand Herald
- Russia bans ‘Death Note’ and other “violent” anime in censorship scandal | Happy
- LGBTQ NGO to Complain at Top Court about Govt Office Censure of Fairytale Book | Hungary Today
- What Internet Censorship Looks Like: In East Africa, too much Facebook has been awful. So has too little Facebook. | The New York Times
- Virtual library gives children in England free book access | BBC News
- Duchess of Sussex claims privacy and copyright breached by paper group | BBC News
Around the Web
- Amazon and major publishers colluded to keep e-book prices high, lawsuit says | The Seattle Times
- Trump’s 1776 Commission Critiques Liberalism in Report Derided by Historians | The New York Times
- MLK Today | Boston Review
- The Essential Octavia Butler | The New York Times
- John C. Roemer III, retired teacher and former head of American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, dies | The Baltimore Sun
- C-SPAN Video Library Provides Keyword Searchable Video of Presidential Inauguration | Library Journal INFOdocket
- Author Kathleen Krull Remembered After Unexpected Death | School Library Journal
- Hank Aaron dies at 86. He used his Hall of Fame baseball career as a platform to champion civil rights. | The Washington Post
- Fort Worth Library Book Club Goes Global | NBC 5 DFW
- Sen. Josh Hawley finds new publisher after Simon & Schuster dropped book | CNN
ALA News
ALA Publishing
Awards and Grants
eCourses and Webinars
- United for Libraries Learning Live monthly sessions to kick off with ‘Fighting Budget Cuts and Finding Funding’ Jan. 26
- AR Tools for Library Instruction webinar presented by LIRT
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