Highlights

• Make a powerful statement about censorship. Purchases of Banned Books Week materials supports the office’s work in defending and promoting the freedom to read.
• ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom is excited to share a new Facebook group with you. “Celebrate Banned Books Week” is a community designed to foster meaningful conversation and share engaging ideas for anyone who celebrates Banned Books Week.

Censorship

• SF school board reverses course, decides to save controversial mural | San Francisco Chronicle
• Room rentals are out, background checks are in for Leander Public Library | Community Impact Newspaper (TX)
• City LGBTQ commission recommends continuing ‘drag queen story time’ at public libraries | CBS Austin (TX)
• Despite opposition, drag story hours will have to apply to use NPR’s Peace Hall | Suncoast News
• The Hunt’s cancellation and Hollywood’s history of self-censorship, explained | Vox
• Florida Prison System bans more than 20000 books | WJHG News (FL)
• The reason why hundreds of books were removed from an Illinois Prison Library |WILL Illinois Public Media
  • ‘It’s the racial stuff’: Illinois prison banned, removed books on black history and empowerment from inmate education program | Chicago Tribune

Privacy

• How the New York Public Library guards privacy in the digital age | Wall Street Journal
• California Grand Jury: Data analytics threaten patron privacy | Library Journal
• Why protecting privacy is a losing game today—and how to change the game | Brookings Institute
• How facial recognition became the most feared technology in the US | Recode
• You Should Definitely Track Your Loved Ones’ Phones. Actually Maybe Not. | Wall Street Journal
• States Battle Big Tech Over Data Privacy Laws | Pew Stateline
• The FTC can rise to the privacy challenge, but not without help from Congress | Brookings Institute
  • Opinion: Give the FTC some teeth to guard our privacy | New York Times
• Why the N.Y.P.D’s DNA database has some people worried | New York Times
• Microsoft’s privacy policy admits contractors listen to Cortana, Skype recordings | PC World
• ‘Alexa, delete what I just said’: How to manage voice recordings on your smart devices | Washington Post
• Sealed records on Dayton gunman pit safety against privacy | New York Times
• Hundreds of thousands of people are using passwords that have already been hacked, Google says | Vice

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

Access

• Federal judge issues injunction for Gavin Grimm in transgender Rights case | EdWeek
• ABFE Free Speech Report: Antitrust and When Is a Private Company Not So Private Anymore | American Booksellers Association
• 3D Printing: Overview, Impacts, and the Federal Role | Congressional Research Service

Net Neutrality & Broadband Access

• Internet is a modern necessity, but some Americans don’t even have broadband | Washington Post
• How do we measure broadband? | Benton Foundation
• Broadband is too important for this many people in the US to be disconnected | Brookings
• Here’s how family tech nights help close the digital divide | eSchoolNews

Academic Freedom & Campus Speech

• Higher-ed groups are warning colleges against ‘surveillance’ of Chinese academics. On some campuses, That’s already begun. | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Coalition cautions FBI against unwarranted monitoring of Chinese scholars | PEN America
• White professor investigated for quoting James Baldwin’s use of N-word | The Guardian

Fake News, Free Press, Social Media

• The Fight Over Section 230—and the Internet as We Know It | Wired
• White House proposal would have FCC and FTC police alleged social media censorship | CNN
• YouTube discriminates against LGBT content by unfairly culling it, suit alleges | Washington Post
• Google’s algorithm for detecting hate speech is racially biased | MIT Technology Review
• After the El Paso and Gilroy shootings, tech leaders are saying platforms must stop amplifying hate speech | Vox
• The new arms race: Deep fakes and their impact on information | OIF Blog
• Twitter’s ban of McConnell shows tech’s censorship power | Real Clear Politics
• TikTok’s parent company appears to be censoring the Hong Kong protests | Quartz
• Are social media companies going ‘too far’ to regulate their platforms? | Freedom Forum Institute

First Amendment & Free Speech

• Joaquin Castro struck a nerve. But publishing a list of Trump donors is constitutional | Washington Post
• What is domestic terrorism and what can the law do about it? | CBS News
• Federal judge rules middle school officials could punish student for writing ‘Trump 2016’ on whiteboard | Freedom Forum Institute
• Ninth Circuit Rejects Challenge to Electioneering Disclosure Requirement | Constitutional Law Prof Blog

Around the Web

• Justice Stevens on intellectual freedom | OIF Blog
• Stanley v. Georgia, Fifty Years Later | OIF Blog
• Integrity Immutable: Diego Rivera and the Rockefeller Feud | OIF Blog
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’s legacy of library challenges and bans | Polygon
• Turkish court bans sale of leftists books and magazines | Ahval News
• Gay penguin couple adopt abandoned egg at Berlin Zoo | Newsweek
• Banned Books Week Lecture: Censoring Medicine in the Age of Galileo | The New York Academy of Medicine
• #FreeAustinTice | Freedom Forum Institute

International Issues

• The global gag on free speech is tightening | The Economist
• Silenced’: Pakistan’s journalists decry new era of censorship | Aljazeera.com
• Press Groups: Regulations, violence constrain Indonesia’s journalists | Voice of America
• Facebook denies giving contradictory evidence to Parliment | The Guardian
• Artists demand removal of work from Aichi Trienniale following censorship controversy | ARTNews
• China detains critic of online censorship for ‘provoking trouble’ | ABS CBN News
• The EU’s latest assault on internet freedom | Spiked

ALA News

• Freedom to Read Foundation announces Fall 2019 course scholarship recipients
• 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

Subscribe to future issues of Intellectual Freedom News, a free weekly compilation of news delivered to your inbox 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