In a comment for the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Adviser, Senior Director G. Philip Hughes suggests that populist Bolivian President Evo Morales deserves to reap the whirlwind of class- and ethnically-based protest that his policies and divisive politics have sown.
To read Mr. Hughes’s entire commentary please click here.
In a recent U.S.News.com article, White House Writers Group Mark Davis takes a broad look at why President Obama’s plan to unilaterally draw down the US strategic arsenal is profoundly dangerous.
To read Mr. Davis’s article, please click here.
In a March 19,2012 commentary for the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Adviser, White House Writes Group Senior Director G. Philip Hughes discounts a British report that Caribbean integration efforts might collapse imminently and suggests avenues for future integration efforts that could be even more fruitful for the region’s citizens and their governments.
To read the entire article in Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor, please follow this link
Facebook is now facing a likely federal investigation following the revelation that its cookies can track users Web surfing after they logged out of the world’s most popular social networking site. The worst outcome of such an investigation would be onerous legislation that would stifle innovation.
The call for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, however, is a positive sign for people who care about privacy and innovation. While the FCC is notorious for seeking to employ powers it does not statutorily possess, the FTC has a long record of judicious use of its power. Regulation of some sort is inevitable in the privacy arena. Best it be a one-stop shop at the FTC.
Facebook is almost certainly telling the truth when it says it made an inadvertent mistake when it placed cookies on our machines that can track where we go on the Web by our unique identifier.
Facebook is also probably telling the truth when it says that has not stored or used this information.
The fact remains, what can be done, will be done. The current privacy paradigm is simply not sustainable.
Politicians pass laws, but that doesn’t mean they understand them.
Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is justifiably upset by a Google bomb that links searches for his name to something too disgusting to repeat here. In demanding that Google take it down, however, Santorum does not seem to understand that all the responsibility—and liability—rests with the webmaster, not the search engine—in a law that passed when he was a member of the Senate. (Anybody out there know how Senator Santorum voted on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?)
Santorum, however, does strike at a point.
“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” he said. In fact, something was ‘up there’ about First Lady Michelle Obama, a truly offensive image. Google did act against one site carrying that image, citing malware concerns, and placed an ad explaining its stance. Technology companies will need to remain utterly consistent in how they apply these rules—and clear to the public how they operate. Politicians need to understand the need to play by the rules they themselves have passed.
To learn more about the impact of Section 230 on Google bombs, check out my book, Digital Assassination.
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WHWG is excited to announce a new series of short videos that offer key strategic communications lessons.
More videos after the break.
USA Today rates Washington, DC the “Most Socially Networked City” in the country. The survey ranked the 100 best – and worst – “Twitter Towns,” and the nation’s capital came out on top.
Following DC were:
2. Atlanta
3. Denver
4. Minneapolis
5. Seattle
While some may have thought Seattle – often considered the Internet technology capital – would have earned the top slot, experts conclude that politics played an important role in the ranking. No, Washington didn’t lobby for the title; but, Twitter is being used increasingly as a political tool, for advocacy and in GOTV efforts during election cycles.
Part of the research also included analysis of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Researchers collected the number of people making use of these social media tools per capita in each state’s most populated cities.