Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

AURAS

Homeland Security surveilled the Washington, D.C. Funk Parade; Georgia sues an open government advocate; and more.

  • With Donald Trump leading in polls of registered Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire, GOP digital strategist Patrick Ruffini makes an important data point: the people surveyed by those polls bear little resemblance to the people most likely to show up to vote in those early states.

  • The New York Times has issued a correction for referring to a “criminal referral” regarding the use of Hillary Clinton’s personal email account while she was Secretary of State; now it says it was a “security referral” pertaining to the possible mishandling of classified information.

  • Former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald takes to Newsweek to tear apart the Times’ first report on what he calls “email-bogus-gate.” He says the security issue isn’t with Clinton’s handling of her email account, but with what FOIA officials reviewing what to release from that account have been doing.

  • Asked about the issue while campaigning in Iowa, Clinton said, “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time,” Alana Wise of Reuters reports.

  • In the wake of Netroots Nation, Democracy for Action—the million-member online organization founded by Howard Dean and run by his brother Jim—has decided to start asking all the candidates who want their support “how they will stand with the Movement for Black Lives and what they will do to confront structural racism and our culture of white supremacy,” their executive director Charles Chamberlain announced Friday.

  • Newly obtained documents show that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination “frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful,” reports George Joseph for The Intercept. One email shows planned surveillance of innocuous events, including Washington DC’s annual Funk Parade.

  • Chris Smith of New York magazine sums up the Uber-NYC brouhaha of the last few weeks with some very smart observations of how the conflict allowed the company to “dispel its aura of Bloomberg-era elitism” and gave it the opportunity to exploit “its appeal to a youthful, techie, multiracial liberalism.” Don’t miss the smart quote from Civic Hall co-founder Andrew Rasiej.

  • The state of Georgia is actually suing open government advocate Carl Malamud for “unauthorized copying and distribution” of the Georgia legal code (copies of which the state charges the public an arm and a leg), Mike Masnick reports for TechDirt.

  • With President Obama visiting Nairobi, Kenyans have been tweeting up a storm about it, with many using the hashtag #KenyansMessageToObama, reports Aggi Ashagre for NPR.

  • Writing for NextCity, Nancy Scola reports on Airbnb’s “Cuban Invasion.” Bookmark this one for your own trip.

  • The city of Seattle has released an interactive map of all of the booming city’s construction projects, Vicky Gan reports for CityLab.

  • If you’re in London, check out CitizenBeta’s monthly meetup: the next one is this Wednesday.

  • Pressed by its co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce is taking some substantial steps to address gender inequality in its workforce, David Gelles reports for the New York Times, including pay equity.

  • Now airing: Public Radio International’s Innovation Hub show did an interview with me based on my book “The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet).” You can listen here or read Marc Solinger’s post about it.