Intellectual Freedom News 7/19/19
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
- 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