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Ukrainian Civic Movement Unveils Online Tool to Monitor Parliament Members

BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, July 30 2012

A new tool for monitoring parliament members' activity is now available online, the Kyiv Post reports. The tool has been created by Chesno (“honest”), a civic movement founded a year ago by a group of civil society organizations with the aim of empowering citizens with information tools and improving their knowledge and political choices. Read More

More On Egypt's 'Nullified Ballots' Campaign

BY Lisa Goldman | Monday, June 25 2012

An Egyptian voter nullified his ballot by sketching Batman in the square next to each candidate's photo (Photo: @wessam_s)

Tens of thousands celebrated at Tahrir Square on Sunday afternoon, as the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi was declared the victor in Egypt's presidential elections. Morsi made history by becoming Egypt's first elected civilian president - and the first Islamist elected head of an Arab state. For other revolutionary activists, however, neither candidate was acceptable. To express their dissent, they organized a Mubtellon ('nullify') Campaign . Participants nullified their ballots with slogans and doodling images on their ballots, photographed them and published the photos on Twitter and Facebook. According to official estimates, more than 800,000 ballots were nullified in this manner. Read More

Ahead of Russian Elections, a Hope that Tech Will Keep Them Clean

BY Raphael Majma | Monday, February 27 2012

Polls are currently predicting that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will win the March 4 first round Presidential election by a comfortable margin, and some online activists are hoping that their election-monitoring projects — using apps, crowdsourcing and online training — will keep the election clean.

The Europe Roundup: The Pirate Party in the Berlin Parliament: Trolling the Government?

BY Antonella Napolitano | Tuesday, November 29 2011

Germany | The Pirate Party in the Berlin Parliament: Trolling the Government? Two months ago the Berlin chapter of the Pirate Party registered an amazing result by winning 15 seats in the Parliament of the State. The ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: Ushahidi-Based Websites Spread to Fight Corruption

BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, September 15 2011

Bulgaria | shahidi-Based Websites Spread to Fight Corruption Several Eastern Europe countries are struggling for democracy and transparency; Bulgaria is one of the most involved in the process. Transparency ... Read More

"Tweet the Results" Aims to Challenge Canadian Election Law Through Massive Non-Compliance

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 2 2011

TweetTheResults.ca The National Post's Sarah Boesveld interviews Alexandra Samuel and Darren Barefoot, two Vancouverites who have put together Tweet the Results. The project is a challenge to Canadian election law ... Read More

Canadians Contemplate an Election "Tweet-In"

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, April 21 2011

Canadians are conspiring to flout a national election law that prohibits them from tweeting, posting, or otherwise spreading word about any election results until polls have closed coast to coast, reports CBC News: ... Read More

In the Year 2000...

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, April 6 2011

Scrutinizing the AP's precinct-by-precinct results on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race while riding the DC-to-New York train last night, Ben Smith wonders what the 2000 Florida recount would have looked like in the age ... Read More

The Wisdom of Surveilling Sudan from 300 Miles Up

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, January 7 2011

Coming out of the British diplomatic world, Carne Ross says that there a couple of things he finds potentially unsettling about the George Clooney-spearheaded Satellite Sentenial project that we took note of yesterday: Read More

Egypt's Election Turns Into a Battle of Multiple Ushahidis

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, November 23 2010

The Muslim Brotherhood has launched an instance of Ushahidi, one of several launched to monitor Egypt's upcoming parliamentary election. Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Tools to Keep Independent Media Online in Hostile Environments

Websites and media outlets in developing countries or countries with corrupt or repressive regimes struggle daily to fend off hacker attacks, some from their own government — like the Malaysian news portal Sarawak Report, which techPresident reported was taken down in April by sustained denial-of-service attacks. The negative attention controversial reporting draws can scare local advertisers away as well, making it difficult for a media company to support itself. Media Frontiers offers two services to websites dealing with either of those problems.

monday >

Ahead of September Elections, German Pirate Party Picks Its Platform

The German Pirate Party held its election year convention over the weekend and approved its party platform, following lengthy debate over the role that online decision-making should have within the party, as German news sources reported and the party outlined on its own web platforms. GO

Peruvians Petition their President to Stick Up for their Digital Rights

Peru’s civil society advocacy groups have started an online petition outlining their ‘non-negotiable’ demands for digital rights and freedom of speech. The campaign was prompted by the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. Lima, Peru, will soon host the 17th round of secretive TPP trade talks, which will take place from May 15 – 24.

Gun Control Advocates Take Aim At LivingSocial for Promoting Guns and Alcohol

A coalition of advocacy groups is launching a new campaign this week against the promotion of American gun culture. The campaign focuses on the daily deals site Living Social, which hasn't stopped promoting social events Hunter S. Thompson would have loved (they promote shooting off guns and letting off steam and drinking.) GO