administrator

Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Paul Bell's bio below.

When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in February, he spoke to the need for the United States to become more energy-efficient. To that end, the stimulus bill he recently signed into law provides more than $30 billion for energy efficiency projects, innovative technology loan guarantees, the retrofitting of federal facilities, and the development of the initial framework for a "smart" electrical grid.

These measures put the country on a long-term path toward so-called green-led growth. But how they are implemented is as … Read more

In a move to reach out the Cuban people, the White House on Monday announced a series of changes to U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the authorization of greater telecommunications links to the communist country.

"This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba," the White House said in a statement. "Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the … Read more

The State Department is bolstering its use of social media with the appointment of a new senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

One Economy co-founder Alec Ross, whose nonprofit organization brings technology to low-income people, starts at the State Department on Monday, The Washington Post reported. As a senior adviser for the State Department, he's charged with using technology to enhance the department's diplomatic missions in areas such as health care, poverty, and human rights.

Internet diplomacy is nothing new in Washington, but the Obama administration has put more emphasis on the potential to … Read more

As any major Web site can attest, any online voting begs to be influenced by special interests. CNBC yanked a 2007 presidential poll after enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters boosted their candidate to 75 percent, and the FreeRepublic.com crowd recently flooded a Web vote about stem cell funding.

On Thursday, WhiteHouse.gov became the latest Web site to experience this kind of deluge as part of an online town hall--and this time, it was marijuana legalization advocates who voted to push their questions to the top of the charts.

By the time President Obama's town hall began, questions about … Read more

Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights.

Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."

The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to … Read more

As Vivek Kundra, President Obama's choice for U.S. chief information officer, was speaking about government transparency at the Washington, D.C., convention center on Thursday morning, his former offices a few blocks away were being raided by the FBI.

Until Obama's appointment last week, Kundra was the District of Columbia's chief technology officer. The FBI raid coincided with two arrests as part of a bribery sting--Yusuf Acar, 40, and Sushil Bansal, 41.

An administration official tells our sister news organization, CBS News, that Kundra has taken a leave of absence from his new position as the … Read more

Unlike many of the applications designed to monitor and limit kid's Internet activity, DM Net Time and Watch Administrator doesn't present a fancy interface. The tabbed layout is all business, but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss.

As soon as DM Net Time and Watch Administrator launches, it scans for users on the network (or shared computer) and displays them in the first tab. Tick a check box to select the user(s) you want to restrict or monitor, and simply follow the tabs to apply the desired settings. Less experienced users will probably … Read more

The Bush administration secretly concluded after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that it had the authority to wiretap the Internet and telephone calls with virtually no limitations, restrict free speech, and use the U.S. military domestically against suspected terrorists.

Those legal opinions came in a series of memorandums written by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, including deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, which were disclosed by the Obama administration on Monday.

Although the broad outlines of the Bush administration's claims to sweeping executive powers were previously known, the newly released memorandums provide a glimpse at both … Read more

Editors' note: Correction, March 3, 12:46 p.m. PST: This post, which originally carried the headline "White House ditches YouTube after privacy complaints," significantly misconstrued the White House's policy on and use of YouTube. In the interests of disclosure and transparency, we are leaving the contents as originally posted, with two subsequent update notes and with the exception of the headline change. See also our follow-up story, "No, the White House hasn't ditched YouTube."

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Updated at 5:50 p.m. PST March 2: The New York Times is reporting that … Read more