August 18, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• Webinar: Intellectual freedom is not just about censorship! | Wednesday, Sept 13, 2017 @ 5 – 6 pm EDT, presented by Michelle Luhtala and Kristin Pekoll
• New Banned Books Week opportunity: Partner with OIF for #RebelReader Twitter tournament! | OIF Blog; “During Banned Books Week, OIF is hosting a Rebel Reader Twitter Tournament and your library is invited to partner with us! Among the many benefits, partner libraries receive a digital tool kit and are entered into a drawing for intellectual freedom prizes.”

Censorship

• Board member opposes Fishers High School students reading ‘The Kite Runner’ | Indy Star
• Conejo school board president alone in opposition to Sherman Alexie book | Ventura County Star; “At the board meeting on Tuesday, the Conejo Valley Unified School District trustees approved The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for ninth grade reading.”
• Library’s LGBT displays draw some ire – nearly two months later | Temple Daily Telegram (TX)
• “Hardline sexual ideology”: West Fargo Public Library refuses to remove LGBT book display | KVRR (ND)
• Kearney School District removes 2 gay students’ quotes from yearbook | KCTV5.com (MO)

Privacy

• We fight for the users | DreamHost blog; “For the past several months, DreamHost has been working with the Department of Justice to comply with legal process, including a Search Warrant (PDF) seeking information about one of our customers’ websites. At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration.”
  • DOJ demands files on anti-Trump activists, and a web hosting company resists | NPR
  • Did you visit this anti-Trump site? The US government wants your IP address | The Guardian
  • DOJ wants the IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited a Trump protest website | Mashable
  • Justice Dept. demands data on visitors to anti-Trump website, sparking fight | The New York Times
  • A sweeping search warrant targets anti-Trump website in clear threat to the Constitution | ACLU
  • A closer look at DOJ’s warrant to collect website records | The Washington Post
  • The DOJ wants anti-Trump activists’ IP addresses — Here’s how to hide your IP address | Forbes
• Privacy advocates advise Supreme Court to protect phone location data under the 4th Amendment  | TechCrunch
• Verizon – yes, Verizon –  just stood up for your privacy | Wired
• With smart toys, kids’ privacy is at play | School Library Journal
• International privacy experts adopt statements on e-learning, intelligence gathering | EPIC
• Gaming and software companies fragged by child privacy class action | Lexology
• Apple, Facebook, and other companies ask Supreme Court to block warrantless cellphone tracking | The Verge
• Building America’s Trust Act would amp up privacy concerns at the border | Ars Technica
• US voting machine supplier leaks 1.8 million Chicago voter records | Gizmodo

See this week’s privacy updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.

Net Neutrality

• Net neutrality investment study used ‘corrupted, made up data’ | Inside Sources
• How the end of net neutrality could affect your wallet | US News & World Report
• FCC extends net neutrality comment period by two weeks (Aug 30) | The Verge

Internet Filters

• Academic freedom triumphs over internet filtering policy | OIF Blog; “Peg Johnson, the library director at Santa Fe Community College, explains how she worked to change the campus’ policy on filtering content on the library’s computers.”

Academic Freedom/ Campus Speech

• White nationalist Richard Spencer’s request to speak at U. of C. rejected | DNA Info
• U. of Florida denies white supremacist Richard Spencer’s request for event space | The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Wisconsin’s crackdown on student hecklers | Newseum Institute
• The ‘Free Speech’ Hypocrisy of Right-Wing Media  The New York Times
• Authority is constructed and contextual | OIF Blog

First Amendment Issues

• Interactive Constitution: The meaning of free speech | The Constitution Center
• Eighth Circuit upholds Nebraska Funeral Picketing Statute in first amendment challenge | Constitutional Law Prof Blog
• A Bill Intended to Stop Sex Trafficking Could Significantly Curtail Internet Freedom | Slate
• VDARE conference planned in Colorado Spring canceled amid uproar over white supremacists | Denver Channel
• The states trying to pass laws protecting drivers who hit protesters | CityLab
• White Supremacists are waging a war against public space | Citylab
• New media and the messy nature of reporting on the Alt-Right | Wired
• The Chilling Effects of Openly Displayed Firearms | The Atlantic
• Protest is legal. Intimidation is different | Crain’s Chicago Business

Hate Speech:

• Charlottesville is reshaping the fight against online hate | The Verge
• Supreme Court unanimously reaffirms: There is no ‘ hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment | The Washington Post (article from June 19, 2017)
• Facebook’s hate speech policies censor marginalized users | Wired
• There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment | The Boston Globe
• What we learn from government speech about hate | Lawfare Blog
• Europe polices hate speech; time for the U.S. to do so, too | San Francisco Chronicle
• National revulsion over the Charlottesville march shows why we shouldn’t ban hate speech | Vox
• ‘Freedom’ is best response to white supremacy hatemongers | Newseum Institute
• The problem with making hate speech illegal | Foreign Policy Voice
• The Daily Stormer’s last defender in tech just dropped it | Wired
• Who are the antifa?: President Trump equated them with the white supremacists. Here’s why he’s wrong. | The Washington Post
  • The rise of the violent left | The Atlantic
  • What Trump gets wrong about antifa | The Atlantic

• ACLU of California splits from national group regarding speech that promotes violence | Talking New Media
  • In backing Alt-Right, A.C.L.U. embraces role in defending ‘groups we detest’ | The New York Times
  • ACLU takes heat for its free-speech defense of white supremacist group | CNN Politics

Around the Web

• A Texas assistant principal wrote an alt-right children’s book | Motherboard
  • Denton school official removed over book’s supremacist symbol | CBS DFW (TX)
• UVA employee suffers a stroke after campus class with white supremacists | The Chronicle of Higher Education; He works at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library.
• FCC censorship rules vary for broadcast, cable, and streaming | Variety
• Escondido library privatization? No: Maintain public control | The San Diego Union-Tribune (CA)
• Libraries obsolete? No way, say Millennials. | The Christian Science Monitor
• The problem with reading levels | OIF Blog

International Issues

• Fanny Hill: Why would anyone ban the racy novel about ‘a woman of pleasure’? | The Guardian (UK)
• 250-year-old novel banned by a university because it’s ‘too racy’ | The London Economic
• It matters that school libraries are closing – not just for reading but for helping young lives in need | iNews (UK)

ALA News

• ALA condemns racism and violence in Charlottesville | ALA news
• Online Webinar: Back to School | Tuesday, Aug 29 @ 1 pm Central; Will feature new books and an update on Banned Books Week
• New e-Forum 9/5: Power that is Moral: Cataloging and Ethics | ALCTS; ”
  At ALA Annual in June 2017, Elizabeth Shoemaker and Violet Fox spoke at the CaMMS Forum about “Power That Is Moral: Creating a Cataloging Code of Ethics”. This e-Forum is designed to continue that discussion about creating a document that would help guide ethical cataloging decisions.”

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