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

Daily Digest: This Year in Personal Politics

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, December 29 2008

"Politics is Personal. Politics is Viral. Politics is Individual.": Jose Antonio Vargas has been covering the intersection of politics and technology for the Washington Post since February of last year, and ... Read More

Daily Digest: Health Care's Unwelcome House Guests?

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, December 17 2008

Pfizer Would Like to Be Invited Over: Yeah, we probably should have seen this coming from a mile away. The Obama transition launched a series of house parties and community events to be held between now and the first of ... Read More

The Other Transition: Whither Obama's Movement?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Saturday, December 6 2008

While most of the country's attention is focused on the transition underway in Washington, another vitally important transition is taking place right now in Chicago. I'm referring, of course, to the future of the Obama ... Read More

Shame Works, But Funny Gets Forwarded: MoveOn's "Non-Voter" Ad Might Be Most Viral Political Video Ever

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, November 7 2008

"In just a few short days, this private citizen has become a national pariah," intones the blown-dry anchor. Cut to sweet looking older woman, who is less sanguine: "I waited in line five hours to vote, ... Read More

Daily Digest: Can Robos Survive Under the Full Glare of the Web?

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, October 23 2008

The Web on the Candidates Internet Killed the Robocall: The liberal mini-media empire Talking Points Memo is out with an inventive "Map of GOP Sleaze" that plots campaign robocalls and mailers against a map of ... Read More

Daily Digest: Too Many Fact Checkers Spoil the Truth?

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, October 17 2008

The Web on the Candidates Debunking: America's Newest Growth Industry: This election cycle has given rise to a number of independent fact check sites, from Factcheck.org and PolitFact.com to those run by various ... Read More

Web Gearing Up to Block "Blank Check" Bailout of Wall Street [UPDATED]

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, September 22 2008

The American web is buzzing with activity around Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposed $700 billion bailout bill, a test if there ever was one of the new balance of power in the digital age. On one side, we have ... Read More

Daily Digest: Pioneering Pushback by Proxy

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, September 16 2008

The Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel highlights a fascinating example of a seemingly new online tactic we focused on yesterday when it came to DNC's new "Count the Lies" compendium. Let's call it pushback by proxy; "How ... Read More

Daily Digest: Pioneering Pushback by Proxy

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, September 16 2008

The Web on the Candidates MoveOn Points Facebook Ads to Sympathetic Others: The Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel highlights a fascinating example of a seemingly new online tactic we focused on yesterday when it came to ... Read More

Daily Digest: A Most Sobering Promise

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, July 31 2008

Young voters are asked to make a tremendous sacrifice: lay off the bottle the night before Election Day; the debate continues over the nature of MoveOn; the RNC goes after Barack Obama on his supposed audacity; 10 ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

GO

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

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.

GO

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.

GO

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.

GO

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.

GO

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

More