Harvey, Irma…Irma, Harvey

As Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, journalism teacher Holly Hartman downloaded the walkie-talkie app Zello and started listening in on volunteers from the Cajun Navy, an ad-hoc group of private boat owners that formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, who were now swarming to help rescue people in the Houston area. Before Hartman knew what she was doing, she had volunteered to help moderate incoming calls for help. Here is her powerful story from the next 34 hours.

URGENT: The Disaster Response Corps, a collaborative effort of volunteers, organizations, and companies who assisted with previous disasters such as Superstorm Sandy, and are now working on Harvey and Irma recovery, including Station Houston, Sketch City Houston, NY Tech Responds, Code for Miami, Code for Fort Lauderdale, Code for Orlando, Open Referral, Poetic Systems, and TTM Advisors, is seeking volunteers with tech and general organizations skills who want to assist with rescue and recovery efforts in response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

HarveyNeeds.org is working to connect victims, volunteers, shelters and rescue teams.

Tech volunteers in Houston are also turning their sites (and recent experience) to help with Irma prep, Alex Konrad of Forbes reports.

Here’s how to onboard yourself into IrmaResponse.org.

Life in Facebookistan: Facebook has discovered that in 2015-16 it sold ads to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda, its chief security officer Alex Stamos posted yesterday. About 3,300 ads costing about $100,000 have been identified so far, with many focused on “amplifying divisive social and political messages” and about one-quarter were geographically targeted.

Facebook is cooperating with congressional investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the new revelation “left unanswered in what we received from Facebook — because it is beyond the scope of what they are able to determine — is whether there was any coordination between these social media trolls and the [Trump] campaign.” He also said the news “serves as a profound warning to us and others about future elections.”

A lot of people think that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who right after the election heatedly denied that his platform had been abused by fake news purveyors, should be called to testify before Congress.

Media matters: Good news, it’s still legal for a reporter to ask a government official questions. Charges have been dropped in the case of Public News Service reporter Dan Heyman, who was arrested in May for trying to ask HHS Secretary Tom Price questions in a West Virginia Capitol building, Erik Wemple reports for The Washington Post.

Really good news! A California judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Shiva Ayyadurai against Techdirt. As the site’s relieved founder Mike Masnick writes, “We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit. This is, clearly, a big win for the First Amendment and free speech.” (Readers will recall Masnick’s powerful speech at Personal Democracy Forum last June about the case and its chilling effect on him and his colleagues.)

Ugly news: The Intercept’s Micah Lee reports on how rightwing extremists dox and harass their enemies online, using evidence obtained from a source lurking on neo-Nazi message boards.

Trump watch: Dozens of lobbyists, government contractors and influence peddlers are members of President Trump’s private golf clubs, USA Today’s Brad Heath, Fredreka Schouten, Steve Reilly, Nick Penzenstadler and Aamer Madhani report. Two-thirds of them played golf on one of the 58 days that Trump has visited his favorite clubs in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia, according to scores they posted online. Let’s hear it for online golf scores! As USA Today’s team writes, “Because membership lists at Trump’s clubs are secret, the public has until now been unable to assess the conflicts they could create. USA TODAY found the names of 4,500 members by reviewing social media and a public website golfers use to track their handicaps, then researched and contacted hundreds to determine whether they had business with the government. The review shows that, for the first time in U.S. history, wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally.”

Tech and politics: The New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo writes up a new survey by Stanford University political scientists that found that wealthy tech entrepreneurs tend to be socially liberal, in favor of higher taxes on the rich and more social services for the poor, but most oppose tight government regulation of business, especially rules that protect workers. This is news?

Microsoft president Brad Smith says that if the government tries to deport one of its employees with DACA status, “it’s going to have to go through us to get that person.” Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company “will fight for them to be treated as equals.”

Heather Gold asks a good question: “Why did President Obama Post About DACA on Facebook?” She notes that he has his own website, but by prioritizing Facebook he not only supports privatizing public space, he’s helping Facebook get more data about its users.

“Neither Google nor Eric Schmidt attempted to interfere” with New America’s Open Markets program, NAF board chair Jonathan Soros has written, in an internal email to staff obtained by Wired’s Nitasha Tiku. “They did not threaten funding, and they did not call for any changes” in the organization’s programs.

Berlin’s Chaos Computer Club says the software used to tally votes in Germany’s upcoming national election is insecure. “The amount of vulnerabilities and their severity exceeded our worst expectations“, one of CCC’s researchers, Linus Neumann, said.

The House of Representatives yesterday unanimously approved a bill that would speed the deployment self-driving cars on the nation’s roads, in part by pre-empting state lawmakers from issuing tougher regulations, Reuters reports.

Whither civil society? Writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, nonprofit strategy consultant Tom Watson (a longtime friend of Civic Hall) says that “American civil society is under attack [and] few if any figures of national prominence have stepped forward to address this attack directly, organize a unified and interdependent defense, and gather the political and social willpower to mobilize nonprofits, foundations, philanthropists, corporate grant makers, social entrepreneurs, and others outside the government to oppose the destructive forces damaging the very organizational ties that bind American society.”

This is civic tech: Jason Hibbetts recounts the seven-year history of civic tech initiatives in the Triangle, North Carolina’s hub of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It all started with CityCamp…

Apply: The Obama Foundation has launched a fellowship program for “outstanding civic innovators from around the world in order to amplify the impact of their work and to inspire a wave of civic innovation.” More information here.