Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Photo: Flickr/TheAlieness GiselaGiardino

Google's Preparing for Super PAC Spending Online in 2012

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Monday, January 9 2012

Free speech is a lucrative business, as Google has always understood. In the post-Citizens United 2012 presidential election, there haven't been many search-ad takers just yet from among independent groups. But Google clearly hopes that the rush is coming. Read More

Why the BART Cell-Phone Shutdown Matters

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, September 27 2011

PdF friend and conference '10 speaker Susan Crawford has a smart oped piece up on Bloomberg discussing the issues recently raised in San Francisco by Bay Area Rapid Transit's cutoff of public cell phone service during ... Read More

Free-Speech Advocates Push for FCC to Rule On BART Cellphone Service Shutdown

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, August 31 2011

In the wake of a shutdown of cellphone service earlier this month the San Francisco Bay Area's commuter rail provider, BART, in order to stop a political protest, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have asked ... Read More

Lawmakers Say State-Sponsored Sex Ed Website Talks Dirty

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, April 28 2011

Some Massachusetts lawmakers apparently think the state has crossed the line in using the Internet for sexual education by supporting a website about sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV that is targeted to teens. ... Read More

FTC vs Bloggers: Cruising for a Bruising?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, October 14 2009

The last time I saw political bloggers across the spectrum agreeing about anything, it was in opposition to some overly restrictive notions emanating from the Federal Elections Commission about regulating political ... Read More

Facebook Expands Government Arm with Hire of Public Policy Director

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 12 2009

Facebook has hired on a new public policy director, National Journal's Winter Casey reports. Tim Sparapani's resume almost seems cobbled together as a direct response to the arguably growing concerns over free speech and ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

"Power Politics in the Age of Google"

TechPresident's editorial director, Micah Sifry, will be speaking this afternoon on a panel at Harvard University called "Power Politics in the Age of Google," alongside Susan Crawford, Nicco Mele, Elaine Kamarck and Alexis Ohanian. The panel will be moderated by Harvard Shorenstein Center Director Alex Jones, and will be live-streamed here. GO

House Republicans Get a Jump on the Budget

Via Politico's Mike Allen, the House Republicans are out with a video — this one attributed to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — getting the drop on President Barack Obama's next federal budget, expected Monday. GO

Mittbucks.com Lets Voters Compare Their Paychecks With Romney's

What would it take for Mitt Romney to be able to relate to the average American's daily economic life? He'd have to pay $1,208.09 for a gallon of gas, according to Mittbucks.com, a web site recently created by Adam Rosenscruggs and his wife Danielle in Washington, D.C. The eye-popping figure results from an annual income that I plugged in ... GO

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

More