Sunday, December 15, 2013

Barbara Jones Transcript: ALA and FTRF Mislead Orland Park Public Library

ALA and ILA at OPPL Board meeting 18 Nov 2013. From
left: ALA's Barbara Jones, Deborah Caldwell-Stone,
Esq, Nannette Perez, and ILA's Robert Doyle.
Barbara Jones representing the American Library Association [ALA] spoke at the Orland Park Public Library [OPPL] Board meeting on 18 November 2013.  Below is a transcript.  It contains my intercalated comments.  The comments illustrate the latest example of exactly how ALA intentionally misleads communities into allowing porn in local public libraries despite the law.  Note that the author of the Children's Internet Protection Act has stated I am a "trusted source" on exposing ALA propaganda, so please consider my comments in that light.

If ALA guidance is to be believed by OPPL, OPPL will retain porn viewing despite the law, the community and library employees will suffer further harm, and ALA will tout its success story as a nationwide example, perhaps even adding library director Mary Weimar to its speakers list.  At that point, the Village of Orland Park should step in to force the library to act within the law as there is no veil of autonomy to act outside the law, and I have offered to assist it in doing so, but let's hope justice and common sense prevails.

The actual Barbara Jones speech can be seen/heard in the first five minutes here:



TRANSCRIPT OF ALA'S BARBARA JONES 
ORLAND PARK PUBLIC LIBRARY BOARD MEETING
18 NOVEMBER 2013

Good evening. Can you hear me in the back? Okay.
[N1 NOTE]: The remaining of the speech was largely read from a prepared speech.
My name is Barbara Jones. I am the Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation at the American Library Association in Chicago. I am a citizen of Chicago, but I am speaking for ALA.

Attending with me are Deborah Caldwell-Stone, attorney and Executive Director of OIF; Nanette Perez, Program Officer for Banned Books Week in OIF, and Robert Doyle, the Executive Director of the Illinois Library Association.
[N2 MINOR FALSEHOOD]: Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the current Deputy Director and former Acting Director of OIF [Office for Intellectual Freedom], not the Executive Director: http://www.ala.org/offices/oif 
[N3 NOTE]: The Illinois Library Association holds "attempts to limit access to the Internet in the name of protecting citizens are unconstitutional" : http://www.ila.org/Handbook/2012-13/2012-13_ILA_Handbook_web_7-23-12.pdf
The US Supreme Court ruled the exact opposite in US v. ALA, 539 US 194 (2003), hence it is no surprise Robert Doyle would support OPPL for facilitating porn by defying the law, and no surprise ALA would invite ILA to help pressure OPPL.
American Library Association is the oldest and the largest library association in the world, founded in 1876. We have approximately 65,000 members in all 50 states plus international members.
[N4 MINOR FALSEHOOD]: ALA has 58,000 members, not 65,000: http://www.ala.org/aboutala/annualreport12/about-ala-2011-2012  It is my belief ALA is shrinking in part as a result of librarians tiring of the politicization of ALA; apparently ALA does not want to acknowledge this so it inflates membership numbers.
ALA includes such divisions within ALA as Association for Library Services to Children, the American Association of School Librarians, and the Young Adult Library Services Association.
We do care deeply about and have expertise in library services to children. Many of us are parents ourselves or aunts and uncles or whatever. Um, we’ve worked for many years with libraries and communities just like this one in developing policies and services.
[N5 FALSE]: ALA does not "care deeply about ... library services to children." See: "ALA Mocks 'Protecting the Children'" http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2009/07/ala-mocks-protecting-children.html Further, the organizations ALA named above, ALSC, AASL, and YALSA, evidence that they not only care not a whit about library services to children, but they actively work to thwart such services. Common Sense Media [CSM], an organization having Chelsea Clinton on its board, had a list of books with ratings parents and educators could use to determine what's right for children to read. The list included information about the potential for the sexual inappropriateness of material. ALSC found CSM's list to be so useful it listed it on ALA's Great Websites page. When YALSA learned of this effort to advise parents and educators of the sexual content of books, it forced ALSC to censor the site out of its Great Websites page, then actively worked to blacklist CSM within ALA, state library associations, and library schools, all for providing information about the sexual content of books. See: “YALSA Board of Directors Meeting via Conference Call, August 29, 2013; Intellectual Freedom Committee Report,” by Michael Giller, YALSA Board of Directors, American Library Association, August 2013. http://tinyurl.com/ALAblacklistsCSM  To this day, ALSC has not restored the link to its site.  Further, the porn ALA enables in libraries includes crimes against sexually trafficked children, women and men whose unfortunate circumstances as sex crime victims are recorded and added to the never-ending stream of Internet porn so freely viewed in public libraries with the false claim that people have a First Amendment right to view porn in libraries. See: "Libraries Harm Sex Trafficking Victims If They Allow Porn Viewing; Megan Fox Outs Orland Park Public Library" http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/11/LibrariesHarmVictims.html So ALA does not "care deeply" about library services to children or even about children. Instead, it cares about ensuring children retain access to sexually inappropriate material despite the law, and facilitating this by misleading local communities, as illustrated in Orland Park, IL, or by using censorship or blacklisting or any other means to justify its ends.
[N6 TRUE]: ALA works with libraries nationwide in developing policies. So when ALA or others claim ALA has little influence in local libraries, the ALA is saying otherwise. And the influence it wields is one that ensures children retain access to sexually inappropriate material.  The author of the Children's Internet Protection Act, for example, revealed how ALA controls about a third of American libraries.
Our policies have been quoted in court cases. We would therefore have no motive whatsoever or reason to mislead the libraries, since we take our reputation and our members very seriously. And they do come from all ranges of the political spectrum.
[N7 FALSE]: They have a motive and reason to mislead libraries. The reason ALA needs to mislead libraries is that communities would not naturally expose their children to sexually inappropriate material; they have to be misled into doing it. The motive is the ALA leader who individually created the policy of making sexually inappropriate material to children was a three year board member of the Illinois ACLU who joined ALA and created the "Office for Intellectual Freedom" and the "Freedom To Read Foundation." We are all here discussing inappropriate material in public libraries as a direct result of this one ACLU leader who joined ALA and worked from within to change ALA policy. ALA does not take its reputation seriously. Above I noted that ALA censored and blacklisted Common Sense Media for providing information about the potential for the sexual inappropriateness of material for children. ALA also censors a number of others it opposes politically, such as Robert Spencer of JihadWatch. ALA anonymously used dozens of accounts on Wikipedia to promote a political push for net neutrality that would otherwise be a violation of IRA 501(c)(3) tax code. ALA, Deborah Caldwell-Stone herself, outed the marital infidelity of former MLB Cubs player Alfonso Soriano on Wikipedia, the 5th most viewed web site. ALA plagiarized its "censorship map" from Chris Peterson. ALA did absolutely nothing to substantially help jailed Cuban librarians. ALA fakes its annual top 10 most "banned" books in a manner that brings harm to the LGBT community by falsely claiming rampant discrimination against homosexuals. ALA quietly slips locals money to sway local sentiment, like $1000 in West Bend, WI—it would announce this activity publicly if acted on the up and up and were concerned for its reputation.  ALA acts as a conduit for George Soros's Open Society Foundation to indoctrinate children in public schools with anything the Open Society Foundation wishes under the guise of teaching "privacy."  As to ALA members coming from all ranges of the political spectrum, that is true, but conservative members are routinely squelched. One conservative member, Greg McClay, was even intentionally left off a ballot for an ALA election so he would not be elected. And no librarian being sexually harassed as a result of ALA policy is ever given any assistance by ALA, though librarians who promote inappropriate material to children are given awards and speaking assignments at ALA conferences. And ALA conferences never include conservative speakers. When the Children Internet Protection Act author revealed ALA is misleading up to a third of American communities, ALA's American Libraries printed precious little if anything about that despite the law being the very top reason ALA spent so much of its time and money on a losing effort to try to stop that law.  So while ALA members come from all ranges of the political spectrum, only one range is allowed to be heard by ALA leadership.  Did ALA bring anyone to guide libraries on how other libraries are successfully using filters to block porn and comply with the law?  Of course not.  Stating they have "no motive whatsoever or reason to mislead the libraries" is not the same as proving it.  As terrific reporter Sharyl Attkisson tweeted, "You can often tell by the tone that something else is at play. Why do they try to squelch debate and discussion of issues of public importance?":

I have had the opportunity to visit your beautiful library before tonight and witness the good work you are doing for your community. Your library and staff have always welcomed me, and the layout of your building shows your consideration for children and other users’ special requirements. We are also pleased that you have written policies that are in line with libraries throughout the United States and are very child-protective, not withstanding current hyperbole and negative comments.
[N8 FALSE]: The library's policies are not "very child-protective." Instead, they harm children (and other patrons and librarians). They allow porn viewing despite the law. That porn viewing results in crime, and some of that crime is not even reported to the police. Should the police actually show to do an investigation, they will be delayed by the need to obtain a warrant even though the police and the library work for the same government and should be able to confidentially share records, and by that time the computer records have already been erased as a result of the library following ALA advice to destroy computer records. As a result criminals get off scot free as happens in other libraries that follow ALA policy. So ALA diktat directs libraries to 1) have policies that allow porn viewing and 2) have policies that prevent police forensic investigations. In no way are such policies child protective, let alone "very child-protective."
We were pleased that your local paper, the Patch, has tried to set the record straight about your excellent policies in its recent articles. ALA, NEH, and other library agencies have also been privileged to fund several grants to support your excellent programming, tailored to your diverse population and needs. These grants are highly competitive and Orland Park's continuing success in getting funded is tribute to Mary Weimar and her staff and Board. We are also happy to continue working with you on our annual Choose Privacy Week programs.
[N9 MISLEADING]: That the Orland Park Patch claims the policies are excellent is a result of ALA diktat for libraries to mislead the media: http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/11/ALAMisleads.html Indeed, with regard to the Patch, I had to intervene to have it remove anti-gay statements directed at one of the speakers who opposed porn at the OPPL.  Media misreporting also results from the misleading information from the ALA in discussions with the media, including admonitions not to talk with me that include false information intended as character assassination. I have been told this by at least one media member who suspected he/she was being misled then who later found out I was right on the money. What else is misleading is the fluff about the "highly competitive" grants when in reality about a thousand libraries have received books about the Muslim faith which are gladly provided to any library that asks. And that "annual Choose Privacy Week"? That is actually George Soros's Open Society Institute and money fronted by the ALA spreading Open Society Institute misinformation. Know that the ACLU leader who created ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Freedom To Read Foundation decried a Florida librarian for calling the police on a 911 terrorist. She would have preferred the librarian had followed Florida's library patron privacy law: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/us/nation-challenged-questions-confidentiality-competing-principles-leave-some.html This is the kind of "privacy" ALA is teaching in libraries and school.
It is important that ALA and local libraries revisit their policies regularly, as you do, and we urge the Board and library administration to rely on the legal advice from your attorney. If you need any additional legal assistance, we stand ready to help. We have an attorney on staff, plus an attorney who can read at Freedom To Read Foundation. She has prepared briefs for the United States Supreme Court related to library service and the First Amendment.
[N10 MISLEADING]: The ALA attorneys prepare documents that are 1) losers in court on this issue, such as in US v. ALA, 539 US 194 (2003) case, or 2) misleading such as by making statements that are 100% opposite of the law or other otherwise misleading. ALA trains librarians its view of how to respond to legal challenges. ALA violated the Pennsylvania Court Rules by preventing me from attending its training sessions. So it is advising people basically to see only attorneys willing to write opinions that violate the law, such as by falsely claiming it is a violation of the First Amendment to block pornography from public libraries.  Recently I was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying no library has yet been sued for blocking porn.  ALA's Deborah-Caldwell Stone responded to that by saying that was not true since the Camdenton case was about that.  Only she made that argument up only now as the case was really about blocked LGBT sites.  So saying if you need help we are ready to assist is misleading because you will get advice designed to facilitate porn in libraries, not accurate legal advice.  See: "ALA Admits Libraries Have Never Been Sued for Blocking Porn" http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/11/NeverBeenSued.html  Again, Sharyl Attkisson comes to mind, "Just learn to recognize the language, tone and methods they use and consider their unspoken interests. Then make up your own mind":

Do not rely on hyperbolic statements from Facebook. Nothing substitutes for an attorney when it comes to legal matters. Legal advice on Facebook is worth exactly what you're paying for it.
[N11 MISLEADING]: No one gets legal advice from Facebook. What ALA is really saying is do not investigate legal issues on your own and make your own decisions, rather come to us or our trained attorneys and we will guide you. Later, in the speech by ALA attorney Deborah Caldwell-Stone, that attorney will outright say the law and the issues are too complicated for people to understand so they must rely on ALA or local acolytes for information.  As Sharyl Attkisson tweeted, "Don't let anybody tell you what to think.. or tell you that you shouldn't even listen to a side in a given argument":

We understand from news reports that you are reevaluating your Internet use policies. Research by library professionals shows that filters are not a silver bullet and they can impair access to information that is legal to excess.
[N12 MISLEADING]: True, filters are "not a silver bullet," but that is not the issue.  What is misleading is that the underlying issue has already been asked and answered by the US Supreme Court which stated no filter will ever be perfect; one can simply ask a librarian to temporarily disable the filter.  She is essentially trying to relitigate a matter her ALA already lost in the US Supreme Court by not advising that the Court already addressed this issue, and she is trying to set up a false standard that filters must be perfect before they can be used.  Also, "information that is legal to [ac]cess" is also misleading because that "information" to her includes pornography, but the Court ruled libraries have every right to block pornography. This is part of the word games ALA plays to mislead people.  See: "ALA Misleads on Internet Pornography in Libraries" http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/11/ALAMisleads.html  To evidence the word games, note that Barbara Jones went on Huffington Post to declare library filters do not work and they block breast cancer searches. The very next week she said blocking breast cancer was an old excuse when forced by an NPR affiliate reporter to confront the state and federal cases a library director had just won after six years that allowed him to block porn and keep porn blocked even upon patron request. So she used the "old excuse" just a week before the NPR interview saying otherwise, and now she's back misleading OPPL by saying again that filters don't work when even she was forced to admit they do: http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2012/02/ala-admits-library-filters-work-barbara.html 
Last summer, the Google corporation funded our office to host a conference in Washington, DC, on filters, ten years after the CIPA Supreme Court decision mandated filtering for libraries accepting E-rate discounts. And this, um, meeting was not all librarians, it was experts from, um, an entire spectrum in the United States, and I don’t have time tonight to review all the conclusions from that conference, but the consensus of the participants was that filters are a flawed tool that impair education and access and we'd be happy to provide the white papers or any further information as you make your decision.
[N13 MISLEADING]: As discussed above, filters will never be perfect but the US Supreme Court already addressed the issue by allowing librarians to temporarily disable filters. To now say "filters are a flawed tool that impair education and access" is an attempt to make the exact same argument the ALA already raised and lost.  Libraries themselves are flawed tools that impair education and access, as Megan Fox found out in the OPPL.  Should we get rid of libraries as well?
We stand ready to assist the Board as you deliberately, deliberate these very important decisions.

I commend two excellent analyses besides the Google documents. One from Deborah, the attorney who's here tonight, and one from a practicing public librarian, Sarah Houghton, on what filters can and cannot do. And she does a thorough study every year of all the different filters, all different price ranges or what have you.
[N14 MISLEADING]: That document "from Deborah," the next speaker at the OPPL board meeting, was written within days after ALA was exposed internationally as being one of the nation's top porn facilitators as a result of my reporting on the ALA. So it was literally written in response to me without mentioning me, just like Deborah Caldwell-Stone recently responded to me without mentioning me for my disclosing in the Chicago Tribune that no library has even been sued for blocking porn. That document "from Deborah" contains false and misleading information. It is an example of how ALA refuses to speak about pornography in libraries, instead calling it "constitutionally protected material" while not revealing that the case it lost in the US Supreme Court allows libraries to filter out porn even though "legal" porn is otherwise constitutionally protected material.
[N15 FALSE]: Sarah Houghton has admitted that she had stopped rating filters years back, so to say "she does a thorough study every year" is false, and her past work is years behind the curve in a field that makes leaps and bounds every year; her past work is no longer relevant. Further, Ms. Houghton is a pro porn advocate. She has written about me saying, "Finally, the influence of outside lobbying groups on local Internet filtering policies in libraries should not be understated. Some groups, such as the Values Advocacy Council and SafeLibraries.org, have local affiliate organizations and members that try to get Internet filters into local school and public libraries." That is not what I do but it is what is claimed I do to make it easier to mislead people into filtering me out, so to speak. Regarding the Google symposium on CIPA Barbara Jones mentioned above, Ms. Houghton wrote on her own blog a new post entitled "Symposium on Revisiting the Children’s Internet Protection Act" where I commented online to ask her about how Barbara Jones said Internet filters work, work well, and no longer block health-related information. This is the exact opposite of what her research concludes, it is far more recent, and it comes right from the leader of ALA's "Office for Intellectual Freedom." So I wanted to learn what she thought about that given she is the ALA expert on filtering technology and given she had just answered a question of mine at an ALA webinar. She did not respond as she did at the webinar. Instead, censorship was her first response. She simply deleted my comment. When I wrote again, her second response was personal attack consisting of false statements about supposedly bad behavior and that I "prevent people from having access to Constitutionally protected material." She simply refused to address the issue I raised, that the ALA leader was forced by the Bradburn v. NCRL library director to admit filters work and breast cancer was an old excuse. Instead she responded with 1) censorship, then 2) false and personal attack. Then she removed all past comments of mine and blocked me from following her @TheLIB on Twitter. And this is the ALA's leading expert on filtering technology that Barbara Jones is holding up even in OPPL as providing "excellent analysis." By the way, Ms. Houghton wrote, "Sarah hates filters & filters hate Sarah. It's no secret that I think internet filters are not only unethical and counter to everything librarians believe in, but that filters also don't work for crap." See: http://tinyurl.com/SarahHatesFilters It's no wonder Sarah Houghton is ALA's leading expert on filtering technology and that Barbara Jones recommends OPPL consider her to be most authoritative.
But, nothing, nothing substitutes for librarians and library users working together to find information. And in the case of children, nothing substitutes for librarians, parents, and users working together.
[N16 MISLEADING]: This sounds good, but she is really saying libraries should not use filters at all since "nothing, nothing substitutes for librarians and library users working together." Please understand that ALA intentionally misleads on the definition of censorship and on what should be the mission of public libraries. None other than the author of the Children's Internet Protection Act, who if you'll recall named me as a "trusted source" on the ALA's misinformation, revealed that "Anything goes at the public library. They misdefined the missions of public libraries and they do it in a way that I think most people would totally disagree with, but they couch it in different language so you don’t fully understand what they truly mean." See: http://tinyurl.com/ErnestIstookInterview
And that's exactly what Barbara Jones has done before the OPPL board, misled on censorship and on the public mission of libraries.  As long as librarians keep defining porn as "constitutionally protected material" that must be allowed in public libraries despite the exact opposite being the case per US v. ALA, people will remain exposed to the very harm the law is designed to curtail.  And if local libraries say otherwise, it is time for local governments to act in the manner recommended by none other than the author of the Children's Internet Protection Act, namely, pass local law substantially based on the federal CIPA law to cut off funding until such time as the library begins to comply with the law.  If your local library attorney is saying "constitutionally protected material" may not be blocked from public libraries, now you know were the lie comes from, and it's time to get an attorney willing to abide by his or her rules of professional conduct that disallow providing false legal advice.
Thank you for your attention.

=== End of Transcript of Barbara Jones ===



On Twitter:  @IllLibraryAssoc @IntolerantFox @OIF @OrlandPkLibrary @TheLIB @VillageOrlandPk

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Location: Orland Park Public Library, 14921 South Ravinia Avenue, Orland Park, IL 60462, USA

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