Highlights

• IFRT Emerging Leaders videos engage non-librarians; “ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT) is pleased to announce the publication of four videos to engage non-librarians in the fight to protect intellectual freedom. The brief explainer videos cover the basics of intellectual freedom, censorship, and privacy for a non-library audience with key definitions and everyday language.”

Censorship

• ACLU, other groups criticize Leander’s proposed library policies | Austin American-Statesman (TX)
• City tables proposed changes to public library rental and programming policies | Hill Country News (TX)
• Drag Queen Story Hour goes on despite calls to cancel | WCAX 3 (VT)
• Sparks Mayor Ron Smith says he tried to stop Drag Queen Story Hour scheduled for Saturday | Reno Gazette (NV)
• Commissioners urge library transparency | The Enterprise (MD)
• Texas high school bans graphic novel on Pulse shooting over its “extreme homosexuality” | LGBTQ Nation
• Michigan prison inmates need job skills, but technology books are banned | Bridge Magazine

Privacy

• FTC Seeks Comments on Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule | Federal Trade Commission
• How to Stop your City from Spying on You [podcast] | ACLU
• FaceApp Lets You ‘Age’ a Photo by Decades. Does It Also Violate Your Privacy? – The New York Times
  • FaceApp went viral with age-defying photos. Now Democratic leaders are warning campaigns to delete the Russian-created app ‘immediately’ | Washington Post
• Maryland Says Confidential Data Must be Encrypted. For 1.4 Million Students, it Wasn’t | The Washington Post
• My browser, the spy: How extensions slurped up browsing histories from 4M users | Ars Technica
• Apple preaches privacy. Lawmakers want the talk to turn to action. | Washington Post
• Knowing the ‘value’ of our data won’t fix our privacy problems | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Ancestry CEO on Genetic Data Privacy: ‘Consumers Need to Think About Who They Do Business With’ | Fortune
• What we’ve learned about The Privacy Project (so far) | New York Times
• Class action: Saporito Finishing made workers scan fingerprints without authorization | Cook County Record (IL)

Additional privacy news updates are available at the Choose Privacy Everyday blog.

Access

• ‘Yesterday’ as an Open Access Movie | OIF Blog
• Libraries, publishers work to adapt as e-book lending polices change | Record-Courier (OH)
• The FCC just made it tougher for schools to address the ‘homework gap’, ed tech leaders say | Education Week
• Publishers change ebook and audiobook policies; libraries look for answers | Library Journal

Net Neutrality & Broadband Access

• The United States of Broadband Map | New America
• For some Iowans, no internet choice at any cost | The Gazette (IA)

Academic Freedom & Campus Speech

• Should academic freedom extend to non-faculty academics? | Inside Higher Ed

Fake News, Free Press, Social Media

• Twitter says Trump didn’t violate rules against racism but won’t say why | Washington Post
• Trump’s Not the Only One Blocking Constituents on Twitter | ProPublica
• Senators ask FTC to look into how Facebook, Google and Twitter curate content | CNet
• How Congress could destroy social media | Washington Post
• Social media summit highlights partisan approaches on tech | The Hill
• Cities With More Hateful Tweets Have More Hate Crimes, Study Finds| VICE

First Amendment & Free Speech

• John Paul Stevens had ‘indelible’ commitment to the First Amendment | Freedom Forum Institute
  • Justice John Paul Stevens, Who ‘Left Us a Better Nation,’ Dies at 99 | The National Law Journal
  • Justice John Paul Stevens, dead at 99, promoted the Internet revolution | Ars Technica
• Fourth Circuit: Non-Disparagement Clause in Police Misconduct Settlement Violates First Amendment | Constitutional Law Prof Blog
• Then and now, flag burner benefits from 1989 First Amendment ruling | Freedom Forum Institute
• As hate incidents rise, states require teaching the Holocaust | Pew Stateline
• The Trump Administration’s Focus on Religious Freedom | The Atlantic

Around the Web

• ‘Mein Kampf’ Is Back — And There Are Reasons To Worry – The Forward
• Libraries, Litigation, and Legislation | OIF Blog
• LGBTQ displays: Everything is political, but not everything is partisan | OIF Blog
• A Molehill Made Mountain: Manga and the Struggle for Shelf Space | OIF Blog
• Netflix Removes Controversial ‘13 Reasons Why’ Suicide Scene | Wall Street Journal
• Governors and Federal Agencies Are Blocking Nearly 1,300 Accounts on Facebook and Twitter | ProPublica

International Issues

• Office 365 declared illegal in German schools due to privacy risks | Ars Technica
• How WeChat censors private conversations, automatically in real time | Technology Review
• ‘Police officers demanded to see my books’: Elif Shafak on Turkey’s war on free-speech | The Guardian
• How Scots author’s novel about terrorism barred her from mentor role | Scottish Daily Record
• Confirmed: Google terminated Project Dragonfly, its censored Chinese search engine | Forbes

ALA News

• ACRL releases “2018 Academic Library Trends and Statistics”
• Volunteer to Serve on ALA, Council, and Joint Committees for 2020-2022
• Accepting Applications for 2020 Class of ALA Emerging Leaders
• Nominate a superstar librarian for the I Love My Librarian award
• 2020 ALA Annual Conference Program Proposals are Now Open