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Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway

BY Nick Judd | Friday, May 18 2012

Americans Elect announced recently that it would suspend its online candidate selection process, leaving organizations in several states with an open slot on the ballot. Naturally, potential candidate Buddy Roemer is not enthused. "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here," he says. Read More

Buddy Roemer's Online Gamble

BY Nick Judd and Raphael Majma | Thursday, January 5 2012

Little-known Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer is banking on a digital presence to stay relevant. He's using most of his budget on digital ads, and asks Twitter users to "donate" their accounts to his campaign. Mashable quotes 140elect's Zach Green as saying that 121 people donated their accounts, reaching 62,664 followers. To gear up for the upcoming primary, the Roemer team has bought a week's worth of Facebook ads in New Hampshire, Mashable reports. Read More

Occupy Wall Street Inspires a Moneybomb

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, December 7 2011

Fundly.com Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer hopes that his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement can translate into fundraising support with the launch of a moneybomb initiative, "$99,000 for the 99 percent," ... Read More

Buddy Roemer to Seek Americans Elect 3rd Party Presidential Nomination

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, November 30 2011

The 2012 presidential election just got a lot more interesting. Former Louisiana governor and long-shot Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer has announced that he will seek the nomination of the Americans Elect ... Read More

Cash-Strapped But Hopeful, Buddy Roemer Looks to Build a Base Online

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, November 10 2011

If you tuned into the Republican presidential debates last night, you didn't see Buddy Roemer, the former Louisiana governor. But if you were following along on Twitter, you would have seen him right there in the ... Read More

YouTube and Election 2012: How Are the Candidates Doing?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, September 28 2011

Longtime readers of techPresident know we love looking at YouTube political videos because the site offers so much interesting data about what people are watching, how videos are being shared, and so on. And while we ... Read More

Questions John King Didn't Ask Buddy Roemer at the CNN Republican Primary Debate But Roemer Answered Anyway

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, June 14 2011

Just because someone who may be seeking the Republican presidential nomination doesn't get invited to the big, fancy CNN debate doesn't mean he can't participate. Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer followed along with ... Read More

Buddy Roemer's Hundred Dollar Revolution

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, March 22 2011

Buddy Roemer, the party switching (D-to-R) governor of Louisiana in the late '80s and early '90s, explains to the New York Times' Michael D. Shear that while he might not be "the smartest guy in the world," ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

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Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

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Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

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thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

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wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

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PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

Mike Honda Locks Up Establishment Support, But Challenger Has Ear of the Silicon Valley Elite

Some of Silicon Valley's most influential business people will hold a fundraiser in San Francisco this Thursday for Ro Khanna, the 36-year-old lawyer who's challenging 71-year-old California Democrat Mike Honda for his 17th Congressional District seat. The names at the top of the invite: Ron Conway and Sean Parker. They're apparently forming a committee to help Khanna build his campaign. The other bold-face names who are listed as part of the 'committee in formation' include Salesforce.com's Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Benchmark Capital General Partners' Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, tech entrepreneur Shawn Fanning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, her big data venture investor husband Zach Bogue, and Conway's SV Angel colleague, Founder and Managing Partner David Lee. GO

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