Chris Soghoian makes an excellent case against using YouTube as the default for the President-elect’s weekly addresses. There are many issues he touches on including the privacy of the viewers from Google, the free Obama-endorsed publicity for YouTube, the embracing of a closed-format, and so forth.
Everybody seems to have a wish–list for the incoming president. Some organizations have even put together humongous documents with recommendations for the new administration. I’ve been covering some of them here— when they seem interesting and within my areas of interest– but the sheer volume of “what I really want from the new president” is astonishing. Many on the left are already disappointed with Obama, 60 days before his inauguration.
One position that everyone on the Internet seems to have an opinion about is the mythical Chief Technology Officer that Obama had promised the nation. ObamaCTO.org has been formed– not by the campaign- to solicit ideas for a CTO agenda.
Jim Harper makes an excellent point. A CTO can’t undo legislation or executive orders or court orders. Says Harper:
I’ve got some news or you: These are policy proposals that would be beyond the purview of any CTO. Policy proposals go through Congress and the President, advised by his policy staff. They do not go through a CTO.
If the Baltimore Ravens asked the team physician to kick field goals, the results would be about what you’d get from asking a federal CTO to carry out these policies.
Excellent point. The CTO cannot repeal the DMCA or the USA Patriot Act or mandate Net Neutrality. What the CTO can do is shine sunlight (thanks Jim Harper). A CTO can open up federal government data with portable and open data formats. RSS, XML, APIs– ways for people and machines to process, visualize and analyze the governments (our) data.
Obama’s official agenda says the following:
UPDATE: I’ve added this as a suggestion on the ObamaCTO.org web site- “bring expectations for CTO in check. CTO is not Santa.”
A CTO will not have power over courts, legislation and executive orders. A CTO will have power over how government uses technology- so bring your expectations down to earth, and ask for things like more transparency in Federal government and use of open standards in federal communications, documents, etc.
Vote for it! Use the system to change the system.
First, he was outed as a fanboy. Then he used Flickr on his transition web site. And now he pledges to use YouTube for weekly addresses.
And here I thought our similarities ended with our pan-national childhoods. Former President Roosevelt, who began the fireside chats in the ’30s, was quoted as saying, “What’s a you tube?” More such changes will undoubtedly follow, as the Obama campaign morphs in to the Obama presidency.
In other news, if you want to be part of the Obama team- expect to disclose Facebook and MySpace pages, embarrassing emails/texts and aliases/handles you’ve used online. If they take these things too seriously, no one who has ever been 17 will be hired.
UPDATE: And Chris Soghoian asks Obama to put the videos up in open formats using BitTorrent. Fantastic idea.
Tim Jones at the EFF has just finished his three–part series outlining how the new leadership in Congress and the Executive branch can restore what has been lost over the past eight years.
There are two aspects to how privacy has deteriorated over the past eight years. On the one hand, claiming war time needs, the government has increased warrant-less surveillance of Americans by alarming proportions. Jones highlights the flawed FISA Amendments act which granted immunity from litigation to telcos, the States Secrets Privilege, which allows the executive branch to shield itself from judicial review. The abuse of National Security Letters to acquire data from Internet service providers has also been increased. On the other hand, corporations have much more control of user data than ever before and the balance is decidedly against the consumer. In Jones’ words, “the privacy of personal data should not depend on how long an ISP has stored that data or whether the data is stored locally or remotely. “
Innovation is an area that most directly affects consumers and technologists. Jones suggests– and I agree- that balance should be restored to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and that serious patent reform is required. Both issues, as they currently stand, favor the incumbents over consumers and inhibit innovation.
On transparency, the government should resemble the Sunlight Foundation— if you haven’t already and take a look at how they are working on making data about the government available in formats that are easy to parse, process, analyze and visualize. Obama has promised much in this direction- and Change.gov is certainly a refreshing web site- but the post-January reality will be determined by his administrations response to Freedom of Information Act requests and opening up the data of all branches of government.
Until inauguration day on the 20th of January, I will be covering some of the aspects of the transition to the Obama administration that affect technology and open government in a series called Change Watch .
Here are new rules put in place by the Obama transition team:
- Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.
- Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.
- If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.
- If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.
- A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests.
In all, good news. [via Jonathan Martin]
The new Change.gov web site keeps getting better. There is a section that allows you to submit ideas for the new administration. Also, while you’re there, take a look at the science and technology agenda section.
Like I said earlier, everybody’s got a wish list for the new President. Not everyone provides a timetable the way the ACLU has.
They divide up their “Actions for Restoring America” in to things to do on the first day, the first 100 days and the first year. The first day includes things like stopping torture, closing Guantanamo, and ending extraordinary renditions. The next 99 days are more interesting from a geek policy standpoint.
All valid points. What remains to be seen is how much of a priority these concerns remain in such harsh economic times. In some cases, making the right kind of appointments to FCC and other positions should take care of concerns.
Until inauguration day on the 20th of January, I will be covering some of the aspects of the transition to the Obama administration that affect technology and open government in a series called Change Watch.
Everybody has a wish list for the new President, including the Government Accountability Office. It’s strange how one arm of the legislative branch has a ready list of things they need from the next President. Do they know they have a President in office right now?
In any case, there are two points in their list that are of our interest:
Again- they already have an FCC, an NTIA and President Bush, and yet they are willing to wait until the end of January for “urgent” action.
Until inauguration day on the 20th of January, I will be covering some of the aspects of the transition to the Obama administration that affect technology and open government in a series called Change Watch.
Until inauguration day on the 20th of January, I will be covering some of the aspects of the transition to the Obama administration that affect technology and open government in a series called Change Watch. 
Today, Change.gov was launched. It is the official web site for the “Office of the President-Elect”. It is an extremely forward-looking web site which hopes to capture the enthusiasm and energy of Obamamania before is subsides. The site continues where BarackObama.com left off- except for the user participation part. One hopes that there is a direct way for citizens to participate. Maybe Joe Trippi’s MyWhiteHouse.gov idea?
UPDATE: Alan Rosenblatt at techPresident has a couple of great ideas about how the new President can keep the Obama social network alive- either as an independent community outside of government or as a “white house social network” to directly channel the energy of his supporters.
Science Addiction 