ALA Council

 
September 3, 2021 - Collated by OIF Staff and News Editor on the Intellectual Freedom Blog

Highlights

• IFRT accepting nominations for 2022 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award

Censorship

• Gillette residents call for controversial library books to be moved | Powell Tribune
• Leander ISD board adopts policy changes after high school book club title review | Community Impact
• "The Bluest Eye" remains a point of contention in Chelsea | The Sun Times News
• Nashville school board pledges to fight racism, white privilege amid critical race theory ban | Tennessean
• Cedarburg mural removed by school board reborn [off-site] in Grafton | FOX6
• Ahead of First Friday Pride Parade, Carbondale leaders rebuke letter sent to business owners | Aspen Daily News
• Woman Calls for Banning of LGBTQ Books at Indy Public Library | WKFR
• Teachers protest bills targeting critical race theory, race education | ABC News
• 'Afraid to teach': School's book ban targeted Black, Latino authors | York Dispatch
• Whitefish Bay tax levy passes overwhelmingly after effort by some parents to stop it over how race is taught | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Privacy & Cybersecurity

• The US Army is using a controversial facial-recognition technology that uses images from social media to identify people, documents show | Business Insider
• The Surveillance State That the U.S. Left Behind in Afghanistan | New Republic
  • This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban | MIT Technology Review
  • The Taliban Reportedly Have Control of US Biometric Devices -- a Lesson in Life-and-Death Consequences of Data Privacy | Nextgov
• Why college students need to use a VPN -- and how to pick the right one | USA Today
• An Explosion in Geofence Warrants Threatens Privacy Across the US | WIRED
• Data privacy laws in the US protect profit but prevent sharing data for public good – people want the opposite | The Conversation
• A Technical Explainer on Apple's Concerning Privacy Changes | New America
  • Normalizing Surveillance | Lawfare
  • Apple delays plans to roll out CSAM detection in iOS 15 | TechCrunch
• Defenders of patron Privacy: After challenging the Patriot Act, four librarians reflect on privacy in the digital age | American Libraries

More privacy news is available at the Voices for Privacy blog.

First Amendment, Free Speech, & Civil Liberties

• Supreme Court Struggles With Campus Speech Question in Recent Decision | Intellectual Freedom Blog
• GOP bans on school masks draw federal civil rights challenges | Politico
• Are Censures of Politicians a Form of Free Speech or a Threat to It? | The New York Times
• Divided Supreme Court leaves Texas abortion law in place | PBS News / AP News
• Federal judge says Alabama laws against panhandling violate 1st Amendment | Advance Local
• Colorado judge reopens lawsuit of Muslim inmate alleging First Amendment violations | Denver Gazette
• Updated: Virginia Supreme Court rejects Loudoun Schools' appeal to reinstate suspended teacher | Loudoun Times-Mirror
• Settlement reached in ACLU's First Amendment lawsuit against Woonsocket mayor | Boston Globe
• We Work at the A.C.L.U. Here's What We Think About Vaccine Mandates. | The New York Times
• Perspective: Protect assembly and petition by preserving listening at public meetings | Freedom Forum

Net Neutrality & Broadband

• New PLA Survey Highlights Role of Libraries in Digital Equity | American Libraries
• Infrastructure Bill Passed by Senate Includes Historic, Bipartisan Broadband Provisions | Pew Charitable Trusts

Copyright

• The Federal Circuit Has Another Chance to Get it Right on Software Copyright | EFF

Academic Freedom & Campus Speech

• New legislation puts into question what universities can and cannot teach | Iowa State Daily
• Tracking Attacks on Scholars' Speech | Inside Higher Ed
  • The Limitations of FIRE's Database | Inside Higher Ed

Social Media

• YouTube suspends payments to Brazilian accounts over election disinformation | Reuters
• The rise of Rumble, the conservative alternative to YouTube | Deseret News
• Texas Senate Passes Bill That Would Punish Social Media Companies For Alleged Political Censorship | Houston Public Media
  • Texas is about to pass a new law Republicans say will stop censorship of conservatives on Facebook, Twitter | USA Today
• About half of Americans use social media to follow COVID-19 vaccine news | Pew Research Center

Journalism & Media

• Partisan divides in media trust widen, driven by a decline among Republicans | Pew Research Center
• Beyond Atonement: CJR looks back at its coverage of race over six decades | Columbia Journalism Review

Information Literacy & Disinformation

• Disinformation in a time of Covid-19: Anti-vaxxer media coverage | Maverick Citizen
• Truth Seekers Summit: 'Weapons of Mass Disinformation' | Rolling Stone
• Reddit Moderators Demand The Platform Take Action Against Covid Disinformation | Forbes
  • Dozens Of Subreddits Go Private To Protest Reddit's Covid Disinformation Policy | Forbes
  • Reddit Bans Controversial Covid Subreddit After Users Protest Disinformation | Forbes
• Conservative hoaxers face record $5.1 million fine for election robocalls that spread disinformation | WLWT
• How can we use technology to weed out online disinformation? | The Star
• Fighting vaccine disinformation is crucial to ending the pandemic | CNN

International News

• Canadian ISP takes web-blocking debate to the country's Supreme Court | Complete Music Update
• The CCTV that has to spot a face in 22 million | The Times
• First they came for Kama Sutra | Times of India
• Egypt orders removing books, publications inciting violence from mosques nationwide in 2 weeks | Egypt Today
• Banned and blocked: LGBT+ websites censored from Russia to Indonesia | Thomson Reuters Foundation
• The Israeli Activists Putting Orthodox Women Back in the Picture | Haaretz
• Russia's Internet censors demands Google, Apple remove an opposition app from their stores | The Washington Post

Around the Web

• Book Review: You Can't Say That! | Intellectual Freedom Blog
• The New Puritans | The Atlantic
• Hate crimes in US rise to highest level in 12 years, says FBI report | The Guardian
• An App Called Libby and the Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books | The New Yorker
• Advancing the Autistic Community: Three Helpful Approaches | NISO
• An Illustrated Guide to Post-Orwellian Censorship | MIT Press Reader
• 'I Helped Destroy People': Terry Albury, an idealistic F.B.I. agent, grew so disillusioned by the war on terror that he was willing to leak classified documents -- and go to prison for doing it. | The New York Times
• Censorship discussion overshadows new Pasadena Unified coronavirus protocols | Pasadena Star News
• Virginia school board to pay $1.3 million in transgender student's suit | NBC News
• 3rd conservative radio host who condemned vaccines dies of Covid | Politico
• FBI Bankrolled Publisher of Occult Neo-Nazi Books, Feds Claim | Vice
• Danbury officer suspended for remarks during library run-in | AP
• The Only Bookstore on Najafi Street | Atlas Obscura
• Mrs. Kasha Davis brings 'Drag Story Hour' to TV with new kids' show | Rochester City Newspaper
• Ypsilanti mother pens memoir, "I Was a Stripper Librarian: From Cardigans to G-Strings" | Michigan Live
• Netflix's 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' Ushers in a New Era of Horny Literary Adaptations | InsideHook

ALA News

• Robert (Jay) Malone named executive director of ACRL
• National survey finds libraries play expanded role in digital equity, bridging gaps in access to technology
• Run for ALA office by filing an electronic petition
• ALA Announces New Endowment Trustees
• Scholarship Application Now Open
• Eleven libraries recognized in American Libraries' 2021 Library Design Showcase
• ALA invites libraries to apply for Let's Talk About It: Women's Suffrage humanities discussion project
• Applications open for 2022 Virtual Bill Morris Seminar: Book Evaluation Training
• AASL Partners with Pokémon to Offer Pokémon Clubs
• Congressional Hispanic Caucus endorses Build America's Libraries Act

More ALA News

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