Reposted from chooseprivacyweek.com

Tomorrow, May 1, begins our annual observance of Choose Privacy Week. It’s an event that invites everyone to visit their local library and learn more about the importance of protecting your privacy rights in an age of pervasive surveillance.

During Choose Privacy Week, libraries will offer individuals the opportunity to learn, think critically, and make more informed choices about their privacy by offering special resources and sponsoring programs and other special events.

ALA itself will mark Choose Privacy Week with a special online forum that will feature guest commentaries by noted privacy experts and advocates. The forum will be part of this blog, “Voices for Privacy.”  Participants in the online forum include:

• J. Douglas Archer, Librarian at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the ALA-IFC Privacy Subcommittee
• Khaliah Barnes, Administrative Law Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
• Mitra Ebadolahi, Nadine Strossen Fellow, the ACLU National Security Project
• Rachel Levinson-Waldman, counsel to the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice
• Lew Maltby, President, National Workrights Institute
• Joyce McIntosh, library consultant, editor, and former Outreach and Assistive Technology Librarian at Elmhurst Public Library
• Deborah Peel, MD, Patient Privacy Rights and the Coalition for Patient Privacy
• Chip Pitts, Lecturer, Stanford Law School and former Chief Legal Officer of Nokia, Inc.

If you’re planning Choose Privacy Week activities, you’ll find a wealth of resources here on our redesigned website, including free, downloadable PDF edition of the Choose Privacy Week Resource Guide. The Resource Guide contains out-of-the-box activities, events and other suggestions for educating and engaging library users on privacy issues and features several age-specific lesson plans and activities for children and youth.

In addition, a free recording of the April 9 webinar, “Choose Privacy Week Programming @ Your Library,” is now available. The webinar features a panel of librarians and privacy experts discussing ideas and tools for privacy-related programming and outreach.

We’ve also got downloadable banners, web badges, and social media images for privacy mavens who want to promote Choose Privacy Week. The hashtag for Choose Privacy Week is #chooseprivacy.

Also available as “programming in a box” are three Choose Privacy Week documentaries. These documentaries, available as streaming High Definition video, examine the many facets of privacy, government surveillance, and civil liberties and provide a great “jumping off” point for library programs that discuss privacy issues.

• “Choose Privacy” features youth, parents, librarians, and citizens discussing privacy in a digital age, with commentary by author Neil Gaiman and constitutional law scholar Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago.
• “Vanishing Liberties: The Rise of State Surveillance in the Digital Age” examines the government’s growing use and abuse of surveillance tools to track and spy on immigrant communities and the proposals to adopt these same tools to monitor and track the activities of all Americans.
• “Data Mining, Government Surveillance, and Civil Liberties” features Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel for national security and privacy and former FBI agent.

Remember: the campaign to raise awareness about the importance of privacy rights isn’t limited to just one week. Libraries, schools, and community groups can sponsor programs year round. Let us know what you need — just get in touch by calling or writing Deborah Caldwell-Stone in the Office for Intellectual Freedom at (312) 280-4224 or dstone@ala.org. Additionally, you can follow@privacyala on Twitter and visit www.facebook.com/chooseprivacyweek.