December 14, 2018 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• Call for nominations for the Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award
• OIF Seeks Censorship Information from 2018
  • Twitter Chat with OIF on Monday, December 17 | OIF Blog

Censorship

• How the state, prisons, and guards keep books from incarcerated people | Teen Vogue
• Pending anti-LGBT lawsuit, Lafayette Library will “stand down” on Drag Queen Story Hour | KATC (LA)
• Story hour causes controversy | Herald-Citizen (TN)
• Middle schoolers react to censorship (A story told in GIFs) | OIF Blog
• Florida’s textbooks woes gaining momentum | CBLDF

Privacy

• ‘Faces of the 7 Train’ exhibit abruptly canceled by Queens Library over privacy concerns, artist cries foul | Flushing Post
• Facial recognition has to be regulated to protect the public, says AI report | MIT Technology Review
  • The Safe Face Pledge “The Safe Face Pledge is an opportunity for organizations to make public commitments towards mitigating the abuse of facial analysis technology.”
• Your apps know where you were last night, and they’re not keeping it secret | The New York Times
• Big tech has your kid’s data – and you probably gave it to them | Vox
• In America’s Panopticon | The Nation
• After Marriott Breach, How to Protect Your Information Online | The New York Times
• Google Glass wasn’t a failure. It raised crucial concerns | Wired
• A news Google+ blunder exposed data from 52.5 million users | Wired
• Google’s Pichai faces privacy and bias questions in Congress | The New York Times
• Who’s Tracking Your License Plate? | City Lab  “Automated license plate readers are collecting and sharing tons of data across state lines, according to records from nearly 200 police departments nationwide.”

Net Neutrality and Broadband Access

• Digital divide among school-age children narrows, but millions still lack internet connections | National Telecommunications and Information Administration
• Last gasp: Net neutrality activists scramble for votes Congress | CNet
• House Democrats with cable-company money won’t join a call to save the internet | GQ
• The FCC has made the same mistake for text message that it did for net neutrality | EFF
• The FBI is not looking into those bogus net neutrality comments | TechDirt

Access

• USAHEC to digitize military history collection | The Sentinel
• New Jersey parents upset at reduced access to books | OIF Blog
• On information privilege and information equity | School Library Journal

Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News

• Hundreds of jailed journalists the new norm, CPJ Census finds | CPJ
• Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source | Pew Research FactTank

Academic Freedom & Campus Speech

• Suspended Arkansas high school paper shares censorship concern | Texarkana Gazette
• Group gives two Georgia universities low marks for campus speech rules | AJC

First Amendment and Free Speech

• ACLU settles suit over governor’s censored Facebook page | Associated Press
• The sneaky fight to give cable lines free speech rights | Wired
• Time to stand up for journalists, for the pursuit of truth | Freedom Forum Institute

Hate Crimes and Hate Speech

• Unconstitutional “Hate Speech” prosecution in New York | Volokh Conspiracy  “SUNY Purchase College student Gunnar Hassard was arraigned in Harrison Town Court for Aggravated Harassment in the First Degree, a class E felony, for hanging posters with Nazi symbolism in areas of the campus.”

Around the Web

• NOAA expands public access to big data | National Centers for Environmental Information
• Who’s living in a ‘bubble’? | The New York Times
• Happy birthday, Gustave Flaubert! | OIF Blog
• A review of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” cont… | OIF Blog
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ ‘Article 19’ at Seventy | OIF Blog
• Senate postpones vote on independently nominated copyright head | Library Journal

International Issues

• Australia anti-encryption law rushed to passage | Houston Chronicle
• Australian newspaper complains of censorship after gag order prevents coverage of Catholic sex scandal | The Hill
• Google CEO says no plan to ‘launch’ censored search engine in China | Motherboard
• Should controversial books be used in Canadian classrooms? | CTV News
• How Egypt crowdsources censorship | The New York Times
• How WhatsApp fuels fake news and violence in India | Wired
• The co-opting of French unrest to spread disinformation | Wired
• In fear of the state: Bangladeshi journalists self-censor as election approaches | Reuters

ALA News

• Don’t miss the new LITA webinar – Accessibility for All: Screen Readers (Tuesday December 18, 2018, 1:00 – 2:30 pm Central Time)
• Information rights for records managers (new resource)
• 2019 Loleta D. Fyan Grant now accepting proposals (due January 11)

 

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