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danah boyd and Alex Howard at SXSW 2012 (Photo by Micah L. Sifry)

Split by SouthWest: My SXSW 2012 Diary

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, March 15 2012

PDM editorial director Micah L. Sifry spent last Friday through Monday at South by SouthWest Interactive, attending panels, keynotes and hanging out. Here's his report: SXSW is still a place where sessions packed with thousands of attendees cheer for the iconoclasts and the game-changers. It is also much more of a business networking conference than an internet futurists' playpen. In short, it has a split personality. Read More

President Barack Obama and his director of speechwriting, Jon Favreau, on Jan. 23. Photo: Pete Souza / White House

First POST: Enhancing SOTU

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, January 25 2012

Today in technology and politics:

  • Barack Obama's spilled-milk crack during the State of the Union left Twitter crying.
  • A federal ruling by a judge in Colorado may give law enforcement more leeway to force you to decrypt your electronic devices on request.
  • Julian Assange is planning a TV show.
Click through for our comprehensive look at today's most interesting tech/politics news from around the web. Read More

Was Julian Assange Right About Facebook?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, September 26 2011

OK, that headline is probably over the top, but after reading Dave Winer and Nik Cubrilovic's warnings this past weekend about Facebook's new "frictionless sharing" system, I was left wondering if Julian Assange of ... Read More

'Unauthorized' Assange Autobiography to Be Released Today

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, September 22 2011

NPR.org has this story on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography, NPR reports, was released on Thursday in Britain — without his say-so: British publisher Canongate decided to go ahead and release ... Read More

The Fall of WikiLeaks: Cablegate2, Assange and Icarus

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, September 2 2011

I'm theoretically on vacation right now and scarcely in a position to do a deep dive into all the news and commentary, but here's one quick comment about WikiLeaks's decision to release the complete and unredacted ... Read More

Guardian Reports Phone Hacking Targeted Gordon Brown

BY Nick Judd | Monday, July 11 2011

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a target of News of the World journalists attempting to access his voicemail, the Guardian reports, adding that News International newspapers also gained access to ... Read More

From Nader and Gravel to Assange: There Are Some Parodies Money Can't Buy [UPDATED]

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, June 30 2011

If you haven't seen the new fundraising video from WikiLeaks, which plays off an old Mastercard commercial, don't miss it. It's smartly done, and doubly effective given that Mastercard is one of the companies that are ... Read More

The One Where Julian Assange Can't Find the BCC Field

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, March 29 2011

An except from Daniel Domscheit-Berg's book about WikiLeaks, referenced on Cryptome today, retells the tale of the time that Wikileaks accidentally released the email addresses of its donors. How did the nigh-legendary ... Read More

Next #PdFLeaks Event: "WikiLeaks and the Law" Monday March 21

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, March 15 2011

Is Julian Assange a journalist? How does Bradley Manning compare to Daniel Ellsberg? How far does the First Amendment go in protecting the press when publishing classified information? Read More

A New Must-Read: Robert Manne's "The Cypherpunk Revolutionary Julian Assange"

BY Micah L. Sifry | Sunday, March 6 2011

It will take you a half hour to read Robert Manne's new essay on Julian Assange, but trust me, if you are one of those people who have been transfixed by the epic and world-shaking trajectory of WikiLeaks, the time will ... Read More

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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.

GO

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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