International Outlook:
Solidarity with Charlie Hebdo? Subscribe!
What can anyone do in response to the horrific murders of twelve persons associated with the French weekly Charlie Hebdo?
One way of expressing solidarity with the victims, and opposition to the killers, would be to purchase a subscription to the satirical (often deliberately offensive) publication, whether for yourself or for a local library. In the U.S., subscriptions to Charlie Hebdo are conveniently available through Amazon.com. The surviving staff said that next week’s issue will be published on schedule.
http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2015/01/charlie-hebdo/.
Russia plans to launch national digital library in 2015
Work on developing electronic libraries across Russian is soon to begin, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said last week. At a joint meeting of the State Council and the Presidential Council on Culture and the Arts, Medinsky said that the new initiative will transform local libraries into modern information and cultural hubs, adding that citizens’ access to the service will be via the internet with a single electronic library ticket. "Next year we will launch a national electronic library, set to be the largest collection of online texts, books, magazines and so on [in Russia]," Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky told regional governors.
http://calvertjournal.com/news/show/3493/russia-plans-to-launch-national-digital-library-in-2015.
Saudi Arabia: Free Speech Doesn’t Apply Here
ust two days after issuing a condemnation of the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, the government of Saudi Arabia began carrying out a public flogging against blogger Raif Badawi, who in May was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. While Saudi Arabia is decrying terrorist attacks on the media in France, it’s using its own “anti-terror” laws to convict free speech advocates. And despite its close alliance with the United States, the Saudi government has ignored US urgings and carried out the flogging.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/saudi-arabia-free-speech-doesnt-apply-here.
———————————-
Privacy Issues:
USPS Breach Could Have Compromised Health Data for 485K Workers
The U.S. Postal Service has reported that about 485,000 current and former employees’ health information might have been compromised in a breach the agency reported in November 2014. USPS reported an information systems breach that affected about 800,000 employees and 2.9 million customers. During the breach, hackers were able to access affected individuals': Addresses, Dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. In a statement, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer said the agency has taken "steps to obtain current addresses for as many affected employees as possible through private contractors who used, among other sources, the Postal Service’s own National Change of Address database."
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2015/1/6/usps-breach-could-have-compromised-health-data-for-485k-workers.
State Courts Strike Blows to Criminal DNA Collection Laws in 2014 – What to Look for in 2015
2014 was a banner year for DNA cases. In the wake of Maryland v. King-the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case upholding warrantless, suspicionless DNA collection from arrestees under Maryland state law-the constitutionality of DNA collection in the criminal context has continued to present challenging issues for courts. Many of the courts that addressed DNA collection in 2014 followed the Supreme Court’s reasoning in King and held that DNA profiling upon arrest is a means of "identification" because it might help law enforcement to learn about a person’s past criminal behavior. For example, in Haskell v. Harris, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed a challenge to California’s DNA collection law, which requires DNA collection from all individuals arrested for a felony, and upheld the statute’s constitutionality in light of King.
However, late in 2014, in People v. Buza, the California Court of Appeal refused to follow this path. Instead, it held that California’s DNA Act (the same statute the Ninth Circuit addressed in Haskell), "unreasonably intrudes such arrestees’ expectation of privacy" and therefore violates the search and seizure provision of the California Constitution, California’s equivalent to the Fourth Amendment. Although the California Court of Appeal’s opinion is thorough and welcome, several of the facts the court focuses on may change as technology advances, and this could undermine the applicability of the court’s decision in future cases.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/state-courts-strike-blows-criminal-dna-collection-laws-2014-what-look-2015.
Writers Say They Feel Censored by Surveillance
A survey of writers around the world by the PEN American Center has found that a significant majority said they were deeply concerned with government surveillance, with many reporting that they have avoided, or have considered avoiding, controversial topics in their work or in personal communications as a result.
A survey of writers around the world by the PEN American Center has found that a significant majority said they were deeply concerned with government surveillance, with many reporting that they have avoided, or have considered avoiding, controversial topics in their work or in personal communications as a result. The findings show that writers consider freedom of expression to be under significant threat around the world in democratic and nondemocratic countries. Some 75 percent of respondents in countries classified as "free," 84 percent in "partly free" countries, and 80 percent in countries that were "not free" said that they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about government surveillance in their countries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/arts/writers-say-they-feel-censored-by-surveillance.html.
———————————-
Public Policy:
OITP releases report exploring policy implications of 3D printing
3D printers can do incredible things – from creating food, to rendering human organs, to building spare parts for the International Space Station. A small but growing number of libraries make 3D printers available as a library service. Library users are building functioning prosthetic limbs, creating product prototypes and making educational models for use in classwork.
While 3D printing technology is advancing at a meteoric pace, policymakers are just beginning to develop frameworks for its use. This presents the library community with an exciting opportunity—as providers of 3D printing services to the public, we can begin to shape the policy that coalesces around this technology in the years to come. To advance this work, ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) today released "Progress in the Making: 3D Printing Policy Considerations through the Library Lens," a report that examines numerous policy implications of 3D printing, including those related to intellectual property, intellectual freedom and product liability.
http://www.districtdispatch.org/2015/01/oitp-releases-report-exploring-policy-implications-3d-printing/.
Downward Trend Continues in Enforcement of Environmental Standards
Don’t be surprised if you missed hearing about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual report on its compliance and enforcement efforts for fiscal year (FY) 2014. The report, released the week before Christmas with little public or media attention, highlights what has become a disturbing downward trend over the past several years. Reductions in enforcement can mean less compliance with pollution control requirements and more exposure to toxic chemicals, putting human health and natural resources at risk. The number of federal inspections carried out by EPA in FY 2014 was more than 25 percent below 2010 levels. The number of enforcement cases that EPA brought against polluters for failing to comply with federal standards has continued a four-year decline, with particularly steep drops over the past two fiscal years.
http://www.foreffectivegov.org/blog/downward-trend-continues-enforcement-environmental-standards.
———————————-
Freedom of Information:
Google: The reluctant censor of the Internet
When we think of online censorship, the first thing that comes to mind is totalitarian governments like China. But Google is one of the biggest unofficial Internet censors in the world. In order for Google to operate in the 219 countries and territories it does business in, the search giant has to obey local laws and rules — many of which require Google to remove certain content from its search results and other sites.
So in Turkey, Google takes down links to sites that defame the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — that’s illegal there. In Thailand, denigrating the Thai monarch is against the law, so Google blocks YouTube videos in Thailand that ridicule King Bhumibol Adulyadej. And in Germany, France and Poland, where it is illegal to publish pro-Nazi material or content that denies the Holocaust, Google does not display links to certain sites on its search results pages. Governments asked Google to remove 39,374 items from its search results, YouTube and other sites in 2013, according to the company’s most recent transparency report. On top of that, copyright holders asked Google to take down 36.5 million links, videos and other items. Google controls nearly two-thirds of the world’s search results, making it one of the biggest Internet gateways for more than a billion people around the world. That’s why Google attempts to be transparent about the content it removes from the Web.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/04/technology/google-censorship/index.html.
———————————-
Internet Access:
UGA Media Archives improves access to rare Nixon interview footage
The University of Georgia Libraries is using new technology to improve access to more than 30 hours of rare videotaped interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon. The videotapes had been largely unseen outside of the group that produced them in 1983. The interviews-with full transcription-have been made available online. The interviews are an oral history of the former president’s life, from his childhood to his decision to resign the presidency.
http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/uga-media-archives-rare-nixon-footage/.
———————————-
Intellectual Property Issues:
Sorry iPhone Users: Apple’s Dev Agreement Means No EFF Mobile App for iOS
Today we [Electronic Frontier Foundation] launched a new app that will make it easier for people to take action on digital rights issues using their phone. The app allows folks to connect to our action center quickly and easily, using a variety of mobile devices. Sadly, though, we had to leave out Apple devices and the folks who use them. Why? Because we could not agree to the outrageous terms in Apple’s Developer Agreement and Apple’s DRM requirements.
As we have been saying for years now, the Developer Agreement is bad for developers and users alike. Here are a few of the terms that we are worried about:
Ban on Public Statements: Section 10.4 prohibits developers from making any "public statements" about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not "Apple Confidential Information" as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking "publicly" about them.
Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would "enable others" to reverse engineer, the software development kit (SDK) or iPhone OS.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/sorry-iphone-users-apples-dev-agreement-means-no-eff-mobile-app-iphone.
———————————-
Libraries:
Siobhan A. Reardon: LJ’s 2015 Librarian of the Year
She engineered the creation of an ambitious, five-year strategic plan, underpinned by a powerful mission to advance literacy, guide learning, and inspire curiosity through the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP). Siobhan A. Reardon had been in the director’s chair for less than a month when FLP was handed a 20 percent cut and branch hours were drastically reduced. Library state funding was slashed by 34 percent. In 2010, with funding trickling back into the budget, FLP launched a two-year process to formalize a new strategic plan. "We agreed that we had to stop trying to be all things to all people; we just didn’t have the money," Reardon says.
Instead, her plan refocused the role of the library, identifying five target populations (job seekers, entrepreneurs, new Americans, children under five, and people with disabilities). The plan outlines a cluster model to streamline and enhance neighborhood library services, share resources and staff among neighborhood libraries, and collaborate with community leaders to develop programs and services most needed by residents. "Siobhan Reardon models external focus and is never content to duplicate yesterday’s achievements," says FLP Foundation board chair Dichter.
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/01/awards/siobhan-a-reardon-ljs-2015-librarian-of-the-year/.
———————————-
Publishing:
Shorter, better, faster, free: Blogging changes the nature of academic research, not just how it is communicated
One of the recurring themes (from many different contributors) on the LSE Impact of Social Science blog is that a new paradigm of research communications has grown up — one that de-emphasizes the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster, real-time academic communication. Blogs play a critical intermediate role. They link to research reports and articles on the one hand, and they are linked to from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+ news-streams and communities. So in research terms blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now. But in addition, STEM scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars all have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to the wider world. Academic blogging gets your work and research out to a potentially massive audience at very, very low cost and relative amount of effort.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/12/28/shorter-better-faster-free/.
———————————-
Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.
The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.