But Think Of The Children!

Or, rather, think of the distortions we peddle to get you to think of the children!

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series.

Wait, you mean a sensationalized television show doesn't provide the whole story? You mean not everyone on the Internet is a pervert?

Well, blow me down.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.” [...]

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

Can't wait until Joe Lieberman gets the news. Think of how great he'll feel to be able to stop endlessly moralizing!

The Internet is "dangerous" in the same respect that walking down the street is "dangerous." The meme was always pushed by over-sensitive figures on the theocratic right who wanted to use fear as a weapon to censor and stifle dissent. It happens to be untrue.

Presidency 2.0

While Barack Obama is likely to have to give up his Blackberry after being sworn in as President (owing mainly to a lack of email security, as well as record keeping under the Presidential Records Act), he will have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office, a first. And he just finished up the first-ever Presidential YouTube address, which will become a regular feature.



It already has 630,000 views, probably 620,000 more than those weekly radio addresses which air at 4am. The even more interesting development is Valerie Jarrett's address at change.gov, a completely transparent update on who will be leading key agencies, which has NINETY-EIGHT THOUSAND VIEWS. This is a wonky and fairly dull address about ethics requirements and lobbyists, but because it's being made widely available and people are hungering for knowledge about the incoming Administration, it's getting widespread attention.

I find this to be very significant. Obama enters office with 3.1 million donors and an email list of 10 million. How these lists are put to use and allowed to engage with the Administration will signal how much the President-elect will live up to his expression that change begins from the bottom up. By using these Web tools, Obama can bypass traditional filters and deliver action items to his audience on issues can have relevance and immediacy.

"He can do a half-hour YouTube address every Saturday, addressing millions," Trippi said. "The networks would never give the president that much television time each week, but the press is still going to have to cover what he says on YouTube."

Aides say the Obama team will staff a robust "new media" operation out of the White House and plans a complete overhaul of the White House Web site to make it more interactive and user-friendly. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to use the Internet to make his administration more open, such as offering a detailed look at what's going on in the White House on a given day or asking people to post comments on his legislative proposals.

The Internet outreach team includes some really great people, and I'm sure they will push the technology (White House Twitter feed, anyone?) in the years to come. As for this nonsense that Obama has to be careful reaching his supporters in a partisan way, I think that's a deep misreading of his Internet fan base. My personal view is that an overwhelmingly substantial portion of his Web supporters are not just Democrats, but more progressive than he is. And not only that, they are not passive creatures who have to be told what to think and what to support. They were TRAINED in the campaign to be self-starters. It's going to be a bit less about how Obama wants to use these supporters and more how these supporters want to use the technology, whether to support policy or push Obama from the left.

The other very good outcome of a President who gets technology and its promise is that it makes him more likely to sign a net neutrality bill into law. Keeping the Internet open and free helped Obama win the White House - now he can return the favor by ensuring that freedom well into the future. Sen. Byron Dorgan plans to introduce a net neutrality bill in January - I'm hoping the Congress acts swiftly on it.

Gore Makes His Move

If you want to know why Al Gore hasn't run for President since 2000, it's because he thinks he has a better chance to enact an agenda he cares about from the outside instead of from the inside. And here's how he's going about it:

Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection has some environmental advice for the incoming Obama administration: focus on energy efficiency and renewable resources, and create a unified U.S. power grid.

On Thursday, the group Gore founded rolled out a new media campaign to push for immediate investments in three energy areas it maintains would help meet Gore's previously announced challenge to produce 100 percent clean electricity in the United States in a decade [...]

The plan advocates immediate investment in energy efficiency, renewable power generation -- including public investment in wind, solar and geothermal technology -- and the creation of a unified national smart grid.

"Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation," the alliance said in a statement.

The alliance favors "national electricity 'interstates' that move power quickly and cheaply to where it needs to be (and) local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars."

This is the lasting infrastructure that can be a part of the upcoming stimulus package. Modernizing the energy grid is one of the most important things we can do right now. Generating all this wind and solar and geothermal power doesn't do much good unless it can be transmitted nationwide. We actually lose billions in productivity from power outages and loss of electricity on the existing grid, which is crumbling, so this investment will pay off fairly quickly. This is the kind of common sense move that I think will be a hallmark of an Obama Administration.

Gore is also planning to use social media to press the advantage, though he didn't really elaborate on that.

If Gore tried to ram this through as a President or "energy czar" I truly think it would have less impact. His independence is an asset.

Innovations

The Obama campaign's old-media strategy has been fairly stale, but they are implementing some very innovative practices that look to the future of campaign communications.

I think the Kerry campaign announced their Vice Presidential selection via email, but Obama is taking this a step further by texting the announcement. It's a gimmick, to be sure, but the goal is to obviously sign up a list of a million or so texters to deliver instant communications throughout the election season. More and more young people are using text messages as a primary form of communication, so this is simply smart. I could see them doing "text banks" to put messages out or GOTV.

The other innovation, which they've done consistently since the primaries, is this idea of mass phone banks, which will get a new makeover in Denver.

On Thursday, August 29, 80,000 people will line up to enter Invesco Field in Denver. Greeting them at the gates will be a squadron of federal agents with magnetometers. Security is important; everyone will be carefully screened.

Even with a few dozen magnetometers, though, the queues will be long. 80,000 people will be antsy, sweaty, excited, bored. Presciently, Obama's convention planners realize this.

They're drafting a plan to pass out thousands of cell phones, and with them, lists of persuadable voters from their database along with their home telephone numbers. The idea is to encourage the line-waiters to use their time productively and in service to the cause. One giant phone bank, in other words, waiting to pass through the mag lines.

That's a brilliant idea. Campaign events don't necessarily turn voters around; but they aggregate masses of supporters in one place, and that makes them a perfect time to engage them in mass action. Obama's campaign has really innovated in this area, creating almost flash mobs of citizen participation. With Obama's strategy predicated on massive turnout, this is actually crucial to victory as well.

Meanwhile, at the Old Fart Saloon, this enthusiasm is wanting on the Republican side.

Republicans aren’t exactly planning to avoid the convention in droves. But compared to past conventions, lawmakers, lobbyists and candidates aren’t beating a path to St. Paul either.

Of the 12 Republicans running in competitive Senate races — five of whom are incumbents — only three have said they will be attending the convention. Six are definite no-shows, and three are on the fence.

“Nobody likes a funeral,” said a Senate Republican press secretary who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing “the overall climate of general malaise about the party” as the reason for hesitance on the part of Republicans.

I know the media wants everyone to believe this race is close, but the enthusiasm gap makes it hard for me to believe.

UPDATE: I missed this the first time around (h/t kos):

"I would definitely say that people aren’t as excited about going to Minneapolis as they were about going to New York City," said Matthew Keelen, president of the Keelen Group, a D.C.-based lobbying firm. "Minneapolis is a nice city, but it doesn’t quite have the environment and reputation of a New York City, and I think 2004 was a unique convention and a lot of it had to do with where it was," he said.

They hate middle America. No good cigars or lobbyists there, I guess. What a bunch of hypocrites.

Pat On The Head

I've been busy and such so I never got around to writing about Barack Obama's note to his supporters that are questioning his position on FISA. It's been pretty well covered by Glenn Greenwald, Kagro X and emptywheel, so I don't know that I have too much to add. The short version is that Obama felt the need to address this issue when otherwise he would never have had to do so, and for that reason alone the FISA group at my.barackobama.com is a success. Also the fact that he took the time to address and acknowledge supporters is nice. That said, the statement itself is not sufficient, as it makes the same rejected claim that "exclusivity" is somehow a reason to support the bill (FISA already was the exclusive means for electronic surveillance), and it focuses on telecom immunity rather than the expanded wiretap provisions in the bill.

Obama promises that the Inspector General report would provide some accountability on the Bush Administration's past sins, and to an extent that's true, but while there may be public knowledge arising from that, Administration officials will probably never be held accountable (it'll fall outside the five-year statute of limitations, they'd be out of office, and the IG can't enforce any laws). He promises a "comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs" once he's President, but of course since that's not a given, relying on that is weak tea. The idea that he would, as John Dean hopes, pursue criminal investigations after the fact is negated by the aforementioned statute of limitations, as well as the fact that Bush could pardon the whole gang on the way out the door (I think staying out of prison will override any concerns about tacit admissions of guilt).

All of that we knew, but this part actually got my goat a little bit:

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions. No tool has been more important in focusing peoples' attention on the abuses of executive power in this Administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true -- not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

Essentially, Obama is saying, "All of your hard work is why we didn't allow a really really crappy bill and only this really crappy one! Aren't you pleased?" It's kind of insulting to the intelligence of those civil libertarians who engaged in this debate. It's a wave of the hand, a silly attempt to placate and then a big brush-off.

I'm pleased with the debate but obviously not the result. Clearly Obama wants this behind him along with the rest of the party. We're going to have long memories about this one, however. The fight will not end on July 8.

Sigh... Team Obama's Bamboozlement On FISA.

(bumped)

Good for Mike Stark and the gang (and since I'm part of it, myself) for getting the New York Times to notice the My.BarackObama.com group, now the largest on his site, which is protesting his recent position on FISA and telecom immunity. It's a solid piece, and a testament to the spirit and creativity of the netroots to get something like this accomplished. I just want to mention one thing from the end of the article.

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

“This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip,” Mr. Craig said. “Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire.”

FISA is not expiring. The Protect America Act expired in February, reverting intelligence gathering through foreign surveillance back to FISA, where it had been for 30 years. FISA's burden is not onerous, it's frequently a rubber stamp, and its existence as a secret court may violate the Fourth Amendment in its own right, but it's not "expiring." What's expiring are a few open wiretaps which surveil foreign targets but go through a US switcher. The proper compromise would have been to just fix those and treat them as foreign communications. Massively expanding wiretap capability and telecom immunity was completely unnecessary. Greg Craig is trying to bamboozle you.

UPDATE: Glennzilla is all over this, he even got Craig on the phone and forced him into a bunch of lies and misstatements. Meanwhile, Blue America has created this very cool whip count call tool.

Blue America is launching a call tool today to help you get in touch with Senators regarding the FISA bill. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone to talk with their Senators about the importance of standing up for the constitution, the rule of law — and standing against telecom immunity.

We have been working hard to put together some tools to make your voice heard — and there is more to come today.

This first tool allows you to directly contact Senators to tell them to stand up for the rule of law and vote in favor of the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment. (That’s S.A.5064 to H.R. 6304 which will come up for a vote on July 8th, 2008.) Not only will this tool help you phone your Senators — including connecting your call — but it also gives us the ability to track positions on FISA given your input on what you ascertain during your conversations.

It's worth trying.

The Unity Thing

I guess I have to comment on the Obama-Clinton campaign event in Unity, NH. I'm not near a TV and I didn't see the show but I'm sure this is consuming the punditocracy today.

I don't have a lot to say about it other than the fact that this was going to be the obvious conclusion from the very beginning of the primary. Many teeth were gnashed by bloggers and pundits alike that somehow these two hate each other, that they'd never come together, that "the gloves are off" and it's war and blah blah fucking blah. It just wasn't true, and today kind of cinches that. The personality-driven politics practiced through the media demands conflict. It sells papers and puts eyeballs in front of the set. But the conflict is not between two centrist Democrats with almost identical policy platforms. That was a media creation.

That the blogosphere, in many respects, bought into this is pretty depressing but also inevitable. They by and large venerated Obama and vilified Clinton rather than exploring preferences. Every media-generated outrage was outrageous, every show of body language a sign. It was ludicrous. I'm glad that things are coming back to Earth now, although Obama's support of the FISA bill is not the best way for that realization to happen in my view.

As for the future, I hope that bloggers and blog readers understand, and I think they now do, that the movement is more important than any individual candidate, and that our job BEGINS the day after Election Day. Holding Obama accountable and making ourselves known is going to be a great challenge. It's very encouraging that some supporters are using Obama's own social networking tools to express their disappointment with his stance on FISA. They've created a group on My.BarackObama.com called Senator Obama - Please Vote Against FISA that has over 800 members in just under a day. The comments people are leaving are impassioned and thoughtful. Others are creating events designed to get petitions signed at Unite For Change events this weekend to ask Obama to change his vote. If Obama truly wants to open up government and have change come from the bottom up, he'll listen to these voices.