Politics, Policy, and Technology

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, 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 remain unidentified. 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. 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 and can 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 to Silicon more

Facebook's privacy policies hit a language barrier

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 controls, citing concerns that were pulled back into the spotlight when a Toronto law firm filed suit against Facebook this month, for which it's seeking class-action status.

There will be more 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. more

Open Access to New Wireless Spectrum?

The Federal Communications Commission in January will auction off perhaps the most lucrative wireless radio space in history. It's like First, though, the FCC must write the rules dictating how that spectrum will be used by the auction winner. That means (as things historically go at the Commission) mediating between several powerhouse companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Google who really want to get their paws on this money-making resource. If they're lucky, a little start-up or even consumers will have a voice in the rulemaking.

Wait a minute. Google? Aren't they an Internet search company? Since more

New Web site proposes creating congressional legislation online

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate leadership, has opened the virtual doors of law writing to Internet citizens. This is a compelling idea as the Internet continues to find ways to democratize information and support the flattening of the political process in our country.

The senator writes in

"Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment--an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?"

One of the new Web site's leaders describes more

Hype or hope? CNN-YouTube debates make a splash

Old-fashioned politicking
The truth is, no matter how much new technology comes running into our lives and no matter how many mountaintops the tech evangelists find to shout from, politics -- the kind of old-fashioned, gotta-get-more-votes-than-the-other-guy politics -- really does not change.

Voters depend fundamentally on two things to make their decisions. First, they want to know the candidate is a human being they can relate to and would even invite home to dinner with their family. Think about Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole and John Kerry. Second, voters look for cures from those people they know more