C&RL News December 2014 664 Jazzy Wright is press offi cer of the ALA Washington Offi ce, e-mail: jwright@alawash.org W a s h i n g t o n H o t l i n eJazzy Wright Adobe responds to ALA on egregious data breach In October, ALA decried confi rmed reader data breaches by Adobe and called for im- mediate corrective action to encrypt and protect reader information (the Adobe Digital Editions e-book reader application is used by thousands of libraries and many tens of thousands of e-book readers around the globe). Shortly after ALA released a state- ment responding to the data breach, Adobe acknowledged the error and confi rmed that a software update to send data via secure transmission using HTTPS was made avail- able on Friday, October 24, 2014. According to Adobe, users received an update notifi ca- tion via the auto-update mechanism built into the product, and the latest version of the product also can be downloaded. ALA calls on Dept. of Education to include public libraries in early learning intervention model ALA urged the Department of Education in a letter to include public libraries as early learning partners in the Proposed Require- ments for School Improvement Grants. ALA specifi cally asked that the Department of Education include public libraries as eli- gible entities and allowable partners under the new intervention model that focuses on improving early learning educational outcomes. The ALA Offi ce of Government Relations and the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) collaborated on the letter. ALA hosts WIOA webinar In October, more than 1,000 people partici- pated in ALA’s webinar “$2.2 Billion Reasons to Pay Attention to WIOA,” an interactive webinar that focused on ways that public libraries can receive funding for employment skills training and job search assistance from the recently passed Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). During the webinar, leaders from the Department of Education and the Department of Labor explored the new federal law. WIOA allows public libraries to be considered additional one-stop partners, prohibits federal super- vision or control over selection of library resources, and authorizes adult education and literacy activities provided by public libraries as an allowable statewide employ- ment and training activity. Media interest in Washington In October, The Washington Post highlighted the library community’s advocacy and lob- bying efforts to protect the public from government intrusion or censorship in the feature-length article “Librarians won’t stay quiet about government surveillance.” The piece included quotes from Carla Hayden, Emily Sheketoff, and members of the Con- necticut Four. It appeared both online and prominently in the Sunday Business section of the print edition of the paper. Register now for ACRL 2015 Registration is now open for the ACRL 2015 conference to be held March 25–28, 2015, in Portland, Oregon. Themed Creat- ing Sustainable Community, the confer- ence features more than 300 carefully curated conference programs to help you stay at the forefront of the profession along with a variety of formal and informal op- portunities to network with more than 3,000 of your peers and colleagues. The early bird registration deadline is February 13, 2015. Complete details, including registration and housing infor- mation, are available at http://conference. acrl.org/registration-pages-169.php.