January 26, 2018 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• Reading as a Mirror: Banning the New Jim Crow in New Jersey Prisons | OIF Blog; “With a little reflection, it isn’t hard to see the bitter irony of banning prisoners from reading a book like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, a book that argues that mass incarceration targets African-Americans in order to keep them in an inferior position both socially and economically.”
• Making the Intellectual Freedom News: How Do Our News Editors Make Selections? | OIF Blog
• OIF Seeks Information on 2017 Censorship Incidents
  • Why Should You Report Censorship? OIF Answers a Few Questions | OIF Blog; “While we know that many challenges are never reported, we strive to be as comprehensive as possible. We would greatly appreciate if you could send us any information on challenges in your library, state or region that you are aware of from 2017. The deadline for reporting 2017 challenges to OIF is Wednesday, January 31, 2018.”

Censorship

• New climate censorship tracker comes online | Scientific American
  • Why is Trump censoring some agencies’ climate science, but not others’? | The New Republic
• ‘New Jim Crow’ was banned from NC prisons in the morning. By afternoon, the book was off the list. | News and Observer (NC)
• Wine magazine banned from New Jersey prisons | Los Angeles Times
• What should prisoners read? Not Cosmo, Ohio says | My Dayton Daily News
• Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ lawyers urge Defence Secretary to end ‘censorship’ of inmate’s artwork | The Independent
• Herriman High students cry censorship after story is pulled from website | Desert News (Utah)
• CMS parent says required novel contains graphic sexual conduct | WSOCTV (NC)
• Principal pulls book from Ocala middle school | Spectrum News (FL)
• EFF to court: Don’t let celebrities censor realistic art | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Art from behind the walls of Guantanamo | CBS News
• Facebook Apologizes for Banning Paragraph From Black Woman’s Book | The Daily Beast
• Follow up: Conejo Valley Unified opt-out policy being implemented in schools this week | Ventura Country Star

Privacy

• Data Privacy Day: A Reminder to Safeguard Your Data | Consumer Reports
• Privacy Tip #123 – Tax Identity Theft Awareness Week | Data Privacy + Security Insider
• DuckDuckGo adds tracker blocking to help curb the wider surveillance web | TechCrunch
• How to find an LMS that supports student privacy and data security | eSchool News
• Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US | The Verge
• Tinder’s lack of encryption lets strangers spy on your swipes | Wired
• Mississippi student data accessed in testing-vendor breach | Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS)
• Trump voting commission bought Texas election data flagging Hispanic voters | Washington Post
• Facebook to hand privacy controls to users ahead of EU law | Reuters

See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.

Net Neutrality and Broadband Access

• Net neutrality update: The FCCs restoring internet freedom order and the Senate’s joint resolution | OIF Blog
• New York won’t do business with ISPs not adhering to net neutrality principles | Digital Trends
• AT&T urges Congress to pass ‘internet bill of rights’ | The Hill
• Net neutrality comment fraud will be investigated by government | Ars Technica
• Burger King trolled customers to perfectly explain net neutrality | Motherboard

Filtering

• Schools on constant watch for dubious content | Star Courier
• Students’ filter turns internet into safe space for the sensitive | The Australian

Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News

• Podcast: Free speech and the internet | Newseum Institute
• Their school deleted an article on a teacher’s firing. So these teens published it themselves. | Washington Post

Academic Freedom and Campus Speech

• A war of words on college campuses | CBS News
• Campus clashes over free speech | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Protesters rally against Bannon U of C invite; school defends ‘academic freedom’ | Chicago Sun-Times
• College professor had right to remove online discussion thread, federal judge rules | Newseum Institute

First Amendment and Free Speech

• What First Amendment? | The American Prospect
• First Amendment earns a C+ on winter 2018 report card | Newseum Institute
• What happened when a public school student sued over prayer | CNN
• The tyranny of the minority: A post-Charlottesville theory of the First Amendment | The Hill
• 2018 Free Expression Award recipients announced | Newseum Institute
• Gang injunctions threaten freedom of association and other civil liberties | Newseum Institute
• South Dakota satirists exempt from prosecution in state seal bill | CBLDF

Around the Web

• Fire and Fury at the White House | OIF Blog
• Copyright, the first wave of internet censorship | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Controversial mural replaced at Springfield’s Dr. Seuss museum | WBUR (MA)
• Report on academic freedom in Hong Kong | Inside Higher Education
• The Pentagon Papers team tells how the Times defied censorship | New York Times
• Steve Bannon Accepts Invitation to Speak at the University of Chicago | Chicago Maroon

International Issues

• Somewhere in China: Reading between the lines and the ‘fiction of compromise’ | OIF Blog
• China seizes publisher of banned books again — just months after releasing him | NPR
• Russia cancels ‘Death of Stalin’ movie release but denies it’s censorship | Fortune
• ECJ should rule against Austrian online censorship lawsuit | EU Observer
• China’s pop culture censorship continues with hip-hop | Paper
• China’s VPN crackdown is about money as much as censorship | Financial Times
• Lebanon decides against censorship of Spielberg film | MediaFile
• Palestinians fight Facebook, YouTube censorship | Aljazeera

ALA News

• OIF to showcase new selection policy toolkit at Midwinter
  • ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom Launches New Policy Toolkit | School Library Journal
• ALA Appoints Mary Ghikas as Executive Director through January 2020 | American Libraries
• ALA invites nominations for 2018 Eileen Cooke State & Local Madison Award. The award recognizes an individual or group who has championed, protected, or promoted public access to government information and the public’s right to know at the state or local level.
• New eCourse—Online Privacy & Security: Best Practices for Librarians.  5-week facilitated eCourse starting on Monday, March 12, 2018.
• ALA announces petition candidates for ALA Council
• YALSA’s 2018 Great Books Giveaway provides more than $40,000 in materials to libraries in Mississippi, Virginia, and Michigan
• A new edition of Peggy Johnson’s essential collection development and management text

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