Books and Reading
The 75 Best Book Covers of 2018 According to Book Cover Designers
“2018 has been many things, but it certainly has not been lacking in great book cover design. Here at Lit Hub, we unpacked the biggest book cover trend of the year, compared US covers to their UK counterparts, and remembered the best and worst covers of Lolita as well as Edward Gorey’s own cover designs. We gave you a brief visual history of Virginia Woolf’s book covers and treated you to 100 covers for One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
https://lithub.com/the-75-best-book-covers-of-2018/
Freedom of Information
U.S. Courts Are Figuring Out if the Government Can Block You On Facebook
“In the last two years, there’s been a cascade of lawsuits in the U.S. against public officials who have blocked people on social media and deleted critical comments. The list starts with the highest one in the country, president Donald Trump, and goes all the way down to a county board chair.”
https://www.bespacific.com/u-s-courts-are-figuring-out-if-the-government-can-block-you-on-facebook/
Internet Access
A Report From the Frontlines of the Net Neutrality Litigation
“Reasonable. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
In March of 2018, CDT filed a legal challenge to the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) order in which the FCC removed all of the net neutrality rules it had put in place in 2015. The Commission also reclassified broadband internet access services (BIAS) as an “information service” subject to the weaker regulatory authority Title I of the Communications Act and disavowed the remaining sources of its own authority to implement such rules at all. Instead, the FCC now relies solely on a weakened transparency requirement and market forces to ensure that ISPs refrain from leveraging their gatekeeper positions on the internet to control customers’ access to the internet or to exert influence on providers of online services.”
https://cdt.org/blog/a-report-from-the-frontlines-of-the-net-neutrality-litigation/
Libraries
Library of Congress pushing digitization over next 5 years
“The Library of Congress — which dates to Thomas Jefferson — is marching resolutely into the digital age. Recently it released a new, five-year digital plan. Kate Zwaard, the library’s director of digital strategy joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to provide more information.”
Privacy
Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret
“The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.
One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night.
Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html
Social Justice Organizations Challenge Retention of DNA Collected from Hundreds of Thousands of Innocent Californians
Two social justice organizations—the Center for Genetics and Society and the Equal Justice Society—and an individual plaintiff, Pete Shanks, have filed suit against the state of California for its collection and retention of genetic profiles from people arrested but never convicted of any crime. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Law Office of Michael T. Risher represent the plaintiffs. The suit argues that retention of DNA from innocent people violates the California Constitution’s privacy protections, which are meant to block overbroad collection and unlawful searches of personal data.
It’s time for a Bill of Data Rights
“It is the summer of 2023, and Rachel is broke. Sitting in a bar one evening, browsing job ads on her phone, she gets a text message. Researchers doing a study on liver function have gotten her name from the bar’s loyalty program—she’d signed up to get a happy-hour discount on nachos. They’re offering $50 a week for access to her phone’s health data stream and her bar tab for the next three months.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612588/its-time-for-a-bill-of-data-rights/
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The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Communications Committee, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, Special Libraries Association
