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First POST: Malarkey

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, October 12 2012

Photo: Pete Souza / White House

Around the web

  • Joe Biden's use of the word "malarkey" caused waves online, including 30,000 out of the four million tweets about the debate. The highest number of tweets occured when Biden retorted, "Now you're Jack Kennedy?"

  • Malarkey was also a top searched term on Google. While "laughing" was a term associated with Biden, "shirtless" and "workout" were associated with Ryan. According to Google, the moment sparking the most searches was Biden's reference to his family.

  • According to Pew, one in ten Americans were following the first presidential debate not only on television, but also on a second screen.

  • The Obama campaign promoted the success of its ground game and called for more activity on its Dashboard online organizing platform on a recent conference call with supporters.

  • Activist groups are asking people to propose questions for the next presidential debate through a platform that the various debate hosts don't plan on using very much.

  • The Democratic National Committee fired an employee who appeared in a James O'Keefe video and appeared to endorse the idea of voting in two different states.

  • In a graphic, Google tracked searches for seven political issues and looked at which ones were used most commonly in which states, with, for example, searches for the term "abortion" high in Mississippi and Washington D.C., "Social Security" high in Florida and Arkansas and "gun control" high in Montana.

  • Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned yesterday that the U.S. faces the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and is increasingly vulnerable to computer hackers who intend to target sensitive systems, the New York Times reported. Earlier this week, the White House discussed cybersecurity with Senate aides, and Senator Joe Lieberman suggested that the president would sign an executive order within the next month.

  • A former deputy homeland security advisor to the President and a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department argue that encryption is the key to safe cloud computing.

  • In honor of National Coming Out Day, 37 Members of Congress posed in photos for the NOH8 campaign.

  • Techcrunch's Gregory Ferenstein takes a critical look at Google's study on factchecking political issues online.

  • The oil industry is preparing to counter a Matt Damon film that is critical of fracking, with, among other efforts, a "truth squad" campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

  • Ars Technica fact-checked the claims RIAA chair Cary Sherman made at this year's Personal Democracy Conference about the decline in the number of musicians.

  • The GAO published a report on how mobile devices collect location data and how federal actions could help further consumer privacy.

  • Privacy Caucus co-Chairs Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) expressed concern that the Digital Advertising Alliance is urging members to ignore the default-on Do Not Track settings in Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer browser.

  • In the Wall Street Journal, technology entrepreneur Christopher Schroeder argues that governments that treat the web as a threat can put economic development at risk.

  • A judge ruled that libraries who provide Google with books to scan are protected by fair use.

  • The military's highest court heard arguments on greater access to Bradley Manning's trial.

  • Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock has been trying to target his opponent, Joe Donnelly, on Twitter. There's just one problem: He's been after the wrong person named Joe Donnelly.

  • All Facebook highlighted how the Ending Spending Action Fund, a independent anti-Obama group backed by Joe Ricketts, uses Facebook Connect to create a personalized ad through an application developed by Republican firm Campaign Solutions.

  • The wife of the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Washington state tweeted video of the candidate dancing "Gangnam Style" while spanking himself. The candidate, Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna, trails his Democratic challenger.

  • Occupy protesters in Georgia protested alongside police officers in the case of a retired officer who is faced with losing her home to foreclosure.

  • ABC News and Yahoo News together are reaching the largest digital audience.

  • The New York Times recently reported on how changes to the Social Security death records are harming research of various kinds.

  • A Marketwatch contributor links the inaccessibility of the latest season of Downton Abbey via the web as it airs in Britain to the debate over public broadcasting which airs the show in the U.S. but won't broacast until the new year. "We can no longer blame distance or time or technology for the delays. The program is actually available to us, and people over there are sitting down and working out ways to stop us seeing it ... It’s insulting to viewers to have these artificial barriers."

  • Wikileaks seems to have put up a paywall of sorts for new Global Intelligence files it says it is releasing related to the presidential campaign, and seemes to have angered some Anonymous supporters.

  • Reddit has blocked links by Gawker from its politics section, after a Gawker journalist threatened to reveal the identity behind a man running Reddit's "creepshots", "beatingwomen" and "jailbait" forums.

  • Companies like Time Warner and AT&T would like to get the same benefits that Google is getting for offering its high-speed fiber Internet, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  • Pandodaily highlighted how Google and Microsoft are encouraging connectivity through free wifi offerings in various cities.

  • MSNBC reported on how the Newark school district has been using Mark Zuckerberg's large-dollar gift, two years on.

  • Rane Johnson-Stempson, principal research director for education and scholarly communication for Microsoft Research Connections, wrote about attending a presidential reception on combating human trafficking and how technology can help in those efforts.

  • Google announced a new online collection of material dedicated to Jewish issues with materials from the Anne Frank House, the Polish History Museum, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Foundation France Israel and Yad Vashem.

  • Mother Jones recently featured a photo essay of Libya taken with nothing but an iPhone.

  • The European Union is launching a new clean energy campaign with a social media component with a social media and online component called World You Like.

  • A British web company founded by the British Conservative Party chairman was taken down ahead of the party conference, also removing from the web details about an alter ego he had taken on, the Guardian reported.

  • The Communist Party of Nepal demanded that cinemas stop playing Bollywood films for 10 days to protest India's growing influence in the country.

  • The Washington Post reported how the popularity of Gangnam Style is reflecting positively on South Korea's brand.

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

The UK 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

On Threshold of Telecom Revolution, Future of Internet Freedom in Burma Uncertain

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

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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