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Bahrain and Belarus named Enemies of the Internet

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, March 13 2012

Reporters without Borders released an updated report yesterday of the countries that it has designated Enemies of the Internet. Read More

On Google+, Peering Over the Great Firewall at Obama's Campaign

BY Raphael Majma | Monday, February 27 2012

Chinese Internet users have started to “occupy” President Barack Obama’s Google+ page. Google+ is normally blocked to users in China, but some users have been able to access the site using mobile devices while others remain unable to access the site at all. Read More

Book cover for Rebecca MacKinnon's "Consent of the Networked"

Book Review: Consent of the Networked

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, February 3 2012

Last night, a crowd of more than one hundred gathered on the sixth floor of MIT's Media Lab to help Rebecca MacKinnon launch her new book, The Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. The audience included net luminaries like Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, and Andrew Newman, the director of the Tor Project, and the discussion was at the same level. Herewith, my thoughts on her book salted by some observations from the event. Read More

On Humor and Being 'Harmonized:' Read This NYTimes Piece on Censorship in China

BY Nick Judd | Monday, October 31 2011

Discovered late, this New York Times Magazine article on the tension between Internet humor and censors in China is well worth a read: To slip past censors, Chinese bloggers have become masters of comic subterfuge, ... Read More

Internet Drives Outrage Over Disaster in China

BY Nick Judd | Friday, July 29 2011

The aftermath of a bullet train crash in eastern China over the weekend is yet another example of the Chinese government's weakening grip on control of public access to information, shaken loose by scandal after scandal ... Read More

China Keeping Tabs on Microbloggers' Organizing, Crude Poems

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, June 9 2011

Chinese authorities are cracking down on perceived challenges that are popping up on 'microblogging' platforms, reports the New York Times' Michael Wines in a pair of articles. They are, reports Wines, objecting to ... Read More

White House Officials Targeted in Gmail Invasion

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, June 3 2011

At a hearing last month, House oversight committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa pressed White House Chief Information Officer Brook Colangelo on whether White House staff might be bringing personal iPads with them to work. ... Read More

Eggs Against the Wall in Beijing

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, May 20 2011

Chinese authorities are reportedly looking for a college student who threw eggs at "the father of the Great Firewall." Read More

Rep. DeLauro Signs Change.org's Call for Clinton to Condemn China DDoS Attacks

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 26 2011

Change.org, the increasingly high-profile political petitioning site, has really banging pots around the story that its systems are being targeted by "Chinese hackers" angered by the more than hundred thousand ... Read More

After Attacks, Change.org Asks 'Where's the State Department?'

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, April 20 2011

Photo credit: Meneer De Braker Yesterday, we noted that Change.org was reporting that it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack originating from China, and was calling on the State Department for help ... Read More

News Briefs

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On Change.org, a Big-Name Call for Dimon's Ouster from New York Fed

The International Monetary Fund's former Chief Economist Simon Johnson is using Change.org to build support for his position that JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon must resign from the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Johnson, a British economist who's a longtime professor at MIT, established the petition on Wednesday. Since then, more than 3,000 people have signed on to support his position. GO

Howard Rheingold on Congress, Digital Literacy, and Making Political Movements

From Congress to the classroom, digital literacy is a key skill that's often sorely lacking, Howard Rheingold, author of the new book "Net Smart: How to Thrive Online," said on Thursday's Personal Democracy Plus call — but there are ways to change that.

Rheingold derided "the degree of technological ignorance" in government and in particular Congress. "It's worse than ignorance," he said. "It's know-nothingness ... it's so endemic." During the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act, members of Congress could often be heard pleading their ignorance of the Internet and its inner workings even as debating legislation that some said would alter the structure of the global communications network.

The call, moderated by TechPresident editorial director Micah Sifry, was recorded and is available online here.

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Should U.N. Politics Affect the Internet?

A key U.S. House subcommittee plans on examining the implications of the U.S. ceding control of key aspects of the global Internet infrastructure next Thursday. The House Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Communications and Technology announced Wednesday that it's going to hold a hearing on proposals at the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union to afford more control over Internet governance to countries other than the United States. GO

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This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

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