Sen. Barack Obama is taking heat from liberal supporters for changing his position on granting phone companies involved in President Bush's domestic spying program retroactive immunity for breaking federal laws.
According to a New York Times article published Wednesday, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on Obama's own campaign Web site to protest his recent move to support legislation that will grant legal immunity to phone companies involved in the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program after the September 11 attacks.
Sen. Barack Obama
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com)Previously, Obama opposed any immunity for the telecom companies. In February, Obama voted on a Senate bill against retroactive immunity. And when asked for CNET News.com's 2008 Technology Voters' Guide whether he supported "giving (phone companies) retroactive immunity for any illicit cooperation with intelligence agencies or law enforcement, " he answered "No."
During the primary, Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the Times story said. But now he has switched his position to support a compromise bill that was worked out between the White House and Democratic Congressional leaders.
The bill is expected to be voted on by the Senate on Tuesday after the Fourth of July holiday, the article said.
Disappointed Obama supporters told the Times that they see the shift in the telecom immunity issue as a test of Obama's principles in opposing Bush's surveillance program. The article quotes Markos Moulitsas, a blogger and founder of DailyKos.com, as saying that he has decided to cut back the amount of money he gives to the Obama campaign.
While supporters may be frustrated and angry by Obama's apparent flip-flop on this issue, they won't find any more consistency in Sen. John McCain, Obama's presidential opponent on the Republican side.
My colleague Declan McCullagh pointed out in his blog last month that when news about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program became public years ago, McCain was critical of it. Initially, he said that the courts should decide whether or not AT&T and others accused of violating laws should be held accountable for their participation in the domestic spying program. He also said publicly that it should be made clear to the phone companies that any immunity granted should explicitly state that this was not a "blessing" of their practices and that there should be oversight hearings on the issue.
But over the course of the campaign, McCain's position has changed. In February, he voted for retroactive immunity--even though there were no explicit statements telling AT&T and other telecommunications companies that this is not a "blessing." And there was no deal providing for "oversight hearings," nor were there "provisions" to ensure this won't happen again.
If the outcome of this year's presidential race depended solely on the whims of computer industry workers, it appears that there'd be a draw.
Or at least that's what a survey of 600 employees in that space recently found. The questionnaire was conducted just before the early March primaries by the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, a trade association that represents mostly smaller technology companies, and Rasmussen Reports, a public-opinion research organization.
In response to a question about who'd get their votes if the election were "today," both Democrat Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain received 29 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton trailed behind them with 13 percent, according to results released Tuesday. (Here's CompTIA's PowerPoint presentation of the findings.)
Republican Mike Huckabee racked up 11 percent of the vote, and Internet sweetheart Ron Paul nabbed 9 percent. Another 9 percent of the survey respondents said they were undecided.
More broadly, 35 percent of the survey respondents identified themselves as Republican, 26 percent as Democrat, and 40 percent as "other." Broken down further, 39 percent identified themselves as conservative, 36 percent as moderate, 24 percent as liberal, and 2 percent as "not sure."
Update at 1:45 p.m. PST: The survey was conducted by phone and through a scientifically random distribution, CompTIA spokesman Mike Wendy said. Call recipients were asked first whether they were American, over the age of 18, and an information technology worker, and if they answered affirmatively to all three, the call proceeded. That process was repeated until 600 IT workers were reached.
The findings demonstrate that the high-tech workforce, which CompTIA says numbers about 12 million, is "clearly a large and well-off group of independent-minded voters, whose loyalty is up for grabs," said Roger Cochetti, the group's public-policy director.
Still, it would seem that the economic sector isn't necessarily representative of the American public. Obama, after all, did lose Silicon Valley to Clinton on Super Tuesday, though he has shaped up to be more of an Internet darling than his rival.
Rasmussen's own latest "presidential tracking poll" of 1,600 likely voters, regardless of employment sector, indicates a much tighter race on the Democratic side than the tech sector survey suggested. A Monday night survey found that Obama was favored by 45 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, while Clinton attracted 44 percent.
A roundup of other recent polls by Gallup, CNN, USA Today, and others, found that Obama averaged a 2 percent advantage, though Clinton was favored in some of the individual surveys.
An average of those polls also shows that less than a percentage point separates McCain from Obama or Clinton, based on separate polls pitting him against each of the Democrats.
For the record, men composed the largest chunk of survey respondents, at 77 percent, which may account to some degree for the lackluster Clinton vote. About three-fourths of the survey respondents were white, and nearly half were college graduates. About a third of them said they earn more than $100,000 annually, but otherwise, income levels were all over the map. About a fourth of the respondents said they had contributed to a presidential campaign.
The survey--the second of what CompTIA has billed as a series of surveys aimed at amplifying technology interests in this year's election cycle--didn't delve much into specific policy topics. But it did note that respondents ranked the economy, the war in Iraq, and immigration, respectively, as the top three most important issues for the next president.
A more detailed report dissecting specific policy issues that inform technology workers' votes is expected to be released later this month.
Speaking as someone whose political views are decidedly left, I never thought I'd say this, but would Moveon.Org just put a plug in it already?
As an Internet phenomenon, MoveOn certainly demonstrated how to mobilize public opinion. Indeed, the organization, founded in 1998 by a married couple of nouveau-riche techies, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, acquitted itself well during the Monica Lewinsky uproar.
Unlike a sadly servile mainstream media, which insisted upon playing to the lowest common denominator, a spunky MoveOn appeared seemingly out of nowhere to rally online opposition to the sham taking place in Washington.
But no matter what you thought about the nature of Bill Clinton's actions leading up to Lewinsky-gate, MoveOn's organizational activity represented a textbook example how civil society is supposed to function in a republic. This was interest group politics at its best--as American as apple pie and Federalist Paper No. 10.
MoveOn has played a big role in Congress' (still-to-be-decided) Net neutrality debate, while its pressure tactics also helped stoke opposition to Facebook's ill-considered
Even before then, my enthusiasm for MoveOn's shtick had begun to wane. I think it was the "
Nobody in this country should be above criticism--and that includes appointed military leaders. But the ad unfairly smeared Petraeus, a dedicated professional and one of the most capable U.S. officers ever to serve in Iraq. MoveOn's lame response was that the ad was "successful" in its intent. To wit: "Call the credibility of Petraeus' testimony into question. It garnered more coverage than any ad that MoveOn.org has run in years. Every time Republicans debated the ad, they helped raise questions around reliability of the General's report."
When I read that, I could only murmur sotto voce a disgusted, "you've got to be f---ing kidding me."
Now it's Obama-grams seemingly every day arriving in my inbox from the MoveOn crowd. Enough! I'll make up my own mind. Barack Obama's a fine candidate, but I think Hillary Clinton would make just as capable a 44th president.
Blades and Boyd made a bundle by convincing a sucker to pay millions for the flying toaster screen servers and other forgettable pop-culture bric-a-brac turned out by their company. But business savvy doesn't always translate into political acumen. (If they want to give me an argument, I'd only point to Dick Cheney's multimillion dollar payday from Halliburton as Exhibit A.)
A Sequoia voting machine rebooting, and rebooting...
(Credit: Kevin Ho)With all things touch-screen in an increasingly touch-screen centric world, I was given the "plastic or paper" option for casting my vote in the California primary on this most super of Super Tuesdays. So, not liking the marker fumes and being used to touching everything on the iPhone anyway, I opted to vote "plastic."
The polling place had 10 conventional optical-scan voting stations with real paper ballots, but only 1 digital voting machine. San Francisco uses the Sequoia voting machine and, well, here's my story:
The clerk handed me a plastic card to insert into the machine. The idea is that you insert the card to activate the ballot and machine. Easy, right? Umm, no, not so in my case. Instead of the black screen of death, Sequoia's red screen of death (irony that the Communists would laugh at) popped up when I inserted my card into the machine's slot. Nothing moved--neither touching nor talking to the machine worked. What's worse, the card was now stuck in the machine as there was no eject button or function. The clerk who handed me the card was confounded. I was having flashbacks to that movie, Man of the Year, with Robin Williams being elected on a computer glitch. I had a thought that I'd have to cast a dreaded "provisional ballot"--at least my name isn't Chad and I'm not pregnant.
Not to be deterred, however, another clerk came over and explained something about hitting "yes" to the other clerk who handled the plastic cards that had been processed on another machine. The clerk then proceeded to lift the back of my voting machine up, slapping it hard so that it must have told it to reboot itself. (What is it about me and having to reboot things? Voting machines, airline seats, iPhones?)
After the two-minute reboot, voting was simple. After a language choice, you were presented with various screens containing all the would-be presidents, ballot measures, and attempts to turn Alcatraz into a Global Peace Park. (I voted no on that bright idea.)
The font was large and not as elegant as the voter guide, nor was it sexy like any Apple-based user interface, but it was functional. I clicked my choices (maybe you can see who I voted for on the pictures I took on my iPhone to document the event) and, at the end, was asked to review my choices. What's best, is that the screen then directed me to look at the paper (yes, paper) receipt that scrolled up on the left of the machine, providing the reassuring paper record of my vote. And it was, indeed, accurate.
So in the end, it's an anachronistic notion that in a plastic world, paper is still the default method that gives us reassurance that our vote still counts. What's more interesting is that while my plastic voting method was expected to be faster, it wasn't, as some of the paper people in line behind me moved past.
Casting my vote on Sequoia: A vote for me and a vote for you.
(Credit: Kevin Ho)
Receipt with you or in the bag? Sequoia's paper receipt.
(Credit: Kevin Ho)
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, with his wife Cindy, thanks supporters in a victory speech Tuesday evening.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )NASHUA, N.H.--Hillary Clinton and John McCain won Tuesday's New Hampshire primaries the old-fashioned way: trekking to scores of coffee houses, diners, and high school gymnasiums. They shook hands, answered questions, and eventually convinced a plurality of voters.
This was politicking at its most traditional, employing venerable tactics like McCain's Straight Talk Express bus tour and Clinton's "Time to Pick a President" meetings with voters. By the time the polls closed, it was a rare Granite State resident who managed to avoid in-person contact with a would-be president or a pushy surrogate.
In other words, it was anything but high-tech. Sure, there were robo-calls and e-mail alerts, but, for the most part, the local events that convinced voters to pick Clinton and McCain could have been convened at any point in the last century.
One example: the day after losing in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton asked supporters to meet her at a hangar at the airport here in the frosty pre-dawn gloom. It was a miserable day not only for campaign aides but also for locals, with temperatures at the event hovering around minus 6 degrees Fahrenheit. The Democratic senator showed up, responded to questions, and departed in a coach emblazoned with "BIG CHALLENGES, REAL SOLUTIONS, TIME TO PICK A PRESIDENT" in bold letters.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton prepare for her victory speech that took place later this evening in a gymnasium in Manchester, N.H.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com)Another example: employees of defense contractor BAE Systems crowded into a small auditorium to hear McCain speak, and, when that filled up, crowded into the main lobby to watch his remarks on a screen. The Republican senator spoke for half an hour, and, when the event was over, the workers waited patiently for the chance to shake McCain's hand or glimpse his campaign bus on the way out.
New Hampshire residents love it. More precisely, they claim to be annoyed by candidates and journalists interrupting their meals at diners and parking on their lawns when nearby events fill up, but they savor their chance to influence a presidential election and they take this role seriously.
Not only did Clinton's and McCain's tiresome, repetitive, voice-hoarsening efforts work, they nicely put into perspective the clamor that has arisen over social networks and other Internet popularity contests.
Neither of those candidates was a favorite online. Barack Obama, who came in second in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, has 219,707 MySpace "friends" to Clinton's 160,414. Obama and John Edwards each had more viewers on YouTube than Clinton did. Obama had around four times the number of "Eventful" demands for a visit than Clinton did and more than three times the Facebook friends.
And by any Internet metric, Texas Rep. Ron Paul should have captured the lion's share of the GOP vote in New Hampshire. He's arguably the Internet's favorite candidate, with Google engineers campaigning for him here, a remarkable lead on Eventful and Facebook, and 111,757 MySpace "friends" to McCain's mere 40,770.
Instead, Paul received just 8 percent of the vote (which is somewhat surprising after a weekend poll put him at 14 percent).
The reason for this, of course, is that Paul and Obama supporters tend to be young and tech savvy, which gives them disproportionate representation online. They flood online polls. They feverishly add their preferred candidate to their social networks. They organize, and raise funds, incredibly well.
John Edwards may not be the Internet's favorite candidate, but a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H. proves he's adept at kissing babies.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )There's nothing wrong with that. But in presidential elections, votes matter, and those in Iowa and New Hampshire matter the most. Exercises in online nose-counting like press releases heralding the so-called "MySpace primary" don't.
To be sure, online politicking has been part of the 2008 election. The YouTube debates proved to be a provocative exercise in user-generated content, Meetup and MoveOn changed the way activism works, and e-mail lets campaigns stay in touch with voters and volunteers. As Paul devotees know, online fundraising is a powerful tool.
Journalists love these metrics (see above for the obligatory MySpace statistics) because they're easy to measure and report. But Tuesday's results should be a cautionary tale: votes matter. In-person meetings matter. Handshakes matter. MySpace friends don't.
CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report.
Sen. Barack Obama slams President Bush's warrantless wiretap program at Dartmouth College in his last public appearance before the polls close here in New Hampshire.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )HANOVER, N.H.--Barack Obama may be leading the Democratic presidential pack in every major poll here, but that didn't dissuade the Illinois senator from a final early-morning rally with the Facebook generation.
Clearly not content to leave their votes to the whims of online politicking, the Illinois senator stepped onto a stage fashioned in a Dartmouth College gymnasium, pulled an index card from his inside jacket pocket, and launched into a familiar set of talking points centered on what has become a familiar theme for his campaign: change and hope.
"My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," he told a crowd of about 300 Ivy Leaguers--and, by the looks of it, a handful of locals who managed to gain access to what was supposed to be a students-only event.
For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and "wiretaps without warrants," he said. (He was referring to the lingering legal fallout over reports that the National Security Agency scooped up Americans' phone and Internet activities without court orders, ostensibly to monitor terrorist plots, in the years after the September 11 attacks.)
It's hardly a new stance for Obama, who has made similar statements in previous campaign speeches, but mention of the issue in a stump speech, alongside more frequently discussed topics like Iraq and education, may give some clue to his priorities.
In our own Technology Voters' Guide, when asked whether he supports shielding telecommunications and Internet companies from lawsuits accusing them of illegal spying, Obama gave us a one-word response: "No."
(Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Republican Ron Paul, for their part, came to the same conclusion in our survey.)
Barack Obama's audience at Dartmouth College was receptive but, compared to other political events in the state in the last week, relatively small.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )At the event, which was interrupted for about 10 minutes when a woman in the audience felt faint and was carried out on a stretcher, Obama also spent a few moments on another cause that's important to most of his competitors, regardless of party affiliation: the need to "break from the tyranny of fossil fuels" and the "addiction to foreign oil" in favor of a "green economy" built on alternative sources like solar, wind and biodiesel.
"We are going to save this planet, and you are going to help us do it because you are going to be voting today," he predicted.
Already 5 to 13 points ahead in the polls, depending on which ones you consult, Obama may not have needed to air the tried-and-true speech yet again. And thanks to springlike temperatures--a stark contrast from last week's subzero blitz--New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner reportedly predicted a record turnout of half a million voters before the polls close at 7 p.m. (and a few at 8 p.m.) EST Tuesday.
NASHUA, N.H.--With less than a day before New Hampshire's primary election, it's starting to get ugly here.
And no, we're not just talking about the warmer temperatures turning pristine white snow to gray slush. On Sunday evening, Hillary Clinton's campaign accused Barack Obama's operatives of violating New Hampshire law by dispatching prerecorded "robocalls" to folks on the federal "do not call" list.
Clinton's camp says the messages are also illegal because they fail to disclose they're associated with the Obama campaign--instead, implying they're sponsored by the Planned Parenthood of Northern New England--until 38 seconds into the message. Under state law, such identifications must occur within 30 seconds.
"I'm really disappointed, and I'm just very, very sad to see that these tactics are being adopted by another campaign here in this Democratic primary," Cathy Sullivan, the Clinton campaign's New Hampshire coordinator, said in a conference call with reporters.
Clinton representatives said they were tipped off to the potential infraction by two supporters who called the campaign and claimed they had received the calls despite being on the do-not-call list.
We received no immediate response from the Obama camp, but according to other news outlets, the campaign is dismissing the charges, calling them a sign of desperation on the part of Clinton, who is trailing the Illinois senator here in most recent polls.
"Our disclaimer absolutely complies with the federal law and our vendor has assured us that he scrubbed the list for people on the do-not-call registry," Ned Helms, Obama's New Hampshire campaign co-chairman, said in an e-mail published by the Associated Press. "If this call went to someone who should not have received it, we will make sure the vendor takes every step to make sure this doesn't happen again," Helms said, in an e-mail from the Obama campaign.
The campaign also claims New Hampshire's do-not-call law does not apply to "presidential preference primaries."
The use of the robocalls at all illustrates that despite the amount of attention that media has been giving to the Internet's prominence in this year's primary, more traditional forms of getting out the vote are still out in full force. Across New Hampshire on Monday, most of the major candidates are traveling to local eateries, schools, and cultural centers to take a last stab at swaying undecided voters to their sides.
The allegations arrive as a new USA Today-Gallup poll found Obama to be in the lead among candidates in Tuesday's contest, with 39 percent of the support, compared with Clinton's 29 percent. That contrasts with a poll released just before Saturday night's debates, in which Obama and Clinton were in a dead heat, with each candidate racking up 33 percent of local voters' backing.
Update at 11:08 a.m. PST: The same USA Today-Gallup poll from Monday, by the way, found Sen. John McCain leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by 4 percentage points in the Republican race.
Even though they don't have the visibility of MySpace or Facebook, the New York-based Community Connect has developed a series of niche social-networking sites that have managed to generate a significant following within the communities they represent.
AsianAve, the company's first project, launched in June of 1997. The site provides a service aimed at an Asian audience and somewhat resembles MySpace in look and feel. Since then, Community Connect has gone on to release BlackPlanet, MiGente, and Glee. Its most recent initiative, Faithbase, is a hub for Christians to meet and socialize with other Christians.
While Ning allows anyone to create their own social network, Community Connect has chosen to develop its own proprietary software and market five successive networks that each focus on a specific identity. I spoke to Kay Madati, vice president of marketing for the company, about what differentiates their networks from those created on Ning; while he wasn't familiar with Ning he pointed out that Community Connect's sites have more members than any off-the-shelf social networks he is aware of.
Faithbase officially launched in June 2007 but its "overt marketing push began about a month ago." The site currently has 51,000 members and experienced most of its growth over the past few weeks.
... Read moreWhen U.S. presidential candidates start promoting their open-source and open-document platforms, you know that the open-source movement has finally arrived. I mean, what could be more flattering than to be someone's five-second sound bite?
OK, lots of things. But I still liked reading that Barak Obama has made open document formats part of his campaign, as he noted in a recent speech at Google:
We have to use technology to open up our democracy. It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I'll change that. I'll put government data online in universally accessible formats.
Namely, ODF. Maybe. Or not.
... Read moreJust in time for a Wednesday visit to the Googleplex and other Silicon Valley outposts, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama plans to take the wraps off his technology platform.
Obama's agenda (PDF), which numbers nine pages, isn't limited to the usual talking points, although they're in there, too: enacting Net neutrality rules, speeding next-generation broadband deployment to all corners of the nation, improving math and science education, beefing up federal research spending, letting in more foreign tech workers, and making the research and development tax credit permanent.
Barack Obama
(Credit: U.S. Senate)His plan also includes a number of technology-laced provisions aimed at making government more transparent--with the goal of counteracting what he calls "one of the most secretive, closed administrations in American history" under President Bush.
To do that, he would appoint a "chief technology officer" charged not only with making sure all federal agencies' computer systems are up to date, but also with making sure government agencies make their electronic records as open and transparent as federal law requires. The CTO would also oversee construction of a nationwide wireless network for use by public safety responders, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission.
Webcasts of congressional proceedings are already abundant, but Obama proposes providing live Internet feeds of executive branch meetings as often as possible as well. He also wants to make government data available in universally accessible formats, allow the public to comment on nonemergency legislation at the White House Web site for five days before it's signed, and enlist blogs, wikis and social-networking tools in an effort to promote communication among government employees, both internally and across agencies.
The San Jose Mercury News first reported on the agenda early Wednesday morning.
Obama's plan may sweep in a broader set of issues than some of his rivals, but his isn't the first high-tech platform to emerge from a presidential candidate.
Arguably his biggest rival, Hillary Clinton, released a the text of her plan about a month ago. Her "innovation agenda" overlaps in may ways with a Democratic congressional plan of the same name
Among Clinton's ideas are offering tax incentives to providing broadband in underserved areas as part of a platform called "Connect America," doubling the budget for research at federal science and tech agencies, making the research and development tax credit--much beloved by Silicon Valley shops--permanent, and creating a $50 billion "Strategic Energy Fund" partially financed by oil companies and aimed at investing in clean, renewable energy sources.
