ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom #wlic2013

Barbara Jones, Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association gave a presentation in the FAIFE session at the IFLA World library and Information Conference in Singapore. She talked through the current case of Edward Snowden, and the impacts of that, including people in the USA who were not at all "left wing now raising their concerns about the extent to which their phone calls etc. were being monitored. Her talk had a lot of interesting background and detail that I'm afraid went by me too fast to capture fully. The ALA decided to go after the US law, rather than the particular Edward Snowden case. They are concerned about the gradual way in which citizens are losing their rights. They passed an ALA resolution in July and are aiming to reform or repeal part of the Patriot Act. The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom website is here http://www.ala.org/offices/oif and their blog is here http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/ and it is worth following what they are doing They also organise Choose Privacy Week http://www.chooseprivacyweek.org. Like previous speakers she called on IFLA and librarians internationally to take up this issue of privacy and surveillance more robustly.
Image copyright ALA