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

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• ‘We the People’ or ‘Just some of the people’: Proposed bill would censor Zinn’s ‘People’s History‘ | IF Blog; “In our current ‘post-truth’ era, the teaching of social studies and history are more important than ever. Students need to learn to distinguish facts and evidence, and to carefully consider the sources of their information. They need to learn to constantly, diligently question whose story is being told, and whose story is being left out.”
• Access to Information: A universal human right | IF Blog

Censorship

• NCAC protests Oregon school’s unwarranted removel of Eleanor & Park | NCAC
• House of Burgess: Arkansas bill would ban Zinn books | Kokomo Tribune; A People’s History of the United States
• Could Twitter’s new abuse crackdown lead to censorship? | Voice of America News
• “Antiscience” Bill Would Force School Boards to Listen to Silly Complaints About Books| Miami New Times

Hate Crimes in Libraries

• ‘Stupid’ Pennsylvania teens anonymously apologize for swastika at local library | Philly Voice
• New racially charged fliers found at Texas State’s library target Jews | Mysanantonio.com

Access

• Attorney general reviewing vote by Lisle library board | Daily Herald (IL); “A resident says she believes the Lisle Library District board of trustees violated the state’s Open Meeting Act earlier this year. The Illinois Attorney General’s office is reviewing the resident’s claim.”
• 2017 Scholastic Reading Report reveals extent of book ownership divide | School Library Journal
• Government emails on personal devices are public record, state’s top court decides  | San Jose Mercury News

Privacy

• GOP senators’ new bill would let ISPs sell your Web browsing data | Ars Technica; “If the Federal Communications Commission rules are eliminated, ISPs would not have to get consumers’ explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.”
• The battle for online privacy: What you need to know | Cnet
• Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices and In the Cloud | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• FBI’s James Comey: ‘There’s no such thing as absolute privacy in America’ | The Guardian
• All smartphone users should take away these two lessons from the CIA Wikileaks files | Quartz
• Citizen Lab exposes how cyber-spies subvert activists’ rights | NOW Magazine

Net Neutrality / Broadband

• FCC may scale back net neutrality | PBS
• Op-ed: The internet belongs to the people, not powerful corporate interests | Ars Technica; U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) argues that the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules should remain in place.
• ALA and 170 public interest organizations call on FCC and Congress to protect and enforce strong net neutrality rules and secure the open internet | ALA News
• Rural broadband subside programs are a failure. We need to fix them | The Hill

Academic Freedom

• University presidents nationwide refuse to sign ‘Intellectual Freedom Commitment’ | The College Fix
• A Scuffle and a Professor’s Injury Make Middlebury a Free-Speech Flashpoint  | The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Middlebury College professors stand up for free speech after Charles Murray debacle | The Washington Times
• Should ‘despised dissenters’ be allowed to speak on college campuses? | New York Times

First Amendment Issues

• Law restricting protests during Supreme Court proceedings is upheld | The Washington Post
• Vermont top court weighs if KKK fliers are protected speech | New York Times

Around the Web

• The importance of “issue” books | Knowledge Quest
• Social Media’s Silent Filter | The Atlantic
• The #OwnVoices gap in African-American children’s books | CCBC Blog
• Scalia family donates late justice’s papers to Harvard Law School Library | Harvard Law Today
• Tech sector, enterprises respond to CIA-hacking leaks | IAPP
• Parking ticket chat bot now helps refugees claim asylum| Endgadget

International Issues

• France sees sharp rise in blocked and de-listed websites | Global Voices; “There is no list of websites that have been subject to withdrawal of content, blocking, or delisting. Such absence of transparency is concerning, despite the esteem in which the CNIL is held. As things stand, the CNIL and the police service check each other, with no additional oversight.”
• China’s internet censorship hampering country’s scientific and economic development, warns government adviser | The Independent
• Concerns library patron’s privacy being breached by facial recognition surveillance | Abc.net.au (Queensland, Australia)
• U.S. Judge to rule on Singaporean blogger’s asylum request | New York Times
• Amnesty International and ProtonMail join forces to fight cyber censorship | Amnesty International

ALA News

• Google & ALA trying to get children to code at libraries | Android Headlines

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