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First POST: Facebook Mobs

BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, March 12 2012

    Must-reads

  • The Obama campaign is planning a significant outreach effort targeted at women, the New York Times reported, including "a new Web site that will include links to video testimonials about the health care overhaul signed by Mr. Obama in 2010, including from a former critic who subsequently was found to have breast cancer." The Times also reported that centrist women are becoming disaffected with the Republican party.

  • The Obama campaign has released a trailer for a 17-minute documentary about the first term titled The Road We've Traveled. The documentary is directed by Davis Guggenheim and narrated by Tom Hanks, and features Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren along with Vice President Joe Biden and former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, among others.

  • In a New York Times commentary, a Columbia professor says it is important for society to engage with so-called hackers, particularly those expressing an authentic political voice and examine how they can contribute positively to society. As details continue to come out about the arrest of several LulzSec members, experts suggest that the movement has been hurt, although not permanently. Reuters detailed how the hacker "Sabu" worked full nights online for the FBI, while the New York Times focused on his life on a Lower East Side public housing project where he was allegedly involved in some drug sales, made payments with stolen credit cards and prompted many complaints by neighbors. One of the accused hackers who is from Ireland had led a nonprofit group in Galway which develops open-source applications to improve web security.

  • CQ Roll Call is planning to revamp its website Congress.org so that voters can easily contact their members of Congress about ongoing news stories. According to the Times, the new website was in part motivated when Congress.org was slowed by a surge in traffic during the day of action against SOPA.

  • Politico reported that politicians are now warning each other against falling victim to another SOPA moment as they consider legislation that could affect large companies like Google or Amazon. "'There's so much fear about a SOPA backlash that it's almost halting progress on anything,' said one tech industry source who's involved in the cybersecurity talks. 'With every Internet and technology issue coming forward, people worry and ask, 'Is this the next SOPA?''"

  • Notable

  • A former director of engineering at Facebook is becoming chief executive of Reddit.

  • Hank the Cat, Senate candidate in Virginia, now has more Facebook supporters than Democratic candidate Tim Kaine, but is still behind Republican candidate George Allen. Hank has meanwhile released a new campaign ad praising Hank as a "refreshing voice of change" over the inaction and negative campaigning over the established candidates. At the same time, a new "attack ad" titled the 3pm Phone Call warns against voting for Hank because "he doesn't have thumbs" to answer the phone.

  • Two sisters in Oklahoma have created a video in support of Rick Santorum.

  • A magistrate judge in San Francisco has denied Ron Paul’s trademark infringement claims against social media “imposters.” The suit was filed against the “NHLiberty4Paul” YouTube account, which had previously released a video that implied former candidate Jon Huntsman was an agent of the Chinese government.

  • Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan reported that in many unpersonalized Google search results, Rick Santorum's official page appears to be finally ranking first, although the fake definitions from the Spreading Santorum site are back as second and third results.

  • Google compared Super Tuesday search data with delegate and vote results. Even though Romney narrowly won Ohio, he was second in searches to Santorum. According to ABC news and Blue Fin Labs, Santorum set a 2012 election record for the highest spike in Twitter mentions of any GOP candidate on Super Tuesday.

  • The New York Times highlighted how the Scott Brown campaign is criticizing the Elizabeth Warren campaign for its Hollywood support, particularly with a web video, called "The Elitist."

  • Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti said the Kony 2012 video went viral among other reasons because it focused on people sharing content on social media, started out positive and focused on one bad guy.

  • A new Internet TV network backed by financier Carlos Slim will feature Larry King, among other broadcasts, the New York Times reported.

  • Citing one unnamed source, Reuters media blogger Felix Salmon says CNN is close to buying Mashable and will announce the acquisition Tuesday.

  • The U.S. Army has warned that geo-tagged Facebook posts could put soldiers' lives at risk.

  • Top Republican lawmakers are requesting that the Obama administration provide information on government policy on email surveillance of employees at every federal agency. Emails obtained by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act show that the White House was more closely involved than previously reported in seeking the resignation of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod in 2010.

  • Reuters notes how many Facebook alumni are now involved in political ventures, such as NationBuilder, a political campaign software startup. We reported last week that Mark Zuckerberg roommate and Causes founder Joe Green joined NationBuilder, which is now backed by a long list of current and former Facebookers, including Dave Morin and Dustin Moscovitz.

  • Apple is using OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps on its photo management app for the iPad and iPhone.

  • Google has begun slowing the pace of its book scanning at university libraries.

  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has put up a virtual firewall to block its members from inappropriately baptizing Holocaust victims.

  • International Headlines

  • The Brazilian Justice Ministry said it could launch an official investigation into Google's privacy policy if the company did not provide satisfactory details about how it handles users' personal information within 10 days.

  • In response to a new law in Finland that allows any citizen to propose a new law, some tech entrepreneurs have created a website called Open Ministry as a platform for citizens to discuss proposals and collect the necessary online signatures. But the Finnish government still needs to implement the online procedures needed to verify citizens' identification.

  • In Italy, a Facebook page and an app are encouraging citizens to reveal which businesses don't issue receipts to avoid value added taxes, per the New York Times. "The results were surprising," said Edoardo Serra, one of the creators of the app, which has been downloaded 50,000 times since it was introduced last June. However, there are some concerns because the app users are anonymous.

  • The Modern Poland Foundation is organizing a crowdfunded contest on the future of copyright with Prof. Michael Geist, a copyright specialist, and Piotr Czerski, author of We, the Web Kids, among the judges.

  • Al Jazeera is launching a YouTube campaign to teach viewers in Turkey, Bosnia and other countries how to use Twitter and Facebook.

  • The first women-only Internet cafe.opened in Afghanistan. Young Afghans have been taking to social media to mock proposals by a council of Afghan clerics that would restrict the ability of women to engage in public life.

  • The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has urged Tajikistan to end a block of Facebook and Russian-language sites in the country which had published material critical of the country's leader.

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.

GO

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.

GO

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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