Deciphering WCIT

• The Global Network Initiative offers its statement on the open Internet after the WCIT conference addressing "strengths and vulnerabilities, opportunities and threats."

  GNI, through which big platform companies like Google sit down with organizations and activists hoping to enlist them developing and protecting robust human rights online, said:

  ... the deeply flawed negotiation process and resulting agreement demonstrate the worrying potential for the fragmentation of the open Internet and the ongoing vulnerabilities in the international Internet governance regime, which will continue to be contested at international conferences and gatherings in the coming year.

  GNI will continue to advocate strongly for an Internet grounded in international human rights standards, the inclusion of all voices, and transparency. In 2013 this will be a priority of our efforts to bring together companies and civil society to protect the free flow of information and privacy online.

• Larry Downes offers his interpretation of the WCIT: "The Internet Cold War just turned hot."

  The Internet Cold War? Really? In "Net Delusion," Evgeny Morozov has a few words for people who devolve into language of the cold war to describe politics on the Internet. They are deserved. Among the signatories to the WCIT-12 treaty, which United States diplomats and others view as problematic because they may open the door to setting Internet policy through the U.N., are sometime U.S. allies Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia and Thailand. This may have more to do with the dynamics of developing countries' infrastructure needs and a desire for more national heft than it does with ideology, at least in the sense of ideology at issue in the Cold War.

Around the Web

• There's a Negotiating with Obama Tumblr in response to concerns on the Left that President Obama is making fiscal cliff suggestions that would hurt Social Security.

• Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, "@SpeakerBoehner’s so-called “Plan B” is Plan #Befuddled. It’s not big, bold, or balanced."

• The Obama administration has a weak record on transparency when it comes to disclosing the cost of travel by top officials, Bloomberg reported. OMB Watch wraps up high points and weaknesses in U.S. government transparency in 2012.

• In a Storify, the AFL-CIO's Jess Livoti-Morales urges reporters to focus more on female Obama for America staffers in the wake of a Rolling Stone article that named 10 people who helped Barack Obama win, including nine men and just one woman — a ratio out of step with the ratio of women to men in leadership and digital positions within the campaign.

• The Huffington Post looked at "what's next" for the Obama campaign's data and technology. The Obama campaign sent out an email to a survey on the campaign's online tools.

• Andy Carvin addresses Michael Wolff's assertions about his Newtown social media curation, point by point, in a Storify response.

• As it announced a press conference for Friday, the NRA returned to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and announced that it is "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."

• Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski noted the record Google search interest in "gun control."

• BlogHer examined the ethics of a viral blog post by a mother writing about how her young son reminded her of the Newtown shooter, especially as she didn't intend it to go viral.

• Nieman Lab explored how Wikipedia responded to the Newtown tragedy.

• A Twitter account belong to a spokesperson of the Westboro Baptist Church was hacked by Anonymous supporters.

• Amid reports that Cory Booker plans to run for Senate, Politicker looked at which political web domains have been secured in his name.

• Buzzfeed took a look at how NBC News tried to keep the news about Richard Engel's abduction secret even as rumors filtered out online.

• The Open Technology Institute has a new report on how "dwindling competition is fueling the rise of increasingly costly and restrictive Internet usage caps."

• Alex Howard writes about DARPA and the Defense Department's new open-source approach.

• The FTC has ordered data brokers to reveal their business practices.

• Kony 2012 and an Obama vs Romney rap battle video were among the top 10 viral videos on YouTube this past year.

• Responding to a post by Anil Dash about his nostalgia for the early days of the web, Felix Salmon outlines how "capitalism breaks the web."

• The Strike Debt effort offered an update on the Rolling Jubilee campaign, which they say has raised $480,000 so far:

  At the cost of $5,000 dollars, we have now successfully eliminated $100,000 of debt owed to creditors who profit from people’s sickness and suffering. Letters to 44 debtors will be delivered in specially wrapped holiday packages, designed to catch the eye and pique the curiosity of recipients.

• Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced a drone privacy bill.

• The House passed a bill that would make it easier for Internet users to share their online movie and TV rentals.

• A teenager's Change.org petition has prompted Hasbro to release a gender-neutral Easy-Bake oven.

• Nieman Lab detailed how the new Freedom of the Press Foundation will help MuckRock.

• A new report from the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation offers social media policy recommendations for transportation providers.

• A project called Life of Trash created by Nicholas Johnson lets people download an app for a phone, which they can toss in the trash, and then track where it goes.

• WNYC held a debate between Greg David, former editor of Crain’s New York Business and Laurel Touby, founder of mediabistro, about whether New York City is in a "tech bubble."

• Reuters published several interactives for a new feature on income inequality in America.

• Ninety percent of members of Generation Y surveyed worldwide said they check their smartphones for updates in email, texts and social media sites, often before they get out of bed, according to a new Cisco report.

• TechCrunch explored why NORAD's "Santa tracker" moved to Microsoft from Google.

• Penguin has settled with the Department of Justice in an e-book pricing case.

• A Minneapolis-based data scientist says he determined the location of the city's two stationary license place readers by studying a 90-day data set, Ars Technica reported.

• E.U. regulators are now probing Microsoft for a change to Microsoft's privacy policy that is similar to changes Google made earlier, Marketing Land noted.

• Mediashift took a look at new data released by the United Nations Development Programme.

• The New Yorker highlighted how forensic linguistics helped identify "trolls" on the Times-Picayune's website, uncovering inappropriate comments by a deputy U.S. Attorney and an assistant U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, prompting a scandal that led to the resignation of the U.S. Attorney in the Department of Justice in Lousiana. "Heloise-like tip to newbie trolls: don’t create an anonymous handle that includes the year of your own birth (Henry L. Mencken1951) or one that contains a homonym of your own name (eweman)."

• A Washington D.C. federal judge has ruled that police can get cell-site data without a warrant.

Mayan apocalypse watch

• Russians have been exchanging advice in online forums about what to eat after the human population is wiped out Friday, the Guardian reported.

International

• The British Director of Public Prosecutions is issuing new guidelines under which fewer people could be prosecuted for posts on social media.

• London police plan to set up an intellectual property crime unit.

• The Telegraph reported that changes to the British Freedom of Information Act could make it more difficult to obtain information and hold the government accountable.

• The Vatican will be the first entity to have its own generic Top-Level Domain name after ICANN finished a raffle for the order in which the domain names will be assigned.

• Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, gave a speech on digital priorities for 2013-2014, which emphasize broadband:

  We are all looking for reasons for hope at the moment. If you want hope - don't spend all day looking for it in this building, go look at these entrepreneurs instead.

  They are building the future; they are growing faster than China.

  Their ideas for policy too can be excellent. France's "Les Pigeons" group told me, and rightly so, that we shouldn't be talking about cutting the Erasmus programme at Council summits - we should be adding an "entrepreneur's Erasmus programme" instead!

• GigaOM reported on the EU's plans to remove barriers in the area of digital health.

• The Bulgarian town of Pazardzhik wants to become the first European city to offer free WiFi to its citizens.

• A Hungarian blogger has published a video about an "illegal" voter database used in a 2009 mayoral election, according to Global Voices.

• An Australian Internet service provider has withdrawn from a planned copyright notice trial program being discussed in round table talks.

• The Wall Street Journal profiled the Tor network and the case of an Austrian man who is awaiting charges regarding child pornography being distributed over the network he helped run.

• TechinAsia writes about how China's Internet policies have "doomed Chinese soft power."

• The New York Times highlighted how accounts of a siege in Syria differed on rebels' YouTube channels and British TV news.

• According to a Kuwaiti court, a "tweeter" and a "retweeter" can be equally guilty of a crime.

• The Swedish Pirate Party has filed a complaint over Swedish banks' participation in a blockade against donations to Wikileaks.

• A Polish telecommunications company is using the likeness of Obama and his name in an ad for smartphones and tablets.

• Urban Times reported on how the government of Singapore combines data collected from stationary and mobile sensors throughout the city, made it available on an open platform in cooperation with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and combined it with taxi GPS data.

• A U.N. innovation report has found that China registered the most patent applications globally last year.