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First POST: Trump

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, February 3 2012

Donald Trump. Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
  • Donald Trump announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney yesterday, and the Democratic Party put out a video saying that partnership made sense since they "both like firing people." At first there was some confusion as to whether Trump would be endorsing Newt Gingrich or Romney, evident in the fact that Fox News didn't remove "Gingrich" from the URL of its story on the Romney endorsement.

  • The New York Times, Reuters, paidContent, Marketingland and others look at the details that Facebook reveals in its IPO documents. Reuters notes that among its risks, the company sees the restriction of access by foreign governments such as China and Iran and regulatory uncertainty.

  • Since 2008, Joe DeSantis, Communications Director for Newt Gingrich, has made 23 edits to Callista Gingrich's Wikipedia page. Changes varied, but one change noted by Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski, who tirelessly dregs the Internet, had DeSantis altering a line describing her as Gingrich's "third wife" to note her instead as, simply, his "wife."

  • The rapper K'naan is upset that Mitt Romney used his song Wavin' Flag during his Florida victory speech without his permission, and might pursue legal action.

  • Google takes a look at how nationwide search interest for the Republican candidates has developed, and also compared Florida exit poll results with search data.

  • A New York Times editorial calls for cameras in the Supreme Court.

  • A federal appeals court refused yesterday to unseal recordings from California's trial over the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.

  • The Library of Congress's THOMAS interface now provides links to committee hearing videos.

  • Even though President Barack Obama has preferred interviews to impromptu question-and-answer sessions while also interacting with voters online, the White House said he is not ignoring the traditional press corps, as the New York Times reported:

    Daniel Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, responded in an e-mail, "The idea that interacting with the public through social media is somehow going around the White House press corps is a prehistoric notion." "The media has become so diffuse that communicating ones' message requires a lot more work than it used to," he wrote. "You have to be willing to go where the viewers are, because they now have so much choice in where they get their information."

  • The White House says it can't respond to the We The People petition asking the White House to investigate the Motion Picture Association of America's Chris Dodd — after he was quoted as saying of lawmakers who did not support the Stop Online Piracy Act, "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk" — because it "requests a specific law enforcement action."

  • Creative America, the MPAA-backed group which has supported SOPA and PIPA, is looking to pay people to collect sign-ups for its list, Techdirt reports.

  • According to FEC filing reports, Google spent roughly $390,000 on SOPA lobbying. Techcrunch reports that it's unclear from the documents whether Google was lobbying for or against the bill.

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  • One pro-Ron Paul Super PAC blamed a credit card company for missing a recent deadline for filing disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission.

  • Occupy videographer Tim Poole says he feels unwelcome among some other members of the Occupy movement. Meanwhile, the People's Think Tank is still ongoing, and NYU plans to put recordings of the conversations online.

  • A federal advisory board says the release of data about a new bird flu strain is too dangerous.

  • In a larger seizure of sites illegally operating websites ahead of the Super Bowl, Immigration and Customs Enforcement shuttered 16 domains accused of illegally streaming copyrighted sports broadcasts live, or linking to sites that did the same.

  • A New York City Council member is proposing a bill that would allow residents to make campaign contributions via text message in citywide races.

  • The New York City MTA picked a multi-purpose subway navigation app for first prize in an app contest.

  • The Guardian interviewed David Karp, the founder of Tumblr.

  • An American Idol producer tweeted that he would love for the President to sing a duet with Al Green on the show.

  • A British Parliament report said the government should not scare people about cybersecurity, but still warn them how they should protect themselves.

  • Scotland Yard accidentally sent 1,000 crime victims e-mails that included the other victims' e-mail addresses.

  • A French court has fined Google $660,000 because it claims that Google Maps is abusing its dominant position by being free.

  • Hong Kong is considering a copyright crackdown.

  • Many Syrians who are in opposition to President Bashar Assad are using the web to express their protests, as the AP reports:

    The Internet provides a layer of anonymity, which is vital when retribution is a real danger, but the creativity has also spilled into the streets in the banners, signs and songs of the protesters. "Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator" is one of several new online shows. It was created by 10 young professional artists inside Syria. It uses finger puppets that impersonate Bashar Assad -- nicknamed Beeshu in the series -- and his inner circle.

With Raphael Majma

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.

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

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.

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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.

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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

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