Google's Eric Schmidt thinks strong encryption will eventually defeat government censorship and surveillance; Clay Johnson shares a 24-minute video tutorial on why government IT fails and how to fix it; FWD.us founders hack with undocumented immigrants; and much, much more. Read More

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Will a "tech surge" of the "best and brightest" save HealthCare.gov?: FWD.us holding a hackathon to build engagement tools to help win the immigration reform fight; David Carr's chat with Pierre Omidyar; and much, much more. Read More

Politifact branching out with Punditfact; why you shouldn't "drunk dial" random Members of Congress; why "greasing" IT contracts led to the HealthCare.gov mess; and much, much more. Read More

Silicon Valley is placing its bets behind business-friendly Booker, and in the process is ignoring a stalwart champion of some of their interests on Capitol Hill Rush Holt. Read More

Facebook's initial public offering is in the works and the company is already gearing up to exert the kind of influence in Washington that one might expect from a publicly held firm. With a political action committee for the company already in place, here's a look at some of the politicians who might benefit from the rising fortunes of Facebook's early investors, based on those investors' past political contribution habits as reported by OpenSecrets. Read More