February 10, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• New checklists provide practical steps to protect patron privacy | ALA; “The American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) approved seven new “privacy checklists” at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia to help libraries of all types and capacities take practical steps to protect patron privacy.”
• Conversation before controversy: The N-word on stage | OIF Blog; “But maybe conversations about the N-word are not about an absolute right or wrong. Maybe it doesn’t have to be intellectual freedom versus racial sensitivity, copyright versus sensitive revision. Maybe it should be about having these conversations sooner, more often, and with more listening.”
• First Amendment Support Climbing Among High School Students | New York Times; Ninety-one percent of the students may support the right to express unpopular opinions in general, but only half as many — 45 percent — support that right when the speech in question is offensive to others and made in public. Bullying speech enjoys slightly less backing, and students are even less supportive of either kind of speech when it’s delivered on social media.

Censorship

• Beware of self-censorship | New Republic
• Opinion: The problem with banning books | NC State Technician (NC); “There are no banned books in Wake County Public Schools, and thanks to a new policy, it is likely to remain that way.”
  • Wake County considers school policy on challenging books | The News & Observer (NC)
• Currituck schools to alert parents about books | Daily Advance (NC); “Currituck County Schools will caution parents and guardians that there are books in the school district’s libraries that appeal to students of different ages, and that they should contact their child’s teacher about any books they consider inappropriate.”
• Documents about financial censorship under Operation Choke Point show concern from Congress, provide few answers | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Arizona bill would stop censorship of high-school newspapers | KJZZ
• Black History Month art exhibition removed from school admin. offices | NCAC blog (CA)

Hate Crimes in Libraries

• Prayer rug in Shapiro reflection room defiled | The Michigan Daily

Access

• North Carolina launches new eBook sharing service for children | Avery Journal
• The FCC is stopping 9 companies from providing federally subsidized Internet to the poor | The Washington Post; “The program, known as Lifeline, provides registered households with a $9.25-a-month credit, which can then be used to buy home Internet service.”
• Wilmot agrees to meet with students about Wi-Fi | My Kenosha County (WI), “Wilmot Union High School officials have placed plans to cease public Wi-Fi access on hold, pending the outcome of a meeting with student class officers next week, according to a release issued by the school.”
• Why are rural schools still struggling with high-speed internet access? | eSchool News
• FBI to lift restrictions on online FOIA system after reports it would ditch email, switch to fax | The Daily Dot
• FBI axes FOIA requests by email, so dust off your fax machine | Tech Crunch

Privacy

• A school librarian caught in the middle of student privacy extremes | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Email Privacy Act clears House | Tech Zone 360
• Ohio man’s pacemaker data may betray him in arson, insurance fraud case | Ars Technica
• How app makers increasingly track your every move| Christian Science Monitor
• Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments| CityLab
• When TVs watch you: What we learned from the FTC’s VIZIO case | World Privacy Forum
• In Jessica Rich, FTC loses cornerstone of privacy protection | IAPP

Net Neutrality

• Democrats are bracing for big, public fight to protect net neutrality | CNBC
• Net Neutrality erosion looms: Here’s what could happen and why you should care | Tech Times
• New FCC boss kills zero rating inquiry, signals death of Net Neutrality enforcement | Tech dirt

First Amendment Issues

• Mayhem at Berkeley hardens new battle lines on free speech | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Va. lawmakers pass campus free speech bill | WTOP
• Good news for the future of the first amendment | Newseum Institute
• FAN 141 (First Amendment News) Judge Neil Gorsuch — the Scholarly First Amendment Jurist | Concurring Opinions

Around the Web

• How Americans encounter, recall and act upon digital news | Pew Research Center
• Kasich touts libraries as way to help with online training, but cuts library funding | The Columbus Dispatch (OH)
• Librarians take up arms against fake news | Seattle Times (WA)
• USDA abruptly removes animal welfare information from its website | Chicago Tribune
• Measured success: Budgets and funding | Library Journal
• Is the library the new public square? | MIT News
• White Nationalist Posters Found At U. of C. 10 Times In Two Weeks | DNA Info

International Issues

• Spectre of censorship haunts S. Korea artists | Inquirer.net
• Art under threat in 2016: Presenting the figures | Freemuse.org
• Concerns loom over a data-sharing pact to protect privacy of Europeans | The Wall Street Journal

Office for Intellectual Freedom News

• Report Censorship: Defend the public’s freedoms
• Webinar: Libraries in the Jim Crow South and A Conversation with One of the Tougaloo Nine; In celebration of Black History Month, join Civil Rights activist Geraldine Hollis (author of “Back to Mississippi”) and author Cheryl Knott (“Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow”), along with artist, Michael Crowell and Chapel Hill Library Director, Susan Brown, for an engaging and educational conversation on the history of libraries and life in the Jim Crow South.The Jim Crow laws were in effect in the U.S. South from 1890-1965. During that time, libraries were one of many segregated institutions. Geraldine Hollis (then Edwards), a student at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, was one of nine students arrested at the white public library in Jackson for attempting to read books that were not available at the colored library. The webinar is sponsored by the Freedom to Read Foundation.

---

Subscribe to future issues of Intellectual Freedom News, a free weekly compilation of news delivered to your email by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom including

• current book challenges in libraries and schools
• articles about privacy, internet filtering and censorship
• ALA activities, conferences and institutes, products, online learning opportunities, awards and grants, international exchanges, and more
• how to get involved and make the most of what ALA offers

You can also find us at Facebook, Twitter, and online. Or email us at oif@ala.org