The data superiority wars

• Reuters reported additional details on "Themis," a Catalist-like voter and supporter database being built to serve political committees and causes backed by the conservative industrialists the Koch brothers:

  Themis's ambition to become an analytical powerhouse for the right is clear from its list of business partners, including several heavy hitters in the computer analytics world. Its top contractor in 2010, paid $1.1 million, was voter database company Intell360, which employed former Republican National Committee Network and Online Services Director Steve Ellis at the time, according to LinkedIn. Despite the vast resources behind it, Themis may find it difficult to reach its goal this year. One person close to the group predicts it will not catch up to the left in the current campaign cycle; the Obama campaign is engaged in complex modeling and scouring social media data for information, people in the industry say. Another conservative data industry person said there is no sign of high-end modeling by Themis. Themis does not have to catch up to make an impact, though. It is building its database and signing up advocacy groups to use its services and contribute data. The person close to Themis said its work focuses on identifying active supporters - those with a propensity to attend rallies or engage their representatives, for instance - and discovering the "cream of the crop" - persons active in several allied groups.

  The Republican Party has its own new voter database, operated by a company called Data Trust, which is expected to go into service for individual state parties after the primary elections.

Get out the vote

• The Obama campaign last night unveiled Gottavote.org, which provides voter registration information and can mail users voter registration forms.

• Florida officials are trying to update the accuracy of their voter rolls by seeking access to a federal database to check a list of 182,000 voters who are suspected of not being citizens.

But were they in a burning building at the time?

• Newark Mayor Cory Booker explained his approach to Twitter to Buzzfeed's Rosie Gray.

Around the web

• White House’s cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt said he is retiring.

• Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Bob Casey of Pennsylavnia have proposed a plan under which people like Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who has renounced his U.S. citizenship, would be punished. In unveiling the Ex-Patriot Act, Schumer said, according to The Hill, "Eduardo Saverin wants to de-friend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes. We aren't going to let him get away with it." Saverin says his decision to expatriate had nothing to do with avoiding taxes.

• TED curator Chris Anderson responded to criticism that TED talk about inequality was deemed too controversial.

• House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in remarks this week that the U.S. is seriously unprepared for "catastrophic cyber-attack” that could be expected in the next 12 to 24 months.

• Twitter announced it would implement Firefox's Do Not Track function.

• Molly Ball and Nancy Scola profile NationBuilder, a low-cost tool suite for campaigns.

• A Congressman in Los Angeles appears to have photoshopped his mother into campaign mailings targeted at Jewish voters.

• An 18-year-old elected to a Long Island school board has become the youngest elected official in New York state, but his campaign was the target of robocalls saying that the candidate's father had removed records with names and addresses from the school. According to MSNBC, the controversy sparked a higher turnout in the election.

• Recently, at the Atlantic, Yoni Appelbaum described how Reddit users were able to uncover false information spread through Wikipedia as part of a class project at George Mason University.

International headlines

• A Europe-vs-Facebook initiative led by an Austrian law student said it had collected 7,000 comments, which it says means Facebook must review its proposed Facebook privacy policy. Video from a recent Q & A event with Facebook Chief Privacy Officer-Policy Erin Egan about some of social network's recent proposed policy changes is available online.

• The European Union is expected to back a $102 billion research funding program behind open-access publishing.

• London's Metropolitan Police have developed a system that can extract mobile phone data from the phones of suspects held in custody, and according to the BBC, the data would be retained whether or not suspects are charged.

• Most British government websites will miss a deadline to comply with new cookie regulations requiring "informed consent."

• Six people have been arrested in Scotland for the creation of an anti-Semitic Facebook page.

• France's data protection agency has set up a meeting with Google to discuss its privacy policy.

• A Finnish court ruled that the owner of a WiFi network is not liable for copyright infrigement by other users of that network.

• The trial of alleged Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic was postponed because 7,000 pages of evidence were not uploaded onto an electronic database accessible to defence lawyers.

• A student protest in Syria was broadcast online yesterday using the Bambuser livestreaming service.

• Hackers targeted websites connected to next week's Eurovision Song Contest finale in Azerbaijan, demanding that the event be cancelled. Many activists groups have been critical of the regime's human rights record.

• A Russian multimedia portal says it has built a prototype at the request of the Ministry of Communication that could alert copyright owners to illegal distribution of the their content.

• A freedom of information law has taken effect in Brazil.

• Anonymous said it targeted the websites of India's Supreme Court and Congress over Internet censorship proposals.