Marines did NOT ban Twitter!
NextGov says they goofed in reporting that Marines banned Twitter: Marines and Social Nets: We Goofed, By Bob Brewin, NextGov, (08/07/09)
...the AP misconstrued the meaning of the Marine administrative instruction issued on Aug 3, which reinforced a longstanding directive released by the Defense Information Systems Agency in 2007 banning access to social Web sites on Defense networks to conserve bandwidth for operational requirements. The instruction issued on Monday, he said, actually made it easier for Marines whose jobs require access to social nets to get waivers to use Defense nets to connect with Twitter, YouTube etc.Continue reading
Transparency camp west
Just a quick note to let folks know that I'm currently at Transparency Camp this weekend. It's a great meeting of activists and technologists concerned with all kinds of transparency and government. To follow what's happening, you can track on the twitter hashtag #tcamp09. Since it's an unconference, talks can be proposed on the fly. I gave a talk on the FDLP which got a lot of interest. Contact me if you've got other ideas for presentations. There are still slots available for sunday. Continue reading
Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook
UPDATE: NextGov says this and similar reports were in error and the Marines did NOT ban Twitter. See: Marines did NOT ban Twitter! Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, by Noah Shachtman, Wired Danger Room (August 3, 2009). The article also reports that, "The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. Top generals now blog from the battlefield." Continue reading
Hackers Targeted House.gov Sites
Hackers Target House.gov Sites. By Brian Krebs, Washington Post (August 6, 2009).
Hackers broke into more than a dozen Web sites for members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the past week, replacing portions of their home pages with digital graffiti, according House officials.The sites hit were hosted by a private vendor, GovTrends, which provides Web hosting for about 100 House sites. Continue reading
Voting records expunged in California
In California, Legislative votes on bills are posted on the web (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html). In fact, a bill cannot become a law without an official record of the vote. But it is possible to "expunge" votes and the L.A. Times reports that happened recently on a controversial bill.
- California Assembly expunges votes on oil drilling bill, By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2009.
Although 28 members of the California Assembly supported a measure to allow new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, their votes are nowhere to be found in the official state database.According to the status page for the Assembly Bill "ABX4 23," on July 24, action was rescinded and the "record expunged whereby a final roll call vote was taken" but no record of the House vote exists on the web site today. Offshore oil drilling is very controversial in California and both private contractors and the State hoped to reap a lot of money from the drilling. (Plains Exploration Falls On Tranquillon Ridge Rejection >PXP, By Aja Carmichael, Wall Street Journal, JULY 27, 2009). While voting records are often mis-used, in my opinion, in political contests -- taking votes out of context and viewing them as isolated and simple when they are, in fact, part of a process of conflict, compromise, and (one hopes) consensus -- removing records from the public record is hard to justify on any grounds. The usual excuses were used for this recent expunging: It doesn't happen often; and: Another vote will be taken later on the same or a different bill; and: You can still find the information somewhere else. These are excuses and not reasons and they are not even very good reasons. This is nothing but an attempt to control political information. As one Republican, who wrote the measure, said: "The message to the public is 'this vote was an inconvenient vote and we would rather you not look at the man behind the curtain.'" Continue reading