Open Leaks è online

Open Leaks, il sito fondato da Daniel Domscheit-Berg (ex Wikileaks) è finalmente online.
Qui un video che ne spiega il funzionamento:


OpenLeaks 101 from openleaks on Vimeo.

Qualche settimana fa, su TechPresident, Micah Sifry aveva scritto un pezzo lungo e dettagliato (con brani di intervista a Domscheit-Berg) sull'approccio di Open Leaks rispetto a Wikileaks, considerando le richieste di fondi delle due organizzazioni alla Knight Foundation:

In essence, where the Wikileaks Knight proposal would have been giving news sites a widget that would redirect leakers to the Wikileaks central hub, in keeping with Domscheit-Berg and his collaborators' vision of a more distributed, decentralized system, OpenLeaks is planning to give potential partners their own self-contained and integrated platform for managing leaks. Says Domscheit-Berg, "The submission system described on the Knight proposal would have used a button like feature that news orgs would have placed on their website that would have redirected them to the WL page." And what that would have meant is Wikileaks' editor or editors making the decisions on what was important, acting as a bottle-neck on the flow of information

Nelle parole di Berg, l'approccio di Open Leaks ha diversi vantaggi [il grassetto è mio]:

Firstly the system will scale better with each new participant. Secondly, the source is the one that will have a say in who should exclusively be granted first access to material, while also ensuring that material will be distributed to others in the system after a period of exclusive access. Thirdly, we will make use of existing resources, experience, manpower etc [to] deal with submissions to more efficiently. Fourthly, we will be able to deliver information more directly to where it matters and will be used, while remaining a neutral service ourselves. And last but not least, this approach will create a large union of shared interests in the defense of the rights to run an anonymous post-drop in the digital world.

Vedremo.

Uno State of the Union "come non l'avevate mai visto"

Good afternoon,
I just started at the White House as a Senior Advisor to President Obama, and over the past few days we've all been increasingly focused on Tuesday’s State of the Union Address (9 p.m. EST). The President will talk about what America needs to do to create jobs today, make America more competitive tomorrow, and win the future for our children and our country.
And to make sure that you are part of the discussion about America's future, we've been working on a number of ways to use our online program to give you and Americans across the country a chance to participate in this important event and ask your own questions.  That starts immediately after the speech ends, when White House policy experts will be available at WhiteHouse.gov to discuss the issues the President raised in the speech and to take your questions and feedback.

David Plouffe, campaign manager della campagna Obama, torna a lavorare col presidente ed è lui ad annunciare lo State of the Union di stasera (9pm EST, le nostre tre di notte - se ne riparla domani).

Qui un paio di articoli su come il cosiddetto SOTU sarà interattivo:

The Obama White House's Full-Internet SOTU Press:

On Tuesday itself, several advisors, aides, and assistants will be Open for Questions. On Wednesday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will, naturally be on Twitter.
At some point during the week, Vice President Joe Biden will be on Yahoo!
And continuing a practice we've seen the Obama administration engage in in the past, on Thursday, the 27th, several big-name administration officials will be mixing it up with online communities relevant to the policy areas in which they work.

The State of the Union is...Annotated.

The folks over on the White House new media team have just announced that, during tomorrow's State of the Union address delivered to a joint session on Congress, up and running on WhiteHouse.gov will be a simultaneous helping of visual aids intended to help shore up the presidential lesson being delivered live and in person on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

(qui ti giri, ti volti ed è subito campagna per il 2012, eh)

Per un dibattito un po' meno vago: fact checking

Una bella proposta di 'fact checking':

Domenica 9 gennaio ho seguito l’intervento del presidente della Regione Puglia Nichi Vendola alla trasmissione Che Tempo Che Fa. La sua intervista a Fabio Fazio (ma poteva capitare con chiunque) mi ha fatto venire in mente che quella trasmissione – proprio perché a cavallo tra informazione e intrattenimento – potrebbe prestarsi bene a un esperimento di fact checking: i politici o comunque gli uomini pubblici hanno, come è ovvio che sia, l’opportunità di spiegare ampiamente le loro posizioni, garbatamente stimolati da un ospite che – giustamente – non pensa che ogni intervista debba essere un dibattito o un braccio di ferro; al tempo stesso una piccola redazione (magari di esterni?) potrebbe sottoporre quanto dicono a un controllo specifico, i cui risultati poi potrebbero essere pubblicizati nel sito del programma – almeno – o, magari, nella trasmissione successiva.

Rete, rivoluzioni e politica: Morozov, il dis-integrato

Il nuovo libro di Evgeny Morozov recensito dall'Economist:

The idea that the internet was fomenting revolution and promoting democracy in Iran was just the latest example of the widely held belief that communications technology, and the internet in particular, is inherently pro-democratic. In this gleefully iconoclastic book, Evgeny Morozov takes a stand against this “cyber-utopian” view, arguing that the internet can be just as effective at sustaining authoritarian regimes. By assuming that the internet is always pro-democratic, he says, Western policymakers are operating with a “voluntary intellectual handicap” that makes it harder rather than easier to promote democracy.

L'altro lato della Rete come strumento di rivoluzione politica: come può essere usata per anestetizzare il contrasto, quanto il suo impatto sia stato analizzato superficialmente, le modalità in cui i governi ne hanno gestito l'impatto in modo addirittura controproducente:

The root of the problem, Mr Morozov argues, is that Western policymakers see an all-too-neat parallel with the role that radio propaganda and photocopiers may have played in undermining the Soviet Union. A native of Belarus, Mr Morozov (who has occasionally written for The Economist) says this oversimplification of history has led to the erroneous conclusion that promoting internet access and “internet freedom” will have a similar effect on authoritarian regimes today.

E allora? Morozov si presenta deluso da quanto fatto fino ad ora, più che pessimista. Propone un approccio "cyber-realista" che sostituisca quello cyber-utopico. A quanto pare, però, non approfondisce questo aspetto:

But he presents little in the way of specific prescriptions, other than to stress the importance of considering the social and political context in which technology is deployed, rather than focusing on the characteristics of the technology itself, as internet gurus tend to. Every authoritarian regime is different, he argues, so it is implausible that the same approach will work in each case; detailed local knowledge is vital. Yet having done such a good job of knocking down his opponents’ arguments, it is a pity he does not have more concrete proposals to offer in their place.

[penso non mi convincerà del tutto, ma mi pare interessante]