Buzzing

Not-yet-declared Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush doesn’t like Obamacare but he is a fan of the new Apple Watch supposed health benefits, reports David Knowles for Bloomberg Politics. “On this device in five years will be applications that will allow me to manage my healthcare in ways that five years ago were not even possible,” Bush told an audience in Tempe, Arizona. “I’ll have the ability, someone will, you know, because of my blood sugar, …someone will send me a signal it’ll come here, I’ll get a double beep saying ‘you just ate a butterscotch sundae or something like that. You went way over the top. You’re a diabetic, you can’t do that’—whatever, we’ll be able to guide our own healthcare decisions in a way that will make us healthy. Ultimately, we have to get to a health system, away from a disease system.”

Talk about the intersection of tech and politics: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson tells MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that he and “US Northcom…Secret Service, Capitol Police, [and] Metro police” are all worried about drones threatening the safety of 2016 presidential candidates. He added:

I was giving a commencement address a couple weekends ago and in the middle I look up and I see a little drone flying over my head. Fortunately the Secret Service was on this guy in a second, but it was a little distracting in the middle of what I thought was an inspirational speech and all of a sudden I see this thing buzzing over my head.

The White House’s new chief digital officer, Jason Goldman, turns to Twitter to ask for feedback and the exchange on his tweet is illuminating. At one point, the ubiquitous Twitterphile Alex Howard asks, “If participation on @WethePeople doesn’t lead to a response, what’s your case for why the public should engage more elsewhere?” Goldman replies, “@digiphile I know there’s more to do there. I worked on this petition in my first week and I believe in the platform.” Howard replies, “The platform isn’t at issue. It’s whether WH is willing to respond to what’s *on it*. Until it does, why participate in another?” And Goldman says, “I don’t think it’s a zero sum game. But I fully agree petitions is piece we need to improve and appreciate your advocacy of it.”

Hollaback!, the international movement to end street harassment, has built a prototype application called HeartMob to help combat harassment online, Sarah Kessler reports for FastCompany. They are raising money on Kickstarter to help fund the development of the platform. Although they have already met their goal, if they reach 1,000 backers, the Knight Foundation will give them an additional $10,000. This week the HeartMob team has also encouraged people to share stories of online harassment with the hashtag #MyTroll, which they have collected in a Storify.

Related: Reddit has announced new steps to combat harassing behavior on the community site, saying it will prohibit attacks and harassment of individuals “with the goal of preventing them.”

Facebook Instant is coming “to local news publishers in the coming months,” its VP for media partnerships Justin Osofsky tells Columbia Journalism Review’s Corey Hutchins.

Belgium’s privacy commission has condemned Facebook for “trampl[ing] on European and Belgian privacy laws” and is insisting that it get explicit consent from users for tracking users with behavioral ads, Samuel Gibbs reports for The Guardian.

Several civic tech projects are finalists in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation’s annual $100,000 prize for innovation in public engagement in government award, including: Oregon’s Citizen Initiative Review, New York City’s Participatory Budgeting effort, and Philadelphia’s Textizen platform.

With Jessica McKenzie