So, the Washington Post apparently brought to the attention of DC Mayor Adrian Fenty's office a stream of impolitic Twitter postings made by a District government summer employee in which the contractor called "ghetto" the Anacostia area he was serving as part of the Summer Youth Employment Program. The staffer was subsequently fired. There's a lesson in there about the changing expectations of employee behavior in the context of our new transparent and participatory age. But the gem of the piece has to instead be the judgment rendered by former DC mayor and current Ward 8 councilmember Marion Barry, who represents Anacostia:

You can excuse one [tweet], but he has a series of them. It's excessive.

Government has to have standards.

For those of you in Washington DC or able to get yourself there on short notice, 2009's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is happening at George Washington University this week. There's still time to register, and it's worth it. CFP has a long and rich history of bringing together hackers and hacktavists with government officials and others working inside the system -- going back to the days when all would eye one another with a tremendous amount of suspicion. Relations are a bit warmer these days, but there's still a tremendous amount to discuss. This year's theme is "Creating the Future." You'll get a chance to hear from the people working in the trenches trying to build a vibrant and secure digital tomorrow.

I have the honor of moderating what should prove to be a great session on the topic of Online Activism Around the World, to be held Thursday at 10:45am. The panel will feature Join the Impact's Michael Bolognino, Internet goverance research Ralf Bendrath, Yahoo! Fellow and Vote Report India lead Guarav Mishra, and Basem Fathy of Egypt's Wadi Environmental Science Center. From the program: "Activists from Egypt, Europe, India, and the United States discuss the challenges that activists face in these diverse places. The panelists will identify the tools that they used in their online activism campaigns, as well as the lessons that they learned from their experiences, in order to identify successful strategies as well as areas for improvement." If you attend CFP '09, hope you'll come by our session.