The day after this year's American Library Association conference in San Francisco, the Noisebridge Hackerspace will host lawyers, hackers, librarians, and privacy ninjas in a two-day workshop on reinventing libraries' mission in the age of surveillance.

Librarians in Massachusetts are working to give their patrons a chance to opt-out of pervasive surveillance. Partnering with the ACLU of Massachusetts, area librarians have been teaching and taking workshops on how freedom of speech and the right to privacy are compromised by the surveillance of online and digital communications — and what new privacy-protecting services they can offer patrons to shield them from unwanted spying of their library activity.