Politics and Law

A State Department press briefing gives some insight into why the U.S. government requested that Twitter postpone a scheduled downtime during a crucial period in the post-election upheaval in Iran.

"I think, as I was following this, these developments over the weekend...I began to recognize the importance of new social media as a vital tool for citizens' empowerment and as a way for people to get their messages out," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday, according to a transcript of the department's daily press briefing (which was not held specifically to address the Twitter question). "And it was very clear to me that these kinds of social media played a very important role in democracy, spreading the word about what was going on."

CNN reported Tuesday that the State Department had been behind the decision by Twitter and its hosting provider to reschedule the downtime for an hour when it would be the middle of the night in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Kelly was then asked to comment on "discussions that (the State Department is) having with networking sites about maintaining the technology, about how the State Department as an institution is monitoring these type of sites to gain information about what's going on."

His response: "We're monitoring many different media, including some of these sites. And we've had, of course, talks with Twitter as well...I don't want to go into the detail of the nature of those talks right now."

Another reporter then pointed out that "by not providing any information on the nature of the talks, it indicates that you have some role in kind of providing messages to Twitter, messages to Iranians."

Kelly denied this. He said he was not sure who exactly within the State Department had been in touch with Twitter and added that "we use a number of social media outlets, and we're in constant contact with them. And as I said before, we were, of course, monitoring the situation through a number of different media, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter...this is about the Iranian people. This is about giving their voices a chance to be heard. One of the ways that their voices are heard are through new media."

With the Iranian government clamping down on foreign journalists, Kelly has a point: access to Twitter and ilk are crucial sources of information.

Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook have already emerged as sources of raw news in disasters and political crises before--from the Hudson River emergency plane landing to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. But this is the first time they've been highlighted as vital information channels in Iran--both for protesters trying to spread information and for government authorities trying to gather it.

In a move that some Silicon Valley insiders had anticipated might happen, Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly has announced his exploratory bid for the elected post as attorney general of California.

He has set up the Web site www.kelly2010.com as his online campaign headquarters. Kelly also has an official Facebook fan page for his campaign.

"Over the past year, many people I respect have asked me to run for California Attorney General in 2010. Today, after much consideration, I am announcing that I've launched a committee to further explore the race," Kelly, who is a Democrat, said in a statement. "As the next Attorney General of California, I would utilize my experience to protect California consumers, maintain an open and accountable government, and guarantee an effective legal system."

Kelly's background is in politics. In a video on his Web site, he explains that he got his start as a staffer on Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign and then at the White House, where he focused on establishing public service programs like AmeriCorps. Rumors that he was looking into a run for attorney general began to swirl late last year.

In his campaign, Kelly has indicated that he will run on a platform of high-tech innovation and accountability, particularly in the wake of economic decline and uncertainty.

"(At Facebook) I have dealt first-hand with the complex legal challenges and privacy issues that effect California businesses and consumers," Kelly explained in the video. "We need a strong consumer protection advocate as California's chief law enforcement officer, defending people against unfair practices and schemes. As California faces a budget deficit of more than $41 billion, rising home foreclosure rates, and an uncertain economic future, it is imperative that we prevent consumer fraud and protect California residents from scam artists offering once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for home ownership, phony foreclosure avoidance scams, and any financial fraud."

Among the other issues he mentioned were online safety and privacy for both adults and children, and tech-savvy improvements to law enforcement and border patrol.

Facebook said in a statement that Kelly is not leaving his post to run for attorney general, at least not yet.

"Chris Kelly is a valued member of the Facebook Team and has been for the past several years," the statement read. "Chris is currently exploring a possible run for California Attorney General on his own time and in compliance with all applicable Facebook policies. If, over the next few months, Chris decides to devote himself full-time to campaign, he's indicated that he will take time off or a leave of absence to do so."

As an executive at a social network with over 200 million members that has become a Silicon Valley success stories, Kelly has credibility as a digital-age candidate. Yet under Kelly's watch, Facebook went through a number of embarrassing privacy flubs, most notably the launch of its Beacon advertising program--which some critics charged as intrusive.

Facebook was also at the center of a legal back-and-forth with several states' lawmakers about whether it was doing enough to keep its members safe from known sex offenders. That, however, appears to have ended in agreement and cooperation.

Kelly won't be the only Silicon Valley type running for statewide office. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican, is running for governor. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has appealed to the Valley set with green-tech initiatives and "Second Life" interviews, has also launched an exploratory bid for governor. The state's elections are next fall.

California's current attorney general is Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

This post was expanded at 1:35 p.m. PT.

WASHINGTON--State governments are turning to tools like Twitter to manage elections in order to cut costs and keep up with increasingly Net-savvy citizens.

Both California and Ohio are using more Web tools to communicate with citizens and their own staff during elections, the states' respective secretaries of state said Monday.

Through projects such as the Voting Information Project, states have been moving voter information online, such as voter registration instructions, polling locations, and descriptions of issues and candidates on the ballot. Millions of citizens also turn to state-run sites to track election results.

Now, the state of California is planning to utilize cloud computing for its election night services with the aim of saving money by storing data with external hosting providers, said California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

Maintaining reliable servers "to have a giant party two or three times a year that lasts four or five hours," is not the best use of the states' resources, Bowen said at the Politics Online Conference here, hosted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University and by Campaigns & Elections' Politics Magazine.

That state also intends to use the micro-blogging site Twitter as a means to communicate with its poll workers. Bowen's office currently lacks an effective way to give a quick, direct message to the state's nearly 24,000 precincts, she said.

Such a platform could have been useful during the 2008 presidential primaries, Bowen said, when there was confusion over whether some citizens were eligible to participate in the primaries.

"All it takes is one of our five or six polling workers to have a BlackBerry," she said. "That information (about primary voting eligibility) would have been more than 140 characters, but we could have directed people to a URL with a simple text explanation."

Bowen said she manages her own Twitter and Facebook accounts but redirects complicated questions she receives through constituent services to ensure citizens get complete answers.

"Neither Facebook or Twitter are good for having a complex discussion," she said.

Facebook has proven useful, however, for upholding election laws. Bowen received a Facebook message last year regarding someone misrepresenting the contents of a petition for which they were gathering signatures. The secretary of state's investigators discovered they had an outstanding warrant for the arrest of the individual in question on a previous violation of California elections code on signature gathering.

Ohio has started using online courses to train poll workers-- part of the state's efforts to attract poll workers below the current average age of the volunteers, which is 72.

"It's been a constant struggle," said Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said.

Brunner previously suggested recruiting poll workers in the same manner the state recruits jurors.

"That's not sounding so outlandish now with the trouble we've had keeping people engaged, especially some of the older people who may not be familiar with the technology," she said.

The state also makes widgets available for third-party sites to embed with online voter registration tools.

"We look at 2.0 solutions as a way to increase access to democracy," Brunner said. "There are so many ways to reach voters, and there's no one silver bullet."

It's unlikely, however, that voters will be able to vote online anytime soon, the officials said, given the privacy concerns that would arise. Moreover, creating an online voting system would be "phenomenally expensive," Bowen said, given how complicated it would be.

"We have to know exactly who are you are up to the minute you cast your vote, but we cannot know anything about how you cast your ballot," she said. "We use these voting systems twice every other year, and ... we already have a relatively inexpensive means of voting."

In contrast, there are no privacy concerns associated with using cloud computing to host election night data, Bowen said.

"With election night results, there's nothing that's private," she said. "The question is what is the most efficient, cost-effective way to provide that service."

The 2008 election was truly the most Internet-based presidential race ever, but the more voters went online, the more they sought out partisan content, a new report shows.

For the first time ever, more than half of the voting age population--55 percent of adults--went online for news and information about a presidential election or to communicate with others about the race, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Twenty-six percent of Americans said they relied on the Internet as a major source of campaign news in 2008, compared with 11 percent in 2000.

With greater online political engagement, the report shows, came greater partisanship. One-third of online news consumers said they usually seek out online political information from Web sites that share their political point of view, and the more online news sources a person regularly visited, the more likely he would be to seek out specific view points. Nearly half of online news consumers visited at least five different online types of news content in 2008.

"The 2008 elections saw the role of the Internet in politics increase, and it witnessed the emergence of a unique group of online political activists," said Aaron Smith, the Pew research specialist who authored the new report. The research for the report was conducted between November 20 and December 4, 2008.

Official campaign Web sites were also more popular in the 2008 election. While 18 percent of all Internet users visited the John Kerry Web site in 2004 and 14 percent visited George Bush's 2004 site, 30 percent went to Barack Obama's site last year and 21 percent went to John McCain's.

Social media Web sites also featured much more prominently in the 2008 election, which is not surprising--most were in their infancy, if even in existence, during the 2004 campaign. Nearly half of all 18 to 29-year-olds--Internet users and nonusers alike--watched online political videos during the campaign. Among Internet users with a social networking profile, 52 percent used social networking sites for political purposes.

Obama supporters typically were more engaged online than John McCain supporters--26 percent of Obama supporters online created their own original political content online, compared with 15 percent of McCain supporters.

Some voters went online to find voting information. Nearly one in five voters used the Internet to find out where to vote, 16 percent of voters went online for information about absentee or early voting, and 9 percent went online to find out where they were registered to vote.

While more voters turned to the Internet for political information, fewer relied on traditional news sources like radio or newspapers. Television remained the most common source of election news, with 77 percent of Americans watching election-related coverage. Twenty-eight percent of voters cited newspapers as a major source of election news, down from 39 percent in 2000.

Clarification at 2:52 p.m. PST: An earlier version of this story said the Minneapolis director of elections admitted she left 32 absentee ballots in her car. But the Minnesota Secretary of State's office says that's untrue and we've changed the language to reflect that position as we investigate further.

Fears of e-voting glitches in the November election are still not over. The outcome of the Minnesota Senate race--which could give the Democrats a firmer grasp on power in Washington--may depend on whether scanning machines made mistakes two weeks ago when tabulating ballots.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman holds a lead of only about 200 votes over his main opponent, Democrat Al Franken, but a hand recount that begins Wednesday could show that a few thousand votes were mistakenly rejected.

With Coleman's lead under a margin of 0.5 percent of the more than 2.9 million votes cast in the Minnesota senate race on November 4, the state automatically begins a hand recount of every ballot.

Minnesota used optical scanning machines to read paper ballots, and enough ballots could have been mistakenly rejected by the machines to alter the outcome of the race, said Beth Fraser, director of governmental affairs for the Minnesota secretary of state's office. The office estimates that as many as two votes for every 1,000 cast--or as many as 6,000--may have been mistakenly rejected.

The optical scanners would have rejected ballots that were not filled out correctly--for instance, if a voter circled a candidate's name rather than filling in the bubble next to the name, Fraser said. However, Minnesota law mandates that any vote in which the voter's intention is clear must be counted. In other words, the law is more liberal than the machines, and a manual recount could permit votes to be counted that a machine would reject.

"We have a pretty clear statute of what counts as a vote," Fraser said.

Starting Wednesday, election officials in 106 locations throughout the state will start sorting through ballots, paying particular attention to those that were rejected to decide whether they should be counted.

"It's kind of a consensus process," Fraser said.

Representatives for both of the two major candidates will be at every table, she said, and they are free to challenge the election officials' judgment. If anyone is left unsatisfied about the status of a vote, it will be put aside for the state canvassing board to review.

Officials aim to finish the hand recount by December 5. The state canvassing board--which is chaired by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and includes Minnesota Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson, and District Judges Kathleen Gearin and Edward Cleary--will reconvene on December 16 with the goal of getting in the final results by December 19.

While the optical scanning machines may have rejected some crucial votes, Fraser said the machines are the best option for counting votes.

"It speeds up the counting but gives us the paper ballots to count on, so the results are fully auditable," she said.

Tallying mistakenly rejected votes is unlikely to clear the controversy surrounding the recount, however. Franken's campaign filed a lawsuit on November 13 requesting that the names of voters who cast invalidated absentee ballots be made public, so those ballots can be reviewed by the canvassing board as well. A hearing on the case is set for Wednesday morning, after the recount starts.

Other incidents have called into question some of the results, such as an allegation the Minneapolis director of elections accidentally left 32 absentee ballots in her car. Additionally, Coleman has called into question the neutrality of Secretary of State Ritchie, who is a Democrat.

Updated at 10:10 p.m. PST with video of the interview.

In their first interview since the presidential election, President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, talk with 60 Minutes about the enormity of the moment when he was first declared the winner of the presidential election.

"I am not sure it has sunk in," the president-elect says during the hour-long interview with the CBS TV news magazine.

They discuss the entire experience and how their lives have changed, as well as the challenges faced by the man who will be the 44th president of the United States. "We've got a lot of work to do," he says. "There are a lot of big problems."

A father's promise: In this clip from the interview, Obama speaks with Steve Kroft about a special promise he made two years ago to his young daughters regarding getting a dog, his relationship with his mother-in-law, and the possibility of a college football playoff system.

Obama and the presidency: In this segment, Obama speaks about his thoughts and goals as our nation's next commander-in-chief, specifically discussing the economic crisis, his plans for the military, and his Cabinet.

"The challenges that we are confronting are enormous and they are multiple. And so there are times during the course of a given day where you think: 'Where do I start in terms of moving--moving things forward?'"

He also spokes to the housing crisis in the United States.

"We have not focused on foreclosures and what's happening to homeowners as much as I would like," he says. "One thing I'm determined is that if we don't have a clear, focused program for homeowners by the time I take office, we will after I take office."

The personal transition: In this clip, the Obamas reflect on how they will soon be the youngest first family to move into the White House since the Kennedys nearly 50 years ago. Kroft speaks with the couple about their personal transition.

President-elect Obama also reflects on the pressure associated with being the first African-American president of the United States:

"There was a sense of emotion that I could see in people's faces and--in my mother-in-law's face. You know, I mean, you--you think about Michelle's mom, who grew up--on the west and south sides of Chicago. Who worked so hard to help Michelle get to where she is, her brother to--be successful. She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns. And she's like my grandmother was, sort of a no-fuss type of person. And suddenly she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know. Kind of squeezing it. And you had this sense of, well, what's she thinking? For a black woman who grew up in the '50s, you know, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States. I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African-Americans."

More members of President-elect Barack Obama's transition team were named Wednesday, including some veterans of the technology and communications sectors.

The transition team announced its agency review teams Wednesday, groups of advisers who will review key federal departments, agencies, and commissions, as well as the White House, to aide Obama, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, and key advisers in their policy, personnel, and budget decisions.

"The Teams will ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in," according to Change.gov.

Michael Warren, currently on partial leave from his role as chief operating officer of Stonebridge International, is a leader of the Treasury Department agency review team. He is also part of the working group overseeing international trade and economics agencies. Warren previously served as president of Appfluent Technologies, a data usage and query performance software provider. He is also chairman of Ironbridge Systems, which provides analytics and technical support services. Warren also worked for McKinsey & Company as a tech industry consultant, and consulted on the U.S. and Asian semiconductor industries for the McKinsey Global Institute.

Louisa Terrell, who is on leave from her position as a senior director at Yahoo's Washington public policy office, is a working group member of the transition group's agency review team. Terrell was previously deputy chief of staff for Biden and served as counsel for Biden on his Senate Judiciary Committee staff.

Tom Wheeler--in a leave of absence from Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm working with early stage technology companies--is a member of the agency review working group responsible for the science, technology, space, and arts agencies. Wheeler was previously CEO of the National Cable Television Association, as well as the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

Donald Gips, on leave from his position as group vice president of global corporate development at Level 3 Communications, is a co-chair of the agency review working group. Gips had been named as an original member of Obama's transition team. He previously served as chief domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore and was chief of the international bureau at the Federal Communications Commission.

Reed Hundt, who served as an adviser to Obama during the campaign, is a member of the agency review working group responsible for the international trade and economics agencies. He served as the chairman of the FCC from 1993 to 1997.

John Wilkins, who is on partial leave from McKinsey & Company, is a member of the agency review working group and worked for the FCC from 1998 to 1999.

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama launched a Web site with detailed information about his plans for technology, Iraq, and health care policies.

Now they're gone.

The "agenda" Web pages on Change.gov seem to have mysteriously disappeared on Sunday. By Monday morning, they were replaced with a vague statement saying that Obama and running mate Joe Biden have a "comprehensive and detailed agenda" that will "bring about the kind of change America needs," with the individual pages deleted entirely.

A version of the now-deleted homeland security agenda recovered from the cache feature of Microsoft's Live Search is far more detailed, promising to convene a nuclear terrorism summit, declare the Internet "a strategic asset," and establish a $2 billion fund to "counter al-Qaeda propaganda." Those happen to be identical to the promises that candidate Obama made earlier this year; they have not been deleted from the campaign Web site.

I've posted mirror images of the vanished homeland security section, the technology section, and the newsroom section listing the different topics on the right side of the page.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's transition communications director, would not say what was going on or whether the deletion meant that some of the campaign promises would be dropped. He sent CNET News a one-line e-mail message saying: "That section of the Web site is being retooled."

This isn't the first time that vanishing or altered documents on a presidential Web site have been noticed: President Bush got some unwelcome attention for this last year. The White House's Web team also rewrote the May 2003 caption showing Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier after the Iraq occupation proved more problematic than expected (see before and after).

The ephemeral nature of Web publishing does raise some serious issues: if a president-elect circulates a physical press release promising to do something, and then changes his mind, there's a paper trail. That doesn't exist when files are added to a Web site and then quietly removed over a weekend.

The Library of Congress and other institutions, including the California Digital Library and the Government Printing Office, are trying to remedy this by doing an "end of term" crawl. That means they're regularly crawling and archiving all .gov domains that are considered "government sites," including Change.gov. The crawl started in September and will continue through February 2009.

The project has a varying crawl schedule, so it may not have collected the agenda pages on Change.gov, Abbie Grotke, a digital media project coordinator on the Web capture team in the Library of Congress' office of strategic initiatives, said on Monday.

The Change.gov site has been added to the list of sites to be crawled as part of the Library's Election Archives project--a separate effort. Gina Jones, also part of the Library's office of strategic initiatives, said that since it's a new site, it hasn't been collected yet.

CNET News' Stephanie Condon contributed to this report.

Two new Web sites launched Wednesday that map out President-elect Barack Obama's transition to the White House.

Change.gov, Obama's official transition site, features a blog, a section with Obama's agenda, and a section that profiles the Obama administration. It also includes a jobs page for those interested in working in the Obama administration, a page titled "America Serves" that emphasizes the need for community service, and a section called "American Moment," where visitors are encouraged to share their stories or their vision for the country.

The front page on Wednesday linked to a YouTube video, found in the first entry of the site's blog, of Obama's final campaign speech given in Chicago after his victory.

The Government Accountability Office launched its own 2009 Congressional and Presidential Transition site as well on Wednesday. The nonpartisan GAO makes recommendations on the site of ways the new government can address the nation's biggest challenges.

On the new site, the GAO lists 13 issues that "demand urgent attention and continuing oversight to ensure the nation's security and well-being." Along with "financial institutions and markets" and "Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan," the list includes the transition to digital television and the retirement of the space shuttle.

The site also features a closed-captioned introductory video from Gene Dodaro, the acting comptroller general.