Does the Pope tweet in the woods?

• Pope Benedict XVI will officially join Twitter on December 12, the Feast of Our Lady, with a primary account in English at @pontifex and translated accounts in Spanish, Italian, Portguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French.

From techPresident

• Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, Sarah Lai Stirland details how the Obama campaign used Twitter data to find their most effective advocates and put them to work in the media-saturated social network.

• President Obama also used Twitter yesterday to take questions from average Americans about extending middle class tax cuts.

Around the web

• MoveOn picks a new road: The progressive online group announced yesterday that it would do more to put itself at the service of its members' initiatives, supporting more work at the state and local level rather than attempting to organize sweeping national campaigns:

  We're turning over the keys of our technological toolset to our more than 7 million members, asking them to step up and lead their own campaigns, and putting them squarely in the MoveOn driver's seat.

  More in a HuffPo blog post by MoveOn Political Action Director Justin Ruben right here.

• Politico wonders: What happens to @PaulRyanVP?

• During a campaign managers event held at Harvard, Obama Digital Director Teddy Goff described Paul Ryan as "highly memeable," while Romney campaign staff acknowledged that the 47 percent video caught them by surprise.

• Police officials have submitted a proposal to Congress that would require wireless providers to record and store information about Americans' text messages for at least two years, Cnet reported.

• A new draft of a White House Cybersecurity Executive Order has leaked, according to Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security.

• James Cowie from Renesys examined in detail to what degree other countries could be vulnerable to an Internet shutdown like the one in Syria.

• Nielsen has released an extensive report on the state of social media in 2012.

• The New York Times looked into the regulatory challenges facing Uber. Users of Airbnb may also face legal trouble.

• That's no moon: A We the People petition asks the White House to "Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016."

• Tim Berners Lee's Open Data Institute is receiving a $750,000 investment from the Omidyar Network.

• The National Labor Relations Board ordered Dish Network to change its social media policy which forbade employees from making disparaging or defamatory remarks about the company.

• New York Magazine profiles Chris Hughes and his plans for the New Republic.

• KQED, the the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Public Radio Exchange have unveiled Matter Ventures, a start-up accelerator that will provide financial and logistical support for media entrepreneurs, the New York Times reported.

• Dan Oshinsky detailed the potential he sees in e-mail as the new Newsletter Editor of Buzzfeed.

• Washington D.C.'s 911 emergency network has been suffering from systemic failures over the past two years, according to the Washington Post.

• A Forbes column looks at how the Missouri Department of Transportation aims to save $500 milllion over five years with the help of social and mobile technologies.

• Aztec calendar watch: A blog post on USA.gov explains: "Scary Rumors about the World Ending in 2012 Are Just Rumors."

International

• Foreign correspondent Lara Setrakian has founded Syria Deeply, a new online platform documenting the conflict in Syria.

• In a column about the necessity of foreign correspondents, Bill Keller from the New York Times writes:

  Yes, 'citizen journalism' has been an asset. YouTube videos from Iran’s 2009 uprising kept the story alive after foreign reporters were expelled, and tweets from Tahrir Square provided real-time guidance to the Arab Spring. But tweets are no substitute for being there.

  He also suggests that lack of reporting on the ground contributed to the confusion around events in Benghazi that is now a problem for Susan Rice.

• The International Herald Tribune profiled Alan Shatter, Ireland's minister of justice, equality, and defense, who will play a key role in negotiating an EU data privacy law over the coming year.

• The European Commission is proposing rules to make government websites accessible for all.

• The European Commission released research about about European's interest in accessing digital content across EU borders.

• Lebanese ministers expressed concerns about the Internal Security Forces' request for all mobile phone SMS data from the two months prior to the assasination of ISF intelligence chief Wissam al-Hassan.

• The New York Times looked at five ways Indian Internet users are fighting for free speech.

• A British MP who had been campaigning against the payday loans market demanded an apology after the Guardian traced abusive tweets to the anonymous Twitter account of an online lender.