Data distrust

• A firm that sells information about voters collected by Democrats is backing off plans to look for clients in the private sector.

Hoping to get the word out

• Organizers hope a mix of training and technology will create a communications network to chronicle irregularities, counter rumors, and hopefully stave off violence surrounding upcoming elections in Kenya.

Militarizing the Internet

• In Foreign Policy, a good question: Why does the Pentagon — and not the State Department — get all the money and staff for Internet security? A follow-on: Is this a judgment on the effectiveness of 21st-century statecraft or public diplomacy?

"Start with the one, and see how it goes from there"

• When will it end? Evgeny Morozov keeps on trying to paint "Future Perfect" author Steven B. Johnson as an "Internet centrist," someone who believes that the Internet holds the solution to every problem. Johnson's book, which we discussed at New York Law School when it came out, makes the case that networks of people — probably using the Internet — can find the solution to a lot of problems. The pair went back and forth in The (new) New Republic, and on their personal blogs, and the argument seems to have grown from a singleton into a full-blown course of ten.

Around the web

• Much ado about snapping: Snapchat and the ephemeral web are drawing more and more attention lately. As more people put more of their lives into digital formats, will a new wave of software eliminate the heightened, and sometimes troubling, accountability of 21st-century culture?

• Gavin Newsom, the technophile lieutenant governor of California, does a Q&A with Politico.

• Because he's flogging his new book, "Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government."

• Happening today: The Federal Communications Commission hosts a broadband summit.

• A new bill introduced in the House in late January reads: "To provide for the establishment, on-going validation, and use of an official set of data on the historical temperature record, and for other purposes." Any federally funded climate research would have to use that dataset, and all of the data would also be made public over the Internet.

• Nerd sidenote: GovTrack still has the text and summaries of bills coming from the House before Congress.gov does. The official site is still in beta, but House Republicans: C'mon man.

• BBC Tech headline: "Kids app 'translates' grown-up paper into child-friendly articles."

• Former British MP Louise Mensch's alternate social network, Menshn, is winding down thanks to a tiff between Mensch and co-founder Luke Bozier.

• A New York Times Bits blog review of a new PBS documentary, Silicon Valley, pans it as just another hagiography for proponents of "crush-it" culture.

• A new blog supports German candidate for chancellor Peer Steinbrück, thanks to the financing of anonymous donors. Its architects bill the blog as American-style campaigning in the tradition of President Barack Obama.