Reading Homeland by Cory Doctorow brings up many themes about the NSA, Privacy, and Edward Snowden.
June 5th‘ marks the anniversary of Snowden disclosing thousands of classified documents, and Fight for the Future is organizing a campaign to educate internet users about security, and encourage the use of free privacy tools.
Sunday‘ the New York Times ran an article about NSA who are creating a database of photos for facial recognition software.
Historically Libraries have been advocates for Intellectual Freedom (check out the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom for more information). We fight for our customer’s rights to have access to information, but as we work with the public, especially teens, we often need to’ teach‘ them how to protect themselves online rather than just have us do the protection for them.
Now is a great opportunity to have programs on internet safety.
Below are some resources you can use to create an internet safety program for your community.
- Onguard Online‘ has a great resource for parents to talk to their children about internet usage.
- Netsmartz by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
- Google Safety
- 4 Net Safety by Sprint
Consider putting print outs or bookmarks about internet safety out with a display of Dystopian Fiction like Cory Doctorow’s books and Web Programming books.
Even if you don’t have time to create a display, consider purchasing the independently produced audio edition‘ of Homeland, exclusively available on Cory Doctorow’s website, and adding it to your Overdrive Downloadable collection.
