Must-reads

• "Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation" — At The Atlantic, Quinn Norton describes the tumult of life as a close friend of Aaron Swartz after his arrest, a series of conflicts with the prosecutor pursuing the case against Swartz, and the fear and paranoia of life under federal investigation. Norton paints a picture of ineffective defense attorneys and prosecutors more interested in putting Swartz behind bars than pursuing the truth.

• Watching Kenya: Ahead of elections beginning in Kenya today, activists, coders and election monitors took steps to stave off the violence that plagued the last major vote in that country. As people head to the polls, there are some reports of violence.

• Election results from Kenya are available live online.

Around the web

• Beth Noveck reviews "Citizenville": The former deputy White House CTO gives California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom positive marks for embracing open government and transparency in his book, but docks him for expressing lots of optimism and no indication he understands that technology isn't a cure-all:

  "Citizenville" might not give us the evidence that its proposed solutions will work. But it surely gives us the faith that open government - namely, more participatory, decentralized and agile institutions, enabled and supported by advances in technology - could lead to better solutions for citizens and more legitimate democracy. And, thankfully, if we are looking for a politician who claims he knows how to get out of the way and catalyze bottom-up democracy, we know where to find him.

• ICYMI: Sarah Lai Stirland talks with Micah Sifry and Nick Judd about her interview with Newsom in last week's techPresident podcast.

• Solutions that work: "Community PlanIt" is a lot like aspects of Newsom's "Citizenville:" It's a game designed to draw users into city planning requests for comment, built by academic researchers at Emerson College. The planners who use the game say it's dramatically increasing the number of people who participate in the deliberations that shape plans for a future city.

• Technology for anti-transparency: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration uses an internal web application to monitor and approve contacts with press, The Albany Times-Union's Jimmy Vielkind reports, in some cases requiring pre-approval before allowing an official to acknowledge a reporter's request.

• As the Obama campaign's alumni move to a network of outside consultancies, development shops and political organizations, New York Times politics reporter Nick Confessore wonders if the president's network can continue in lock-step while adopting the post-Citizens United playbook.

• The Smithsonian will license digital access to some of its materials to a private company, meaning the public will have to pay a third party for access to portions of the taxpayer-funded research archive.

• The Hill's Brendan Sasso writes: "Leading House Democrats are calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use its existing authority to unveil the secret donors bankrolling political TV ads."

• Open data alert: The City of Chicago has released new datasets.