Most of you probably use Google every day. At times you may wonder  how much information Google is storing about you and what they do with it.  Google’s  CEO says they do everything they can to protect your privacy and actually delete information that can be associated with individual internet activity every 18 months. You can also opt out of some of their data collection procedures when you sign  up for the particular service. The interview below with Google’s CEO reminded me of one of my favorite articles from grad school - Data Retention and the Panoptic Society: The Social Benefits of Forgetfulness. To learn more about Google’s privacy policy listen the the audio interview below. To get an interesting perspective on the value of privacy in democratic societys, visit the link above.

People sometimes ask what Banned Books Week is all about. Banned Books Week  (the last week of September) is a celebration of intellectual freedom and serves as a reminder not to take freedom of thought and expression for granted. You may wonder if books are really banned in this country. No they are not. However, books are “challenged” in schools and public library settings quite frequently. When a book is challenged, a concerned citizen is typically asking for the item to be removed from a library shelf. However, this act is an attempt to censor free speech and reduce the diversity of ideas available to others. Most often people challenge books that do not map on to their own person ideology.

Librarians believe that diversity is important for a vibrant and well-functioning democracy. Our professional ethics require us to resist attempts at restricting access to information or chilling the free speech of fellow citizens, even if we personally disagree with the ideas or opinions expressed. Join us in reading  a book from the Banned Book list and listen to the  prose below to hear one person’s opinion about censorship.

“Burn every word - ideas are incombustable!”

Inflamed rhetoric abounds in the health care debate and this is not the best way to carry on rational discourse about important issues. One problem is that most media outlets have the primary objective of making money so they cater to groups that consume their news. People then pay more attention to  news that maps onto their own personal ideology regardless of the quality or truth of the information. In other words,  people are more attentive to facts that they have a predisposition to believe and media organizations can take advantage of this to make a profit.

Do media organizations always report in this way? No, but it is sometimes difficult to know when this is happening especially when we have our own predispositions interfering. Moreover, many sources of information that people rely on are not news, they are opinion or commentary about the news. That is, people are theorizing or “spinning” the news. The problem with obtaining “news” from “spin doctors” is that they don’t necessarily consider themselves bound by the professional ethics of journalists and the value of ratings may trump the value of truth.   To be literate and informed citizens we need to be vigilant against our own tendencies to agree or disagree without checking the facts. For important issues, never rely on a single source of news and do your best to check the facts. There are a few fact checking sites recognized as being non-partisan - FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com . Think about visiting these sites, explore all sides of issues, and always be skeptical.