Helping Citizens Contact Elected Representatives - Raise Your Voice

News Site Does More Than Report, It Offers a Way to Act | TechPresident

Raise Your Voice wants to help citizens better engage with legislators

Axioms of Web architecture

Why You Can’t Get a Taxi - Magazine - The Atlantic

"The ethos of the Internet is that everyone should have the freedom to connect, to innovate, to program, without asking permission. No one can know the whole of the network, and by design it cannot be centrally controlled. This network was intended to be decentralized, its assets widely distributed. Today most innovation springs from small groups at its “edges."

- Joichi Ito - Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants - NYTimes.com

"With the private sector and government stumbling into the 21st century, it’s crucial that we learn the cooperative lessons of the 1800s and empower social-purpose ventures to build a bridge connecting profit to social good."

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 - Sara Horowitz from The Dream of the 1890s: Why Old Mutualism Is Making a New Comeback

/via @julietgo

(via nickgrossman)

(via nickgrossman)

Engine Advocacy: House Intelligence Committee Releases Discussion Draft of CISPA

engineadvocacy:

This afternoon, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a revised discussion draft version (text here) of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA — a piece of important cybersecurity legislation. We in the startup community raised concerns about…

Continuations: CISPA

continuations:

the way that CISPA goes about it is wrong on two important levels.  First, it would stuff the incident information into the existing agency and vendor world instead of making it widely available on the Internet.  Wide availability would let researchers, hobbyists and new vendors all work on improving security. In other words it would enable the Internet to help protect the Internet.

The second big mistake in CISPA is that it uses broad language when what we need is a tight and well specified sharing protocol. 

Connected Learning Research Network

This interdisciplinary research network is dedicated to understanding the opportunities and risks for learning afforded by today’s changing media ecology, as well as building new learning environments that support effective learning and educational equity. Our work focuses on a model of connected learning — learning that is socially connected, interest-driven, and oriented towards educational opportunity.

"Lawyers tend to think of disclosure as a writing problem: what should our privacy policy say? That’s an entirely valid viewpoint–written policies could be a lot shorter and clearer than they are. They are important, and worth getting right. But as a computer scientist, I tend to look beyond written privacy policies, seeking disclosure opportunities elsewhere, in the design of the technology itself. Beyond seeing disclosure as something that sits alongside the technology–a link you can click–I tend to look for ways to make technologies whose privacy attributes are clear to the user. The goal is to make transparency an integral part of the user experience."

- Transparency as a User Experience Problem | Tech @ FTC

This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always. | Privacy Inc. - CNET News

Step aside, AT&T and Verizon. A new privacy-protecting Internet service and telephone provider still in the planning stages could become the ACLU’s dream and the FBI’s worst nightmare.  /via @weissman

You are the web – Take Action – Google

Google is starting to mobilize for the web, in the wake of SOPA.

"So for the past 10 years, Brierley has scoured the satellite images of Google Earth, zooming in and out searching for any discernible clues. He found the train station where he used to beg with his brother, then examined the surrounding area and found that his hometown was called Ganesh Talai. He joined a Facebook group, messaging locals to piece the story together. And then, three weeks ago, he boarded a plane."

- Man Uses Google Earth to Track Down Long-Lost Family in India (via internetmiracles)

(via nickgrossman)