BART allegedly had information from a “credible” source that protesters had planned to disrupt transit on August 11, 2011, to demonstrate against the killing of Hill. BART believed that the protesters had planned to organize via cell phone communication, so between 4PM and 8PM, the time that protesters had planned to gather, BART shutdown cell phone service throughout parts of its system.

The attempt to disrupt the protesters was widely condemned and it’s been said that the move may even have been illegal. Pro-democracy groups have decried BART’s decision to jam cell phones, saying it’s a violation of rights protected by the First Amendment. Sherwin Siy, of Public Knowledge, detailed the ways in which such an action by a government entity violates the Federal Communications Act. The EFF has submitted comments to the FCC about the cell phone jamming, comparing the act to similar practices in countries with oppressive governments, Egypt and Syria, and saying that it violates the public’s First Amendment rights.

Yesterday, BART defended its actions in a letter to the FCC, saying that the temporary interruption of cell phone service was “a necessary tool to protect passengers and response to potential acts of terrorism or other acts of violence.” The letter, written by BART General Manager Grace Crunican, goes on to enumerate fantastic scenarios including cell phones disguised as bombs used to kill passengers and flood the transit tunnels.

As much as that is a truly spectacular fantasy, the act of protest is much, much older than cell phone technology and so, even though protesters may have been relying on the devices as a means to organize, shutting down cell phone service is no way to prevent protesters from causing disruptions in the transit system. Further, the shutdown hindered the ability of transit passengers who probably need that service, too.

Although BART has since ratified a new policy that states the organization will not turn off cell phone service in circumstances like that of the August 2011 shutdown, the actions of BART set a dangerous precedent for other governments to use similar tactics. It is with this caution that the advocacy groups have requested that the FCC expressly forbid any body of government from resorting to a cell phone shutdown in the future. Hopefully, the FCC will take their words to heart.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that the internet spurs pro-democratic attitudes most in countries that already have introduced some reforms in that direction.

“Instead of the internet promoting fundamental political change, it seems to reinforce political change in countries that already have at least some level of democratic freedoms,” said Erik Nisbet, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

“Internet use is a less effective means to mobilize citizens for democracy in extremely authoritarian countries.”

In addition, demand for democracy is highest in a country when more people are connected to the internet and, most importantly, when they spend more time online.

“Internet penetration in a country matters in terms of how much people want democratic reforms, but it is even more important that people are spending greater amounts of time on the internet and that they are connected to other people in their community,” said Elizabeth Stoycheff, a co-author of the study and doctoral student in communication at Ohio State.

Nisbet and Stoycheff conducted the study with Katy Pearce of the University of Washington. Their study appears in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Communication, a special issue dedicated to social media and political change.

The researchers analyzed previously collected data on 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This included surveys of 37,549 people who participated in the 2008 Afrobarometer and 2006-2008 Asian Barometer surveys. Included were questions that evaluated how much the citizens in each country demanded democracy and their frequency of internet use. In addition, the researchers looked at country-level data that measured how democratic each country was, and their levels of internet penetration, international bandwidth per internet user and other sociodemographic factors.

The results suggest that the internet is most likely to play a role in democratization in countries that have a moderate to high internet penetration and that have at least a partly democratic political regime. In countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, people may have access to the internet, but the rulers may control the content available, how users may interact with each other, and whether they may get information from outside their own country, Stoycheff said.

“The internet’s effect on citizen demand for democracy is somewhat contingent on both the technological context and the political context,” Stoycheff said.

Based on the results of the study, Nisbet said there are some countries that currently appear to have the right political and technological mix for the internet to play a role in social and political change. Those countries include Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Singapore and Zambia. But countries in the survey that are run by highly authoritarian regimes, such as Vietnam and Zimbabwe, are not likely to see democracy flourishing anytime soon, regardless of use of the internet, the findings suggest. Other countries, like Mozambique and Tanzania, are partly free but have a low citizen demand for democracy and little internet penetration, Nisbet said. But if internet use grows in these countries, it has the potential to encourage people there to challenge their autocratic regimes.

“Our results suggest that the internet can’t plant the seed of democracy in a country,” Nisbet said. “However, the internet may help democracy flourish if it has already started to grow.”

The Google Blog offers more details.  “With less than six weeks until the midterm elections, we wanted to hear from some of politics’ most creative minds about what innovation and democracy mean in 2010.”

“As part of the event David Axelrod and Ed Gillespie will answer questions and offer thoughts and predictions about the upcoming elections. Arianna Huffington will then moderate a panel about innovation in media, and will be joined by Becki Donatelli, Stephen Hayes, Nate Silver and Amy Walter. We’ll also demonstrate tools built for citizens and government officials using YouTube and Google Maps, and will be joined by our friends on the politics team at Facebook.”

Google is also inviting people to submit a question for any of the panel members via youtube.com/citizentube. People will also be able to watch the entire event live on YouTube on Monday from 2:30-5:30 ET and on POLITICO.

Called the Democracy Video Challenge, the contest asks participants to submit three-minute videos that define the meaning of democracy.

"The Democracy Video Challenge asks budding filmmakers, democracy advocates, and the general public to create video shorts that complete the phrase, ‘Democracy is..?’ The winners will be selected by the online voting public," the official site explains.

Submissions for the video contest will accepted from today through January 31, and a panel will select the semifinalists and finalists. Seven finalists, from different global regions will be determined though online public voting.

The winners will receive an all expense paid trip to the United States that includes screenings of their videos in New York, Hollywood and Washington. They will meet with film directors, public officials and democracy advocates from nongovernmental organizations along with spending time on film and TV sets.

People who want to submit a video anonymously can do so as one anonymous video will be selected as a winner, but that contestant will not be eligible to claim the travel prize.

To enter the video contest participants must be 18 or older. Videos can be any style including fiction, documentary, animated or live action. The videos must be in English or have English subtitles.

 Partners for the Democracy Video Challenge include the Directors Guild of America, Motion Picture Association of America, NBC Universal, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
 

In their motion for disqualification of Deborah Platt Majoras, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center cited a newly discovered fact about the case. Majoras’ husband, John Majoras, works for a law firm retained by DoubleClick.

John Majoras is not listed as one of the five attorneys DC law firm Jones Day has advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues. However, searching the Jones Day site, and Google, shows references to DoubleClick no longer appear on the firm’s website.

A query through the Jones Day site search displayed this item as one of four results:

3. Jones Day - Services - Antitrust Mergers/Joint Ventures - Experience
…DTE Energy Company. DoubleClick Inc. Acquisition by DoubleClick Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition…in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc. H&R… http://www.jonesday.com/services/services_experience.aspx?
AdvancedServices=7deaa765-88f7-4368-8db7-443695819af3
12/7/2007 1:10:31 AM

Click the link, and DoubleClick does not appear in the resulting list. We expect this could be a simple administrative oversight, and look forward to hearing it has been corrected.

But the Jones Day webmaster will have more work to do. For one thing, this link should lead directly to a summary of Jones Day’s experience with DoubleClick. It’s blank, but you can see it in the CDD/EPIC motion.

We checked each of the five attorneys’ profiles on the site. EPIC and CDD listed Joe Sims, Thomas Jestaedt, Alexandre G. Verheyden, Michael S. McFalls, and Chris Ahern as the legal eagles providing counsel.

Each of those attorneys once had this listed in their Professional Biography – Experience:

DoubleClick Inc.
Acquisition by DoubleClick
Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc.

In each case, that reference has been scrubbed from the Jones Day site. One would imagine an attorney would want to tout being part of a multi-billion-dollar deal involving one of the biggest name brand companies on the planet.

Not at Jones Day, though.

(UPDATE: A DoubleClick representative responded to this story via email: "Simpson Thacher has been DoubleClick’s outside counsel since July of 2005 and was retained to represent it in all aspects of its proposed acquisition by Google, including with respect to United States antitrust matters.  From the outset, Simpson Thacher has represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission and continues in that capacity. Jones Day has been engaged primarily with respect to European and other non-U.S. jurisdictions.  Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the Commission on DoubleClick’s behalf.")

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As the leading search engine, those who use Google in an attempt to find what they need probably won’t find it if it’s stuffed behind an online search form at an agency’s site.

Today, the Google Public Policy blog noted the company’s testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about this problem. Google’s J.L. Needham called out forms as an obstacle to indexing content effectively:

The most common barrier is the search form for a database that asks users to input several fields of information to find what they’re looking for. Our crawlers cannot effectively follow the links to reach behind the search form.

Google tipped the Sitemaps protocol, accepted at all of the major search engines, as a way for government sites to help guide the spiders to the content that citizens want to discover in search. It’s also in use at the government’s main information portal, USA.gov.

The search ad company also cited the release of a Center for Democracy & Technology report on how the government has published information and made it available to searchers. Their report lambasted availability of responses to some important queries:

A search for "New York radiation" does not find basic FEMA and DHS information about current conditions and monitoring.

A search to help grandparents with a question about visitation of their grandchildren in any search engine does not turn up an article of the same title located on the Web site of the Administration for Children & Families.

A search for "small farm loans" turns up the commercial offers for loans, and statistics about government loans, but not most of the major federal government programs designed to help fund small farms.

Like Google, CDT exhorted the Feds to pass the E-Government reauthorization act, and to take steps to enable search crawlers to find content more efficiently.

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Digital Democracy Director Slams Google’s Greed

Jeffrey Chester, the onlooker in question, has some impressive credentials, and works as the Center for Digital Democracy’s executive director.  So when he states, “Google’s new marketing strategy poses a huge threat to our privacy and democratic aspirations for the Internet,” the rest of his argument is worth reading.

Chester begins by listing ways in which Google has come to dominate various markets.  YouTube, AdSense, Gmail, not to mention the main search engine – the Mountain View’s products are simply omnipresent online.  As online media overtakes print – we’ve seen data indicating that a shift in the balance will occur by 2011 – Google will grow even more powerful.

Which leads Chester to ask, “Do we want a ubiquitous data collection system where private repositories of sensitive information can be sold to the highest commercial bidder — or turned over to the state for its own political interests?”  Even assuming that Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt stick to the “do no evil” way of business, their successors might not.

In related news, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Google reads users’ emails.

Search Rules Advertising As Media Diversifies

Deloitte’s 2007 State of the Media Democracy Survey revealed that 84 percent of all consumers visit a website after finding it through a search engine and 82 percent find websites via personal recommendation.

And while technophiles have been echoing Dr. Egon Spengler since at least 1984 that print is dead, almost three quarters (72 percent) of those same consumers surveyed still read magazines, and 23 percent expect to spend more time reading books this year.

Yet, if the Internet is your only source of information, you might be convinced that print publications are shutting down by the dozens and reopening online, fulfilling the prophecy that people just aren’t into paper anymore. But the reality is that people prefer choice in media, and even interpret media differently depending on the format.

Previously, I noted also the Darwinian aspect to print, the expense, the saturation of the market that has occurred over the past few decades, complete with bloated staffing, ballooning costs, high failure rates, and high barriers to entry that might account better for a seeming downward trend. But it’s more of a shift than a terminal disease. People are diversifying.

With ads, for example, the survey found that 76 percent of all consumers thought Internet ads were intrusive. Yet, if delivered via print, 64 percent actually paid more attention to them. That doesn’t mean stop advertising online, as only 28 percent said they’d rather pay for content than see the ads. But it does provide an opportunity to develop a nice cooperation between offline and online campaigns.

Or maybe Google was just fooling around when they started brokering print ad deals.

What’s happening, rather than one medium replacing or outright destroying another, is that consumers are consuming all forms of media as suits their purposes, when it suits their purposes, and from whichever angle. This could be on the train, at the coffee shop, the library, the living room, the kitchen table, their favorite chair, or the computer desk, from a monitor, a DVR, a mobile phone, a TV, a magazine, newspaper, or radio.

And not only are their choices of media and media delivery vehicles diversifying, but their creators of media are as well. Over 50 percent of consumers are watching or reading user-generated content (71 percent if you’re younger than 24), and 40 percent of consumers are creating their own content (56 percent if you’re younger than 24.)

So that means, to me anyway, that we are entering an interesting and revolutionary new world of media with unlimited choices for creation and delivery of ideas. And that has enormous positive possibilities…if we don’t blow each other up first. 

At Open The Government, their Secrecy Report Card confirmed what many have believed about the Bush Administration: it’s growing more secretive year after year:

•  Since 2001, the “state secrets” privilege (the executive branch power to impose secrecy with little opportunity for appeal or judicial review) has been used a reported 39 times – an average of six times per year in 6.5 years that is more than double the average (2.46) in the previous 24 years.

•  In 2006, 26 percent ($107.5 billion) of federal contracts dollars were completely uncompeted; only one-third of contracts dollars are subject to full and open competition.

•  In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1,149 provisions of laws. Of these challenges, 85 percent have been on “constitutional” grounds. Such challenges make it difficult for the public to know that the laws are “faithfully executed” as required by the U.S. Constitution.

•  A 2007 Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report on secret wiretap warrants indicated that the government made 143,074 National Security Letter requests in the period 2003-2005. The number for 2006 remains classified. These requests can be used to obtain information about individuals without the government applying for a court-reviewed warrant.

OpenCRS serves to deliver reports created by the Congressional Research Service to the taxpayers who fund the think tank, to the tune of $100 million per year. The Service performs non-partisan research on the issues Congress considers during legislative sessions.

The CRS does not make these reports easy for people to obtain, which is why the Center for Democracy & Technology launched OpenCRS two years ago. However, their efforts recently received a boost. An anonymous member of Congress has agreed to provide the project with a running list of CRS reports as they are published, the Center said in a statement.

One recent report, on income inequality and the US tax system, confirms something that many have believed for a long time: much of the income and earnings in the US has been increasingly centered on smaller numbers of people over the past quarter-century.

In short, the rich get richer, and Congress knows it. Now you do too.

Don’t Try Crawling Google News Comments

When AOL broke down its subscriber walls, it looked like the end of walled garden content models on the Internet. They have been coming back in some ways, Facebook being one less-restrictive example.

Google News doesn’t seem like the place to find high walls and ivy creeping up the bricks. TechCrunch thinks it is, citing Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera about the policy for comments on Google News:

One thing that bugs me: they

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