In case you missed it: Driving this week's conversation

• Politico's Lois Romano writes that Democrats regard the data Obama for America has collected on volunteers with covetous eyes:

  Building the voter list and metrics took an enormous amount of work and money. Sources estimate that the campaign spent $100 million on specially designed software that allowed aides to home in on voters through their connection with other supporters, a process called Targeted Sharing. Data was collected from a variety of sources that included Facebook, voter records, door-to-door canvassing, and information provided by outside vendors.

  Messina also ruled out selling other candidates access to the campaign’s organizing tools. “I don’t think the president is going to get into the business of selling things,” he said at the POLITICO breakfast.

  Some insight just for First POST readers: Obama for America's data was so good because every volunteer and staffer was also a pollster, passing back the results of every voter contact and carefully noting every event attendee or new donor. And the data was useful because OfA had technologists to build Targeted Sharing and analysts to use them. Those analysts have told techPresident that the best aspects of the data for political use are the factors that are either already public record or were generated by the campaign itself — for instance, by knocking on doors and asking voters if they were likely to vote or not.

  All of that data went into an instance of VoteBuilder, voter database software spun up for the campaign but also used by hundreds of other campaigns all over the country. It is both more feasibly useful for other campaigns and an easier lift to transfer. But the campaign needed Narwhal, its purpose-built integration software, to generate datasets that merged those basic data points with ones stored elsewhere, such as email contact history or donor information. If you have an OfA-level technological operation, that's doable. If you don't, your Narwhal would look more like ORCA. Current and former DNC staffers say it's unlikely the committee would be able to generate the funds necessary to pay the people who would keep Narwhal fed well enough to still be potent in 2016.

  Similarly, as Romano notes, OfA points out that many of the people on that list were interested in Obama but less interested in what was happening further down the ballot. For many campaigns, OfA's volunteer and donor database would be useful only for lead-generation at best.

  Democrats, Democratic organizations and their vendors are surely still hashing out next steps.

WCIT Watch

• Reuters reported that a U.S. and Canadian proposal to limit the International Telecommunications Union's rules to regulate only telecom operators and not companies like Google and Facebook had received an early setback, but ZDNet reported U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer, says that report is inaccurate.

• Ethan Zuckerman suggests there are "good and bad reasons to be worried about WCIT."

  Shorter Zuckerman: As we noted on Monday, the ITU's regulations reflect views on how the Internet should work that concern a combination of engineers and privacy activists; the ITU is opaque compared to existing institutions like the Internet Engineering Task Force; and the ITU takes input from governments explicitly opposed to American-style concepts of "Internet freedom." Conversely, it's potentially harmful to demonize the ITU for being multilateral without acknowledging that existing organizations like the IETF have been "slow" to adapt to the needs of Internet users and makers in the developing world; it is unhelpful to suggest that regulatory bodies shouldn't regulate; and it is absurd on its face to suggest that the Internet is perfect and needs no changing. Zuckerman's point seems to be to quit demonizing the ITU, and that people who think U.N. bodies are not an appropriate venue for concerns from the developing world or for dealing with the interests of repressive regimes should engineer some other mechanism for voices from those quarters to be engaged.

• The House, following an earlier Senate vote, voted unanimously calling on the U.S. to oppose U.N. control over the Internet. Tim Maurer from the New America Foundation also examines what's at stake at the conference.

From techPresident

• The Obama for America organizing machine has a future, it just isn't clear exactly what that future holds:

  One thing that hasn't been sorted out yet is how and where to move OFA's assets. Though he is involved in the discussions--one White House staffer refers to Bird as "the keeper of the flame"--he isn't saying much yet about what form this will take. Obviously, the data hasn't all been collected and analyzed, and the Decider-in-Chief hasn't decided.

  Where the Obama forces have already been quicker is in communicating back with their core supporters about this unfolding process, and in encouraging the creation of a temporary vehicle for their energies called "TheAction.org" that can do some things the campaign is legally prevented from doing.

• MoveOn.org has announced it will scale back its staff, decentralize strategic planning, and depend more on the aspirations of its members to drive its direction. Sarah Lai Stirland explains more.

Around the web

• The White House released video from President Obama's Twitter session earlier this week, in which he talks with his staff about answering questions, notes to himself that he has to use the hashtag and that he likes the hair of one of the questioners.

• The White House released a video to emphasize that "you don't have to be an economist" to understand the potential $2,000 increase in income taxes.

• The Census Bureau plans to release a new Easy Stats interactive tool today to make census data more accessible.

• The FTC agreed to a settlement with an advertising network that had been using "history sniffing" to track interest in sensitive medical and financial issues.

• The Verge invited its readers to "Meet Lamar Smith: SOPA author, climate change skeptic, and Congress' next science boss."

• Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wy.) is dancing "Gangnam style" in a video for The Can Kicks Back, an anti-debt group aimed at younger voters.

• White House Office of Administration CIO Brook Colangelo is expected to step down this week.

• Research suggests that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies could acquire European data stored in cloud services under the PATRIOT Act in spite of Europe's data protection laws.

• MapBox’s new MapBox Satellite imagery layer draws on public domain collections from NASA and the USGS. "So what MapBox is doing is taking taxpayer-funded imagery, pooling it together, adding its own software that allows users to adjust the colors and even re-label streets as needed, and re-selling it as part of its own products and services," Talking Points Memo explained.

• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected to use Google's Hangout feature to hear from a representative of an NGO based in Mali.

• J Street is promoting a petition calling on President Obama to speak out against planned new Israeli settlement construction. Another separate online petition speaks out against boycotts of Israel.

• New York Times Washington Bureau Chief David Leonhardt answered questions on Reddit.

• President Obama signed the U.S. Safe Web Act, which reauthorizes the FTC's authority to go after Internet fraud and scammers based abroad.

• A San Francisco Chronicle editorial column criticizes Verizon's argument against an FCC net neutrality rule which invokes regulation as a restriction on Verizon's First Amendment rights.

• According to Conservative-leaning site Twitchy, the auction to have a strategy session with Sandra Fluke was closed down early due to "harassing responses."

• The Montgomery County Council in Maryland voted in favor of an open data bill.

• New York City Council members are recommending that the Board of Elections adopt electronic poll books.

• As reports begin to heat up that New York MTA head Joe Lhota may run for mayor, the New York World reported that the domains Lhota2013.com, LhotaforNY.com, LhotaforNYC.com, and JoeLhotaSucks.com had been reserved in September. Lhota told the World that he was "shocked" about the domain names and wasn't involved in their purchase — the date of the purchase seemed to follow a New York Times article noting his Twitter use.

• The Washington D.C. Council passed legislation clearing the way for Uber.

• Two applications for the Philadelphia-area SEPTA transit system, one built by former Philadelphia Code for America fellow Aaron Ogle, and the other by the city's current Chief Data Officer Mark Headd, saw significant growth in use following a Code for America marketing campaign.
  

• Occupy Goldman Sachs at 15 Central Park West outside the condominium of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been ongoing since October 17 and has also evolved into an info hub for Occupy Sandy. A New York Daily News column suggests Occupy Sandy's efforts should be recognized by those who oppose big government.

• Today Occupy activists plan a day of action focused on foreclosure and evictions, following up on a similar effort last year.

• Commuters in New Jersey have been using social media and Change.org to demand restoration of late-night service on the PATH train.

• Students First NY, a group backed by Michelle Rhee, is running online ads to promote a petition aimed at teacher's union members and the Department of Education encouraging the acceptance of a teacher evaluation system that is a requirement for $300 million in state funding.

• Writing about the controversy over the New York Post photo of a victim who was fatally pushed in front of a New York City subway train, James Poniewozik from Time Magazine writes:
  

  The ubiquity of at-hand cameras has given us all a kind of sixth sense that would have seemed magic a couple generations ago, an ability to make sure that nothing around us goes unseen.

• Good.is profiled a new online startup called Kicker that seeks to make news accessible to teenagers.

International

• The Europe Vs. Facebook initiative founded by an Austrian law student has published a 70 page response to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's audit of Facebook's data use and privacy practices, and has launched a crowdfunding platform in preparation for possible legal action. The group also launched our-policy.org
  , a campaign against Facebook's most recently proposed policy changes.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has detected two new campaigns of surveillance malware likely targeted at Syrian activists.

• The government in the Philippines was urging the public to follow updates on Typhoon Bopha or Pablo using the hashtag #PabloPH. Google also set up a crisis map for the storm.

• South Africa's parliament has passed a Protection of Information which could lead to up to 25 years of jail for whistle blowers or journalists who publish "classified information."

• Kazakhstan prosecutors in the country's commercial capital are looking to close several opposition media outlets, including more than 23 Internet sites.

• Guatemala has detained software entrepreneur John McAfee and plans to extradite him to Belize where he is wanted for questioning about a murder.

• A content API from German newspaper Die Zeit lets users track how frequently terms were used in the newspaper over time.