Scott Brown | TechPresident

Elizabeth Warren Doubles Down On Celebrity Support In E-mail Solicitation

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, May 11 2012

Back in February Republican Senator Scott Brown and the state Republican party attacked Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren for relying on Hollywood celebrities to raise campaign cash. The Massachusetts GOP released a ... Read More

Senate Passes Controversial Jobs Act, With Landmark Crowdfund Investing Provision

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, March 22 2012

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to approve a controversial package of bills that would loosen the rules that govern the process of raising money and going public for small businesses and startups. The legislation would ... Read More

Testing the SuperPAC-Free Massachusetts Senate Campaign

BY Nick Judd | Friday, March 9 2012

In an email to supporters, Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren just announced that after an online conversation with supporters, she's asked Sen. Scott Brown to donate money to the Autism Consortium, a network of medical and research institutions in the Boston and Worcester areas, in accordance with a pledge both contenders for the Senate reached in January.

An independent group placed an ad recently on Brown's behalf. Brown and Warren had pledged that should outside groups enter the race on one candidate's behalf, that candidate would donate to a charity of the other candidate's choice from its campaign funds — which would, in theory, negate the financial benefits of outside money entering the race.

Spotted: Scott Brown Ads on YouTube

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, February 29 2012

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has begun advertising his campaign online beyond Massachusetts using the Google ad network, including on YouTube. Read More

'Draft Warren' Campaign Already Raking In the Bucks Online

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, July 19 2011

A Progressive Change Campaign Committee fundraising effort to draft Elizabeth Warren launched yesterday has already raised $40,000. David Catanese reported yesterday that the PCCC had raised $15,000 in only four hours, ... Read More

On Tweeting in a Tornado

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 5 2011

Federal Emergency Management Administration Administrator Craig Fugate is now discussing social media and disaster response with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. C-SPAN is offering ... Read More

Trippi to Mass. and Massie

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 26 2011

Long-time strategist Joe Trippi has signed up with Democrat Bob Massie's campaign in Massachusetts to unseat Sen. Scott Brown, notes Ben Smith: Trippi, who notes that he began his career working for Ted Kennedy's 1980 ... Read More

Gingrich's Traces Brown Victory Back to Tea Parties and Web

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, April 16 2010

Newt Gingrich makes a habit of getting out in front of trends he spots marching along. Worth noting, then, is that at an appearance in West Texas, he connects Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts to two big happenings ... Read More

The Strange Tale of Scott Brown, Rachel Maddow, and a Tweet Goof that Maybe Wasn't (Updated)

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, March 23 2010

Click to enlarge Part of the joy of politics is that there's always something new and strange right around the corner. Read More

Right-roots vs Net-roots: Whose Online Donor Base is Bigger?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, March 5 2010

How big are the right-roots? And how do they stack up against the net-roots? I've been asking that question of various people lately, and also looking at some of the metrics available, as both sides of the American ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

Mike Honda Locks Up Establishment Support, But Challenger Has Ear of the Silicon Valley Elite

Some of Silicon Valley's most influential business people will hold a fundraiser in San Francisco this Thursday for Ro Khanna, the 36-year-old lawyer who's challenging 71-year-old California Democrat Mike Honda for his 17th Congressional District seat. The names at the top of the invite: Ron Conway and Sean Parker. They're apparently forming a committee to help Khanna build his campaign. The other bold-face names who are listed as part of the 'committee in formation' include Salesforce.com's Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Benchmark Capital General Partners' Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, tech entrepreneur Shawn Fanning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, her big data venture investor husband Zach Bogue, and Conway's SV Angel colleague, Founder and Managing Partner David Lee. GO

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