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First POST: Freedoms

BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, April 23 2012

President Barack Obama, here on the Rosa Parks bus April 18. Pete Souza / White House photo

Obama to speak on Internet freedom

  • President Barack Obama is expected to announce an executive order this morning that will allow U.S. officials to impose sanctions on foreign nationals who use new technologies, from cellphone tracking to Internet monitoring, to carry out human rights abuses, the Washington Post reported. He will make the announcement at a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    The White House is encouraging people to watch the speech online and discuss with the hashtag #NeverAgain. Following the speech, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, will be answering questions on Twitter.

Voting with their tweet

  • As the New York Times and AFP reported, French Internet users adopted code dating back to World War II to discuss exit poll results online in defiance of a law prohibiting discussion of the voter tallies until the last votes had been cast. Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy was either "Tokaji wine" — from Hungary, like his father — or "Rolex." Socialist candidate François Hollande was "Gouda cheese" or "Flanby" — a soft caramel dessert, perhaps a reference to Hollande's hefty midsection.

  • Richard Grenell, a former Bush administration official who joined the Romney campaign as a national security and foreign policy spokesperson, deleted more than 800 tweets that Democratic-leaning sites and journalists had criticized for their tone towards journalists and for being sexist towards female politicians and members of the media, Michael Calderone reported.

Around the web

  • The Republican National Committee was running an online ad with the message, "Come November, Let's Make Barack Obama a Stay-at-Home Dad."

  • Presente, a Latino advocacy group, is promoting a photo on Facebook of President Obama sitting in the bus from the Rosa Parks protest with the message, "Mr President: Is there room for immigrants on the Freedom bus?"

  • ICYMI, Yahoo News looked at how the Republican primary played out in Wikipedia edits.

  • A New York Times editorial calls on the Senate to adopt an electronic filing requirement for candidates. Currently, candidates for House must file online, but aspirants to the Senate can file harder-to-parse paper reports. In 2010, the Federal Election Commission began digitizing the disclosure filings of Senate candidates by transcribing them by hand.

  • ICYMI: Friday, Ezra Klein suggested that most people aren't paying attention to the political scandals that ebb and flow among political insiders on Twitter, and that they have no effect on polling. Meanwhile, the term "obama dog" was trending on Google at the end of last week.

  • A NSA whistleblower believes that the agency has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" - phone calls, emails and other forms of data, including copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States, Democracy Now reported.

  • The Small Business Administration and the Department of Education are holding a Twitter Q & A Wednesday for recent graduates on resources that could help them start a small business.

  • More and more lobbying firms are incorporating We the People petitions into their work or attempting to drive traffic to them.

  • Facebook has released revised changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities based on feedback it received from users, and responds to some of the commentary on the earlier proposal.

  • The Washington Post's ombudsman criticized how the news organization is guiding its young bloggers, after one of them resigned following two mistakes in her aggregation work.

  • Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce asked on Facebook for feedback from people affected by reported difficulties with the Education Department's new debt-management system.

  • Writer James Ball described what information he received when he requested copies of his personal data from Google and Facebook under EU data protection rules.

  • The Guardian included Rickard Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party, John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the EFF and Anons among its Open 20: fighters for Internet freedom. The Guardian also looked at Barlow's efforts to create a foundation aimed at funding any organizations affected by corporate blockades with first amendment goals, such as Wikileaks.

  • There were only scattered reports of Cover the Night events, mostly organized by students, in response to Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign.

  • The A.P. reports that fewer people are registering for Susan G. Komen for the Cure fundraising races.

  • The World Bank has launched a blog on open data issues and explained updates and future plans for its open data policies.

  • UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on the audience at a forum of the Center for Global Development to "tweet" the White House to lobby for President Barack Obama's presence at the environmental Rio+20 summit in June.

Around the world

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

Code for America Launches International Partnerships in Mexico, Germany and the Caribbean

Code for America today announced the launch of its first official international partnerships in Mexico, Germany and the Caribbean. After several years of recruiting technologists to spend a year in city halls across America, the organization will bring programmers and designers into close contact with governments in each of those three places to work on a specific problem area. GO

Top Russian Social Network VKontakte Briefly Banned "By Mistake"

The most popular social network in Russia worked its way onto a blacklist this Friday, allegedly “by mistake,” according to the state communications regulator. However, Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte, has had run-ins with the authorities in the past for allowing activists to organize protests on the platform. Some interpret this supposedly accidental blocking as a warning shot.

GO

thursday >

Anthony Weiner Launches NYC Mayoral Campaign Online With An Image of Pittsburgh

Former Congressman Anthony Weiner waxed lyrical about New York City in a YouTube video as he launched his bid to be the city's next mayor on Wednesday, but he did it against a backdrop that turned out to be the skyline for Pittsburgh, as a sharp-eyed observer on Twitter first noted Wednesday afternoon. GO

Revamped Data.gov Includes API Catalog

Federal officials are now offering a list of all APIs that have been released across the federal government as part of the Digital Government Strategy and a new data catalog that allows users to more easily search, sort and tag datasets, according to a post by Hyon Kim, deputy program director at the U.S. General Services Administration. With the announcements, the team behind Data.gov, a central public repository of machine-readable federal government data, is marking its fourth anniversary and the one year anniversary of the release of the Digital Government Strategy. GO

French Authorities Want to Tap (and Tax) Skype Calls

In spite of repeated requests from the French telecommunications authorities ARCEP, Skype has refused to classify itself as an electronic communications operator in France, which would require them to route emergency calls and allow the French police to intercept conversations. ARCEP has informed the Paris public prosecutor of Skype's refusal, and criminal charges might be brought against the company for failing to comply. This is yet another instance in recent months of France making things difficult for tech companies. Some worry that the overzealous government is discouraging technological progress in France, hindering business and economic growth.

GO

New Online Platform for Crowdsourced Videos About Human Rights Issues

Anyone with a phone and an Internet connection can be a citizen journalist, as was made clear in the hours and days after the Boston Marathon Bombings. Citizen journalism has its pros and cons, but it has popped up where most needed: after natural disasters or in war torn regions where career journalists might be barred. A new human rights initiative seeks to link citizen reporting in the form of online videos with mainstream media, governments and other policy makers. The online platform, called Irrepressible Voices, will both document human rights issues and work on solutions as a community.

GO

wednesday >

Facebook Becomes Full Member of Global Network Initiative

Facebook announced today that it has opted to become a full member of the Global Network Initiative, a group founded by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to address the challenges technology companies face when dealing with governments about issues like freedom of expression and data privacy. GO

Russia's OGP Concerns Show That Transparency Matters

Last week, Russian officials announced they have withdrawn their letter of intent to join the Open Government Partnership. The Moscow Times has a statement to the Russian paper Kommersant from a presidential spokesman, saying, "We are not talking about winding up plans to join, but corrections in timing and the scale of participation are possible." So Russia may still be in. Just not soon. And maybe never. Confused? You're not alone. I actually find it fascinating that the Kremlin acts like "openness" and transparency matter. Here's why. GO

In Denmark, Online Tracking of Citizens is an Unwieldy Failure

Six years after Denmark passed a law mandating that telecommunication companies retain and store their customers' personal data for up to two years, local advocacy groups and the telecom industry are pushing for immediate changes to the legislation. The practice of keeping records of private citizens' Internet use is an unjustifiable invasion of privacy, they say. The police, meanwhile, have concluded that requiring telecoms to store subscriber data has not helped them track criminals, which was the the ostensible purpose of the practice. But the Danish government still wants to postpone an evaluation of the law for another two years. GO

"Accidental" Blocking of Australian Websites Raises Concerns About Government Censorship

An Australian government agency admitted last week to unintentionally blocking more than 1,200 perfectly legal websites in the process of shutting down one allegedly fraudulent site. In their defense, they pointed out that they have successfully blocked a number of websites in the past nine months without such digital collateral. This assertion came as no consolation to Australian netizens concerned about Internet censorship, especially opaque and hazily legal censorship.

GO

tuesday >

Honda Campaign Rolls Out Endorsements From Asian American Stars

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) rolled out several additional endorsements from Asian American leaders and celebrities Tuesday, with one of them vouching for his high-tech bona fides. GO

Here Are The People President Obama Hopes Will Repair American Elections

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections now has a web presence at SupporttheVoter.gov. Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28 "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." GO

After Oklahoma Disaster, Neighbors Look Online for Ways To Help

In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. GO

Change.org Lands $15 Million From Omidyar

Change.org capped an extraordinary few years of growth Tuesday with the announcement that it has landed a $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network. GO

What German Politicians Think of Google Glass

The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has not had the easiest relationship with Google. The company launched a public campaign against a law backed by her coalition that would require search engines to pay to show news articles in search results, with mixed results. What's more, Google has long had to navigate the privacy waters in Germany and throughout the European Union. But that has not stopped her federal minister for economics and technology, Philipp Rösler, from giving Google Glass an enthusiastic test run as he leads a delegation of German technology companies and politicians on a trip to Silicon Valley this week as part of German Valley Week. GO

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

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