Is Julian Assange a journalist? How does Bradley Manning compare to Daniel Ellsberg? How far does the First Amendment go in protecting the press when publishing classified information? These are just some of the many questions we'll grapple with next Monday night when The Institute of Information Law & Policy & The Program in Law and Journalism at New York Law School and Personal Democracy Forum present the latest in our series of symposiums on the issues raised by WikiLeaks. We have a great panel of experts speaking: * Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society * James Goodale, Former General Counsel of...
Archive: Year: 2011
We're working on some changes here and wanted to give you a heads-up on what's coming. Starting next week, we're going to shift towards delivering more "long-form" feature writing combined with daily curation of all the things that we think are important for you to hear about right away. In practical terms, what that means is our team (Nancy Scola, Nick Judd and me) will be publishing feature stories roughly once every other day, while what you've come to know and love as "Clearing the Cache" will expand and appear on a moment-by-moment basis as very short posts linking out to relevant material. If your main way of keeping up with techPresident is by RSS, you'll see smaller posts more often. If...
Well, not exactly. But we keep seeing hints and signs that the revolutionary spirit of Tunisia is heavily influenced by open source culture, or what BoingBoing might call "happy mutant" thinking. To wit, on March 4th, Tunisia's new Minister of Youth and Sports Slim Amamou, who is better known as an activist blogger who has been deeply involved in the democracy movement there, tweeted: "Modifions collaborativement la constitution. On va voir ce que ça donne http://piratepad.net/4BHO1W6B5q" or "Let's collaboratively change the Constitution. We'll see what happens" with a link to a PiratePad page, an open collaborative editing tool. Judging from the chat thread that emerged on that Piratepad, one very tough issue emerged--whether a new Constitution for Tunisia could exclude references...
The PdF Network is PdF's premium membership service, designed to give those working in government, politics, advocacy, and many more sectors, unparalleled access to industry experts and resources. As we work to upgrade the network, launching at the end of spring, we're offering the PdF Network's bi-monthly call series to the public at no cost. Paull Young. Last Thursday's PdF Network call focused on the latest thinking on how to use social media to fundraise. On this call, Paull Young, the director of digital for charity: water, had lots of terrific advice for non-profits on how best to use online social media to raise money. The full call, as a podcast, is available to stream and download at the bottom of...
It will take you a half hour to read Robert Manne's new essay on Julian Assange, but trust me, if you are one of those people who have been transfixed by the epic and world-shaking trajectory of WikiLeaks, the time will be well spent. The 15,000 word article was written for The Monthly, an Australian public affairs magazine that Manne is the chairman of, and it's behind a paywall there. It has also been posted in full on Cryptome. A few highlights: Manne, a professor of politics at Latrobe University in Melbourne, makes an absolutely striking comparison between Assange, perhaps the most famous Australian in the world today, and the man who previously would have claimed that title, media mogul Rupert...
It seems as though digital information is leaking out, or sort of leaking out, all over the place, rearranging and upsetting little ecosystems of power in all kinds of strange and unpredictable ways. In some cases, the information is wide open, like the HBGary emails. In others, it's partially open, like the State Department cables, which are being selectively leaked and perused by various gatekeepers. And in the case of the emails from reporters and media bookers that Kurt Bardella, Rep. Darrell Issa's former press aide, bcc-ed to New York Times reporter Mark Liebovich, the threat of their exposure is now driving the Beltway batty. Herewith, a little scorecard to help you keep track of recent events: [I will have to...
With ABC News reporting that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is about to become the first Republican to formally throw his hat into the 2012 presidential sweepstakes by creating a "presidential exploratory committee," we here at techPresident thought it might not hurt to pull together some baseline information about his online presence. Speaker Gingrich, whom everyone refers to as "Newt"--which we will too, for simplicity's sake--has several major online assets. The first is, not coincidentally, "Newt.org," which has been his online hub since as early as the fall of 1996. One result: if you Google "newt," Gingrich's home page comes up first and third (with a little amphibian in between). The only other likely GOP candidate who does as well with...
Am I bcc’ing him on every e-mail I send out? Of course not. — Kurt Bardella, spokesperson for Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight and Government Reform Committee, yesterday, on being asked about whether he was covertly sharing his email correspondence with reporters with The New York Times' Mark Liebovich. Bardella resigned today after questions first raised by Politico mushroomed....
Two years ago, Barack Obama promised the public that he was going to run government in a more transparent and interactive way. Indeed, at public rallies meant to build public support for the signature initiative of his fledgling administration, the $787 billion "Economic Recovery" stimulus spending program, he told audiences that he would "enlist all of you" to help watchdog the spending. The centerpiece was going to a new dynamic and interactive website, Recovery.gov: As soon as this plan is signed into law, Recovery.gov goes live and you’ll be able to see precisely where your tax dollars are going. Because this is your democracy, and as I said throughout the campaign, change never begins from the top down. It begins from...
American progressives are betting that tomorrow will be a red letter day for grassroots activism. In a matter of days and almost entirely without national attention or leadership by the traditional players, but with a lot of social media organizing, people are planning to rally in all fifty state capitols and about fifteen major cities to show their solidarity with the striking workers of Wisconsin. All the email networks are lit up, and MoveOn is planning to somehow stream live video from all the rallies onto one mass LiveStream page on MoveOn.org. Big numbers are predicted, with some saying that as many as a million people will be marching. On MoveOn's site, you can see the advance sign-ups: More than 1800...