August 10, 2018 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• A patron wants to print a gun: Now what? | American Libraries; “The American Library Association (ALA) has drafted a resource for libraries to develop policies and best practices regarding the use of their 3D printers. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, says just because the instructions are or might be available online does not mean a patron has the right to use library resources to print them.”
• ALA urges Commerce Department to reject census citizenship question | American Libraries; “The American Library Association (ALA) has joined 144 groups in opposing the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form. ALA is a signee of a letter submitted August 1 by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to the Department of Commerce, which oversees the US Census Bureau.”
• More than a coffee shop: How libraries support civil liberties | OIF Blog; “Sure, libraries are known for providing access to books and other ancillary resources but those services do not encapsulate the timeless purpose of the profession. Libraries are dedicated to supporting the principles of a democratic society by ensuring access to a wide range of information, services, and ideas.”

Censorship

• Three ways to advocate for books during a challenge | OIF Blog
• Senators demand answers about Google’s censored Chinese search engine | Fortune
• Google struggles to contain employee uproar over China censorship plans | The Intercept

Privacy

• Tech Firms, Embattled Over Privacy, Warm to Federal Regulation | Wall Street Journal
• The Information on School Websites Is Not as Safe as You Think | The New York Times
• Facebook to Banks: Give Us Your Data, We’ll Give You Our Users | The Wall Street Journal
  • Facebook: We’re not asking for financial data, we’re just partnering with banks | Ars Technica
• An airline scans your face. You take off. But few rules govern where your data goes. | New York Times
• Simple steps to protect yourself on public wi-fi | Wired
• Pentagon tells troops: Turn off fitness tracker GPS when you head to warzones | Ars Technica
• China’s influence on digital privacy could be global | Washington Post

See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Everyday blog.

Net Neutrality and Broadband Access

• Trump admin asks Supreme Court to re-kill already-dead net neutrality rules | Ars Technica
• Ajit Pai admits FCC lied about “DDoS,” blames it on Obama administration | Ars Technica
• Verizon lied about 4G coverage—and it could hurt rural America, group says | Ars Technica

Access

• Are they deadly? Are they free speech? Explaining 3-D printed guns. | Washington Post
  • Printing guns: Looking at all the dimensions | Freedom Forum Institute
• Captive audience: How companies make millions charging prisoners to send an email | Wired
• Experts criticize West Virginia’s plan for smartphone voting | Ars Technica
• In rural Texas, libraries anchor small towns but struggle to stay afloat | KERA News (TX)

Copyright

• Engage with Rights-Free Photos | Knowledge Quest

Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News

• Alex Jones and Infowars Content Is Removed From Apple, Facebook and YouTube | New York Times
  • Free Speech scholars to Alex Jones: You’re not protected | New York Times
  • Facebook, Apple, and YouTube banned Alex Jones for ‘hate speech’ and here’s why the First Amendment doesn’t apply | Washington Examiner
  • Gatekeepers or censors? How tech manages online speech | New York Times
  • Don’t ban Alex Jones | Politico
  • Win or lose, the Alex Jones lawsuit will help redefine free speech | Wired
  • Infowars passionately defends the right to censor Infowars | The Verge
  • InfoWars app will stay in the iOS App Store—here’s Apple’s reason why | Ars Technica
  • Op-ed: Alex Jones is a crackpot—but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea | Ars Technica
• New Poll: 43% of Republicans Want to Give Trump the Power to Shut Down Media | The Daily Beast
  • Americans’ Views on the Media | Ipsos
• We Need to Fix the News Media, Not Just Social Media | Public Knowledge
• As journalists face constant attacks from the White House, teaching news literacy gets harder | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Twitter fact-checking won’t free us from our baseless convictions | Wired

Hate Speech / Hate Crimes

• Hate in schools: An in-depth look | Education Week
• The Hate Group Successfully Rolling Back LGBT Rights | The Advocate
• If We Silence Hate Speech, Will We Silence Resistance? | The New York Times
• Using the power of the crowd to document hate | ProPublica
• Why Ames police say they can’t investigate this racist Wi-Fi address near Iowa State campus | Des Moines Register (IA)

Academic Freedom & Campus Speech

• The best educating requires academic freedom | OIF Blog
• The Koch Institute is worried about free speech on campus. But not in the way you might think. | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Why the AAUP opposes both boycotts and restrictions on their supporters | Inside Higher Education
• Why a prof’s blog post is protected by academic freedom/ | National Review
• Iowa State professor to leave in free speech lawsuit settlement | The Gazette (IA)

First Amendment and Free Speech

• Don’t let the government censor blueprints for 3-D-printed guns | Washington Post
• The Justice Department Is Keeping Secrets About Its New Religious Liberty Task Force | Buzzfeed
• Trump’s NLRB Is taking new look at restricting workers’ electronic communication | National Law Journal

Around the Web

• Editorial: Boston Public Library should be an open book | Boston Herald
• Being a Victorian librarian was oh-so-dangerous | JSTOR Daily
• Betty Miles, whose children’s books tackled sexism,dies at 90 | New York Times
• Amazon pulls some Nazi-themed, offensive items after criticism, but many remain | NPR
• Omaha Public Library: Laura Ingalls Wilder debate could be a good thing | Omaha.com
• How technology shapes the way we read | Wired
• How my smartphone revived the purity of reading | Wired
• You can learn everything online except for the things you can’t | Wired
• When Murakami, Toni Morrison, J D Salinger’s books were banned | Economic Times

International Issues

• Internet censorship in Africa threatens democracy, economy | Deutche Welle
• It’s the process of fighting censorship that scares me: Anurag Kashyap | The Express Tribune (India)
• Here’s why UK and Irish businesses must prepare for a flood of GDPR data requests | Tech Republic
• ‘Christopher Robin’ won’t play in China amid government censorship of Winnie the Pooh | Washington Post
• Zunar applauds court for revoking ban on his ‘Sapuman’ book | FMT News (Malaysia)

ALA News

• 3-D Printing in Libraries: Policies & Best Practices
• I Love My Librarian! 2018 Award nominations now open
• Still Accepting Applications for the Emerging Leaders Program – Deadline August 31
• Learn about OED, imposter syndrome, critical information literacy, more in upcoming ACRL e-Learning webcasts
• New iteration: Rethinking Social Media to Organize Information and Communities eCourse
• Freedom to Read Foundation joins with SJSU iSchool and the iSchool at Illinois to offer Fall intellectual freedom courses

 

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