Politics, Policy, and Technology

Can Nate Silver and friends nail their presidential predictions?

Anyone who's even remotely interested in this year's contest between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has no doubt seen countless polls, many of which have shown the incumbent in the lead, while many others have given the nod to the challenger.

In recent weeks, many headlines have declared the election a tossup. A common narrative being spread in newspapers, on blogs, on social media, and on TV nationwide, is that no one will have any idea who will be elected president until all the counting is done because the race is simply too close … Read more

Verizon Wireless wants to 'edit' your Internet access

What if your wireless provider gave you Internet access and search results according to what it decided was a "priority"?

As a Verizon Wireless customer, I'm furious at the idea that it would "pick favorites" over what I was actually looking for -- especially if it was an emergency.

But that's just what Verizon is fighting in court to do right now. Verizon has filed a brief (Verizon vs. FCC) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the "freedom" to edit your Internet, dear customer.

If … Read more

Al Gore with Sean Parker at SXSW: 'Occupy democracy!'

AUSTIN, Texas--Former U.S. vice president Al Gore and Facebook's founding president Sean Parker argued passionately today that online communities must use the powerful tools at their disposal to save American democracy.

At South by Southwest (SXSW) here, Gore and Parker took the stage to tell an adoring crowd of several thousand that though they should be proud of the mass Internet activism that derailed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), there is still a huge amount of work to be done if Americans want to keep special interests from perpetually forcing their agendas down society's throat.

Fortunately, … Read more

Iran cuts off Internet access

Iran has cut off access to the Internet, leaving millions of people without access to e-mail and social networks.

An individual inside the country confirmed this morning that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email are no longer available. Ditto for Facebook. So far, the government has not made any announcement about the service interruption.

But cyber-sophisticated Iranians are still able to circumvent the government by using proxy servers over VPN connections.

"The interesting thing is that when asked, they deny the fact that all these services are all blocked," an Iranian contacted by CNET said. This individual asked to … Read more

Patriot Act signed by President Autopen

If you're not a fan of the Patriot Act, you may not appreciate the fact that it was extended for four more years by a machine.

President Obama used an autopen to renew the controversial legislation on Thursday, raising some eyebrows with the mechanical surrogate.

Obama was in France when he authorized the signing just before a midnight expiration deadline. It followed a House vote of 250-153.

First developed 200 years ago by British inventor John Isaac Hawkins, autopens are machines that trace engraved signatures and are often used to sign cards and letters sent by the White House. … Read more

ACLU wants to know how Michigan cops use 'data extraction devices'

Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout based on comment from both the Michigan State Police and the ACLU of Michigan. See below for details.

The Michigan State Police have a handful of portable machines called "extraction devices" that have the potential to download personal information from motorists they pull over, and the ACLU would like to know more about them.

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models … Read more

Report: Obama to meet with Zuckerberg, Jobs

President Obama is expected to meet with some of Silicon Valley's highest-profile executives tomorrow in San Francisco, including Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Eric Schmidt, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, according to an ABC News report.

The San Francisco Chronicle and CNET cousin KCBS (part of CBS Corp.) reported earlier this week that Obama would make an appearance somewhere in the area on Thursday for meetings with "business leaders in technology and innovation," but it's unclear whether any of the meetings or appearances will be open to the public or media.

Obama has paid visits … Read more

Facebook's privacy policies hit a language barrier

McDonald's. Blockbuster. And now Facebook? The social network and its controversial privacy policies are teeming with new complications as regulators overseas increasingly start to regard them as a suspicious, Americanizing import.

This week, data protection officials in Hamburg, Germany, sent a menacing missive in Facebook's direction, accusing the social network of partaking in illegal activities by retaining data about people who aren't members of the site but whose contact information may have come into its possession through members' e-mail importer tools. Last year, the privacy commissioner in Canada put significant pressure on Facebook to simplify its privacy … Read more

White House unveils cloud computing initiative

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a far-reaching and long-term cloud computing policy intended to cut costs on infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact of government computing systems.

Speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center here, federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the administration's first formal efforts to roll out a broad system designed to leverage existing infrastructure and in the process, slash federal spending on information technology, especially expensive data centers.

According to Kundra, the federal government today has an IT budget of $76 billion, of which more than $19 billion is spent on infrastructure alone. … Read more