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The New York City Mayor's Race: Analog Candidates in a Digital World

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, June 18 2013

If New York techies (yes, Adolfo, that word is okay) came to a technology policy forum in Queens Monday night expecting to be shown respect and consideration by people competing for their vote, they left wanting. (Two heavyweight candidates, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former Comptroller William Thompson Jr., did not even show up.) Monday night, hosted by the Coalition for Queens and a smattering of local Democratic and technology groups, wasn't about showing which mayoral candidate knows the most about technology. It was about showing which candidate has the combination of temperament, intellect and leadership skill to work with the city's technology community and lead global a city in the 21st century. That's a test no candidate for mayor of New York has passed so far. Read More

On Rob Ford's Facebook Page, Wisecracks Don't Last Long

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, May 28 2013

Even as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford faces increased pressure over his alleged crack use, his staff is trying to maintain order on his Facebook page, according to Vice. Closer to techPresident headquarters, a candidate for mayor of New York City is taking a more hands-off approach as Facebook visitors crack wise in comments on his posted photos. Read More

Anthony Weiner Launches NYC Mayoral Campaign Online With An Image of Pittsburgh

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, May 23 2013

Former Congressman Anthony Weiner waxed lyrical about New York City in a YouTube video as he launched his bid to be the city's next mayor on Wednesday, but he did it against a backdrop that turned out to be the skyline ... Read More

From the PDF Archives: Anthony Weiner, Digital Prophet

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 23 2013

Before former Congressman Anthony Weiner announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City in a web video released late at night, before his Twitter habits with young women ended his career in the House, he was an online media skeptic — and, in a way, he prophesied exactly the role that media would play in the end of his first act on the political stage. In video from our archive of Personal Democracy Forum 2004, where Weiner was a speaker, he dismisses blogs as unnecessary in his district because there was "no lack of intimacy" between him and his constituents. Read More

One Congressional Subcommittee's Head-Scratching Look at Online Privacy and the Law

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, June 19 2012

What should government do about how our online and private lives intersect? Photo: Debubuntu

In a world where people share what they had for breakfast on Twitter and mobile apps of all kinds can keep track of your fitness level, your finances, your political beliefs and your physical location, one might ask whether such a thing as a "reasonable" expectation of privacy still exists. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, certainly thinks so. At least, that's what he said Tuesday during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on privacy. Chaffetz and his terms-of-service-reading colleagues gathered to hear from industry representatives about how they might best manage privacy in a mobile-app-driven world. It was the latest installment in an ongoing search for answers to a few basic questions that are bedeviling this particular moment in the Internet age: What are our expectations of privacy? And do we need any new laws to define those expectations? Read More

Andrew Breitbart, Who Pushed the Edge of Online Political Journalism, Has Died

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, March 1 2012

Andrew Breitbart speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2012. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

The controversial rightwing online publisher Andrew Breitbart died early this morning, his website BigJournalism.org reports. Brietbart had been an editor at the Drudge Report and helped launch the Huffington Post before starting his own mini-empire of websites Breitbart.tv, BigJournalism, BigGovernment, BigHollywood and BigPeace. Read More

What Do Michele Bachmann and Ozzy Osbourne Have In Common?

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, July 20 2011

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ozzy Osbourne are both riding the crazy train straight to the bank, political science professor Justin Buchler suggests in a new article in "The Forum," a Berkeley Electronic Press ... Read More

But This Congressman Called the Cops, So His Twitter Hacking Scandal Is Maybe Less Scandalous

BY Nick Judd | Friday, July 15 2011

Politico reports that Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)'s Twitter account may have been hacked Wednesday night, and his Twitter profile image replaced with "a heavily Photoshopped image of a naked man." Unlike Rep. Anthony ... Read More

Faults and Defaults: How Twitter's Settings Tripped Up Weiner

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, June 13 2011

Veteran tech journalist Steven Levy has a useful backgrounder up on Wired.com on how Twitter's default settings for following and messaging other users tripped up congressman Anthony Weiner. Levy's key point: requiring ... Read More

Engaging the Public vs Engaging the Pubic

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, June 9 2011

For some time now, those of us who work in networked politics have been arguing that it was time for the relationship between government officials and the public to change. The internet's economics of abundance--of time, ... Read More

News Briefs

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Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

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monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

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friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

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A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

wednesday >

New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

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Macedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"

The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.

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