And they're off

• Seen on Facebook — Republican digital consultant Patrick Ruffini linking to Sasha Issenberg's Technology Review series on the Obama campaign's use of data with the message, "A look at the sort of stuff I plan to be working on in the next four years."

  Seen in the comments — Obama for America's data director, Ethan Roeder, writes: "Welcome to the race!"

Spinning WCIT

• L. Gordon Crovitz calls the fallout from the WCIT conference "America's First Big Digital Defeat."

  L. Gordon who? This is the same guy who claimed, fallaciously, that the government had little or nothing to do with the creation of the Internet. His new article is chiefly an attack on the U.N. — but most people agree that the WCIT conference, where the U.S. and a number of other countries announced they would not sign the final treaty, collapsed on itself, yielding two groups of Internet-using states: Ones that think the International Telecommunications Union is a good place to go to deal with Internet issues, where each country has one vote, and ones that think the Internet should remain at least nominally postnational.

Other watercooler fodder

• It didn't take long for John Kerry's likely promotion to Secretary of State to be reflected in Google Suggest.

• Japan's recently concluded election campaign went forward with restrictions on political opinions on social media.

After Newtown

• Led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has launched a new online video project to highlight the personal stories of people shaped by gun violence in their lives.

• Michael Wolff takes a critical look at Andy Carvin's social media curation of the Newtown tragedy.

• Two bloggers whose viral blog posts in response to the Newtown shootings ended up at odds with each other issued a joint statement emphasizing their shared concerns about mental illness.

Around the web

• The Census Bureau plans to offer the option of government surveys over the Internet for its future surveys.

• U.S. Marine Corps captain Matthew Phelps proposed to his same-sex partner at the White House, in a moment that was captured in a photo for his Facebook page.

• The Rolling Jubilee announced it had mailed its first debt forgiveness letters.

• Roll Call spoke with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) about technology policy and Congress.

• Glenn Greenwald and Dan Gillmor comment on the new Freedom of the Press Foundation.

• The EPA is investigating its employees' use of private e-mail accounts, including of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

• DARPA has launched a program to create a technology "that can act as a backbone for an airborne network with the same sort of bandwidth as fiber optic backbone," Ars Technica reported.

• Berkeley is considering banning surveillance drones.

• A former head of an Energy Department research and development program plans to lead energy strategy at Google.

• Nielsen is partnering with Twitter to create Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings.

• The Berkman Center's 2012 summer interns created a video to explain how Internet filtering works.

• There's a new article out about the Internet and the Mayan apocalypse. We're just going to leave this here.

International

• EU MEP Marietje Schaake wants European Commissioner Neelie Kroes to debrief the European Parliament on the outcome of the WCIT conference and what it means for Europe.

• The Facebook page of the Israeli embassy in Ireland was removed following a posting that suggested that Jesus and Mary would be "lynched" if they appeared in Bethlehem today. But on deeper consideration the posting also seemed to be somewhat confused about its intended religious allusion, given that a key element of the New Testament Christmas story involves Mary and Joseph being denied shelter in Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus, rather than a focus on an adult Jesus with Mary.

• Irani Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has launched a Facebook page, even though the site itself is officially banned in Iran.

• Iranian computers are being targeted by new malware that can wipe out disk partitions, Ars Technica reported.

• The European Commission recently launched a consultation on the civil enforcement of intellectual property rights.