A player enters a league with family and friends then drafts a 12 player roster made up of congressional and presidential candidates. These teams then compete against each other by earning points. I’m not sure if there is an option for head-to-head game play or ROTO leagues (sorry, fantasy geek moment there). I know what your asking already. “How do you earn points?” It’s not like Obama threw 3 touchdowns last week.

The candidates earn points through fact checking in speeches PolitiFact, poll results given by Real Clear Politics and even the frequency in which they interact with voters through social media. The team owner can even earn points by registering to vote and checking in with social media applications when watching debates. The game is said to be very smartphone friendly. So everyone can check on their team anywhere.

More real time reactions could result in more interest by the youth of America and maybe even influencing the candidates themselves to be more responsible with their campaigns. I personally can’t wait for the first voter to go up to their congressman and tell them how the speech they gave last week cost them a playoff spot. MTV is running a beta-test version of the Fantasy Election ’12 this summer and launching the game September 1st.

The police chief in the small delta town of Isleton, California is going through this reality right now. Isleton police Chief Steven Adams was put on paid leave by City Manager Dan Hinrichs.

“He came in yelling at me and telling me to get out of the police department now,” said Chief Adams. “confused, frustrated, I didn’t know what to feel.”

When City Manager Dan Hinrichs was asked about why Chief Adams was put on leave he said that public complaints led to the issue getting to the point it was at. Chief Adams isn’t buying the excuse. “No, I don’t believe that because I’ve had nothing but support from the public.”

He believes that this is happening because he has been very vocal on Facebook about the department’s problems that include the Sacramento county sheriffs department taking over law enforcement duties in January due to workers comp not being paid by the city to its officers.

As of this time Chief Adams is laced on paid leave and it is not clear when or if he will be allowed to go back to work. Because he is on leave, the Sacramento Sheriffs department will have to take over services for the second time this year.

comScore compiled a couple of graphs contrasting how paid display ad campaigns perform against “earned” media impressions, which are basically all of the instances when Facebook users pass along information to their friends via Likes or other ways of sharing. The more that social network members pass along that link or post or whatever it is that a campaign shares basically amounts to bonus advertising that costs exactly zero.

What’s revealing about this analysis is how candidates who aren’t as well funded as Romney or Obama matched the amount of paid impressions with earned impressions, like Rick Santorum did, or completely dwarfed paid impressions with twice the earned impressions, as was the case with Ron Paul. The second graph clearly indicates that the strength of Ron Paul’s campaign rests with his grassroots organization and successful virility of his messages on social media. comScore estimates that the 30 million earned impressions that Paul achieved is roughly worth $100,000.

Previous studies of political campaigns on Twitter reflect the strength of Ron Paul’s message throughout social networking sites. Not only does he have a higher incidence of positive messages on Twitter and blogs, plus his average amount of retweets trumps all other Republican candidates.

While Paul might have the highest frequency of retweets on Twitter, he also excelled in frequency of impressions for fans on Facebook. Newt Gingrich’s fans were passing along his messages at a much higher rate than Paul’s fans, but can you blame them: with Gingrich habitually making bombastic statements about moon colonies, his unappreciated greatness, and self-references to obscure historical figures, why wouldn’t more people want to share that carnival of messages?

Now that the Republican primaries are winding down and candidates begin to transition into the general campaign throughout the summer and fall, it’ll be interesting to see how President Obama and (presumptive) Republican challenger Mitt Romney make use of social media and how well their messages resonate among their fans and followers. President Obama’s campaign championed the grassroots nature and virility of social media during his successful 2008 campaign but after four years it’s questionable whether he’ll be able to ride that lightning again. Alternately, given that Romney is all but the official Republican nominee, even in spite of the GOP’s reluctance to convalesce around Romney, it’s not certain that all of Ron Paul’s social media prowess could be transferred over to Romney’s campaign. Well, certainly not without an endorsement for Romney from Paul, but even then his legion of loyalists may be hesitant to rally behind a candidate that’s not Paul.

It was widely speculated that Gingrich would officially announced the suspension of his campaign on Tuesday – and he has, kind of. He posted a YouTube video to his supporters, announcing that he will officially suspend his Presidential campaign at a press event on Wednesday.

“I wanted you to know first, because your help was vital. We had nearly 180,000 people who donated to the campaign. We had thousands more who worked as volunteers. We had two and a half million voters, all coming together at a grassroots level to try to fight for a better America.”

Gingrich went on to praise a “terrific campaign” and says that he will continue to tour and campaign (for Romney, we assume).

“When we do announce officially on Wednesday that we’re suspending the campaign, it’ll be with great thoughts of those who were with us side by side all these months. And we want you to know that without you, none of this would have been possible,” he closed.

Check it out below:

According to filings, the Gingrich campaign was $4.3 million in debt by the end of March. It’s expected that when Gingrich officially drops out, he will throw his support behind Mitt Romney.

According to a statement obtained by the Washington Post, the micro-blogging site said, “Recently, criminal elements have used Sina Weibo to create and spread malicious political rumors online for no reason, producing a terrible effect on society.” The statement continues, reminding all users to abide by the laws and regulations regarding speech on the internet and to report any rumors to the authorities.

The action stems from political chatter last month on Weibo, which is used by over three million people in China, related to former government official Bo Xilai, who is currently under investigation for possible corruption as well as accusations that he murdered a British businessman. In the days following Bo’s removal from his position, financial journalist Li Delin posted on Weibo that he’d spotted military vehicles and plainclothes police officers occupying the streets of Beijing.

The combination of the two events – Bo’s removal from office and reports of a military coup underway – sparked a tidal wave of rumors across Weibo. Rumors, as you may or may not know, are not easily tolerated by the Chinese government. Aside from arresting six people associated with concocting the rumors, authorities also scrubbed 210,000 posts from Weibo.

China’s ruling Communist Party has a notorious reputation for micro-managing the flow of information on the internet and controls every media outlet in the country. Social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked from being accessed within the country. Last month, Anonymous attempted to frustrate the government’s vice-like grip over the flow of information by defacing several Chinese government websites and posting in their place instructions for how Chinese citizens can circumvent the nation’s Great Firewall.

CISPA, and other cybersecurity bills, has recently become front and center as cyber threats have grown more prevalent. Numerous lawmakers are pushing for legislation in hopes of lessening the concerns.

But, what would CISPA actually do? And, would it have the same impact that SOPA would have had? According to the bill itself, the goal is:

“To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.”

How do you feel about CISPA? Are you for or against it? Why or Why not? Please share.

Aside from the Internet-related legislation, CISPA is not very similar to SOPA. CISPA is geared toward cybersecurity concerns and, primarily, the sharing of cyber threat information between the private sector and the government. SOPA, on the other hand, was focused on intellectual property and was pushed by the entertainment industry to address piracy issues.

“The bills don’t have many similarities beyond the basic idea that they are both forms of government overreach,” Ryan Radia, the Associate Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told WebProNews.

The reason, however, that so many have associated the bills with each other is due to the implications they would have. According to Radia, the basis of CISPA is well intentioned, but the wording of it is dangerous.

As he explained to us, even though the bill has had multiple amendments, it is still too vague. The main controversy is in how “cyber threat information” would be interpreted and, also, what the government would do with it.

“The information that you hand over to, say, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc., may have some nexus to a so-called cyber threat – that information could end up in the government’s hands not only for use in fighting off cyber attacks, but for use in, say, run of the mill criminal prosecutions,” said Radia.

For instance, he told us that language such as “unauthorized access” could not only apply to hackers, but that it could also apply to users’ stretching the truth online. In other words, it could give the government access to Facebook users that lie about their age or to people that use their employer’s computers to watch YouTube videos.

“Should lying about your age and weight on an online dating site be a federal crime?” asked Radia. “I don’t think so… this bill doesn’t make it a crime but gives government access to information that could relate to such crimes.”

With this broad language, CISPA could drastically change all existing laws pertaining to criminal, civil, statutory, contractual, and various other cases. Although the government would not be able to use the information it receives for regulation purposes, Radia told us that CISPA would be a “prosecutor’s dream” since they could avoid obtaining court orders and other forms of red tape.

As a result of these implications, privacy activists believe CISPA is a violation of consumer privacy rights. Radia agrees saying it poses “a very real risk to privacy.”

“Under CISPA, we could see a whole host of information being shared with the government in ways that do represent a very real threat to privacy and that offend the basic 4th Amendment principle that we should be free from unreasonable searches,” said Radia.

There are numerous petitions to stop CISPA, including one from Demand Progress and one from Avaaz. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also been particularly outspoken about the harm CISPA would bring and even launched a campaign last week in protest of the bill. The EFF is hoping to give the government too much information in the form of its CongressTMI hashtag in order to “showcase the types of unnecessary private data that could be swept up under CISPA.”

While these campaigns to stop CISPA are reminiscent of the Internet blackout in January in protest of SOPA, the Internet community has been less than active in regards to this latest piece of legislation. If you recall, almost every corner of the Internet had some form of protest from Reddit going dark to the Internet community creating memes in protest of SOPA.

It’s not entirely clear if it’s due to apathy or just ignorance of the bill, but CISPA doesn’t face as much criticism from the Internet as a whole as SOPA did. The Avaaz petition, which is also referenced on Reddit’s front page, has over 700,000 signatures, but it pales in comparison to the anti-SOPA petition that received over 3 million signatures. It’s clear that many people just don’t see the same threat in CISPA that they did in SOPA.

Incidentally, Tim Berners-Lee, who is one of the “fathers of the World Wide Web,” recently spoke to the Guardian and expressed his concern for CISPA.

“[It] is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world. Even though the Sopa and Pipa acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it’s staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens.”

Unlike SOPA, Internet giants such as Google and Facebook support CISPA, which has produced a divided perspective from the Internet community. Radia, however, told us that many of these companies are backing the bill for its core purpose – to make sharing information easier.

“Companies aren’t supporting this generally because they really want to screw consumers or take away their privacy, but rather, they want more freedom to share information,” he said.

“How much is less clear,” Radia continued. “This bill would give them, perhaps, too much freedom and give government too much freedom.”

In addition to CISPA, there are several other cybersecurity bills in Congress. One is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which puts a regulatory approach on cybersecurity, and is backed by Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins. Senator John McCain has also introduced a bill called the Secure IT Act that focuses on information sharing and gives more power to the private sector instead of the government.

Other bills including the Security Amendments Act of 2012, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, and the Precise Act, are also being discussed but have not received as much media attention as the others.

“Every one of these bills has a broad immunity grant for private sector information sharing with government,” said Radia. “None of them, in their current versions, have careful limits on the use and on… the conditions the government can place on private entities.”

He believes that the Precise Act is the best one introduced up to this point but that, even it, borrows from the broad language of CISPA.

In spite of all this focus on cybersecurity, Jerry Brito, the Director of the Technology Policy Program at George Mason University, recently told us that, the rhetoric in Washington about it is being overblown.

“There really is little evidence for us to believe that we are on the brink of real calamity,” said Brito.

Radia agrees with Brito and even suggested that cybersecurity legislation may not provide a real solution to the concerns. He, like Brito, is not convinced that a law, especially one of the bills already introduced, would actually reduce cyber threats.

“What we need is a rifle shot – a narrow, careful target approach to ensure that the very specific types of cyber threat information are being shared with private entities and with government,” he pointed out.

In terms of CISPA, specifically, Radia thinks it has a 50/50 chance of becoming a law. He said that it could pass the House but, beyond that, it could go either way.

Last week, the White House issued a statement to The Hill that indicated its opposition to the bill. Although she avoided calling out CISPA directly, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said:

“The nation’s critical infrastructure cyber vulnerabilities will not be addressed by information sharing alone. Also, while information sharing legislation is an essential component of comprehensive legislation to address critical infrastructure risks, information sharing provisions must include robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens. Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs.”

The White House putting their weight behind the anti-CISPA efforts will help, but it seems that the bill is already undergoing some changes to improve the legislation. A recent OP-ED on Mashable reveals that the authors of the bill are currently in talks with Internet companies to reach a compromise that would satisfy all parties, including privacy-minded citizens. It’s this willingness to work with Internet companies to reach a compromise that may set CISPA apart from SOPA the most.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on CISPA this week. On Digital Trends, Andrew Couts points out that, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s schedule, the House will begin debating CISPA on Thursday, April 26, and that a vote will happen no later than Friday afternoon.

Could CISPA help reduce cyber threats, or is it a threat itself? Please share your thoughts.

“I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he tells the Guardian. “It’s scary.”

Brin also indicated that he and fellow Google co-founder Larry Page would not be able to build their search engine in the current Internet environment given restrictive players such as Facebook. He categorized both Facebook and Apple as “walled gardens” saying they have too many limitations within their services.

As one can imagine, Brin’s statements have gained a considerable amount of criticism. What’s more, his perspective has also reignited the debate over what true openness actually is and what real threats lie with it.

How do you define a truly open Internet? We’d love to know.

The Web quickly responded to Brin’s interview with numerous claims of Google being hypocritical. Bobbie Johnson on GigaOM compiled a comprehensive piece on the Web’s reaction including statements from Dave Winer, Andrew Keen, and others.

WebProNews spoke with Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group and who is also veteran in the search industry, about the matter and she told us that Brin lumped two very different types of openness together. As she explained, the one side of openness covers government censorships and restrictions in regimes such as China and the Middle East. The other side of Web openness, she continued, is Web-specific and deals with “walled gardens.”

“It’s disingenuous to put the two in the same basket, which is what Brin is doing,” she said. “One is a very, very important social and political discussion; the other is a business discussion.”

The most recent threat to Internet freedom or net neutrality has been in regards to telecommunications’ companies hampering with Web access. While it is real and should be addressed, Lieb told us that there are other threats, including Brin’s concerns, that exist as well. However, she believes they are all on various levels of importance and should, therefore, be handled differently.

“There are threats to free and open Internet access through business, through governments, through anti-democratic means, but they can’t really all be lumped in one basket,” she said.

On the business side of the threat and in reference to the “walled gardens” that Brin mentioned, Lieb told us that his point would have been clearer if he had not mentioned direct competitors to Google. Even though he raised some legitimate points in this regard, she said she would have liked to see him take his argument outside of potential business threats to Google.

In addition, his bringing Google’s competitors to the table make it easier for his stance to come under attack, especially in light of recent actions from the search giant. For example, in Matt Cutts‘ latest video, he reminds people how Google may remove or demote a website.

“We do reserve the right to take action, whether it be demotion or removal, and we think we have to apply our best judgment,” said Cutts.

Here’s his complete video:

Another example is when Google announced that it was beginning to encrypt searches when users are logged into Google.com. This move, as Lieb explained, limits the openness that people once had since Google no longer shares the keyword referral data with those who don’t advertise on Google.

As evidenced in the below piece that WPN did last year when the news transpired, the overall consensus from the SEO community, including Lieb, was that this move was evil:

After these and other issues were raised, Brin spoke out on his Google+ account and said his words were taken out of context calling the Guardian report a “short summary of a long discussion.” He clarified that he did not think the openness of digital ecosystems was “on par” with government censorship of the Web.

Also, to address the comments made specifically about Google’s own practices, Brin wrote:

“So what was my concern and what about Google for that matter?
I became an entrepreneur during the 90’s, the boom time of what you might now call Web 1.0. Yahoo created a directory of all the sites they could find without asking anyone for permission. Ebay quickly became the largest auction company in the world without having to pay a portion of revenue to any ISP. Paypal became the most successful payment company and Amazon soared in e-commerce also without such tolls or any particular company’s permission. 



Today, starting such a service would entail navigating a number of new tollbooths and gatekeepers. If you are interested in this issue I recommend you read http://futureoftheinternet.org/ by +Jonathan Zittrain. While openness is a core value at Google, there are a number of areas where we can improve too (as the book outlines).

But regardless of how you feel about digital ecosystems or about Google, please do not take the free and open internet for granted from government intervention. To the extent that free flow of information threatens the powerful, those in power will seek to suppress it.”

Lieb agrees with Brin in that she believes the real concerns and threats to Internet freedom lie in anti-net neutrality and the government regimes that block Internet access. Furthermore, the oppression in the Middle East and other regions over the past couple of years only solidifies what an important role the Internet plays in staying connected to the world.

“The business threats posed by a Facebook or a Bing, or even a Google or a Apple, are small potatoes compared to really anti-democratic Internet threats such as those posed by anti-net neutrality or the governments in oppressive or non-democratic regimes worldwide,” she said.

She went on to say that more lobbying needs to happen in Washington to raise awareness of these very real threats.

Do you think the “open Web” is at risk? If so, what are the real threats you see? Please share.

So every time anyone search “Santorum” on Google (and other engines), they were treated with a graphic neologism. His problem has seemingly been mitigated in recent weeks, as that particular search result has been pushed down the page.

That issue received a lot of attention during the campaign, but few people know that frontrunner (and future nominee) Mitt Romney had a similar (albeit less serious) Google problem of his own.

Just a couple of months ago, anyone who searched “Romney” in Google would see a result near the top for the site spreadingromney.com. That site redefined the candidate’s last name into a verb meaning “To defecate in terror.” Let’s use that in a sentence, shall we?

“Dude, I woke up and thought I saw a ghost – I almost Romneyed all over myself.”

All of this stemmed from a story that Mitt Romney probably regrets telling. Meant as a humorous anecdote, it became the focus of the campaign back in January.

Romney detailed one fateful road trip where Seamus, his now-deceased Irish setter got a bad case of diarrhea and made quite the mess all over the car. Not the inside of the car, mind you – the outside. That’s because Seamus was tied to the roof of the car.

Sure, he was secure and in an open-air crate, but you can understand why some people were left a little uneasy by the story. It’s odd to a large portion of the population to strap your dog to the roof on a car trip. As you would expect, he caught a lot of flak for this – the neologism search result probably the least of it. But, of course, the news cycle spins and all is forgotten.

Until it’s brought up again on the national stage.

In a recent interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Mitt’s wife Ann Romney was asked about the Seamus incident. Here’s the conversation, courtesy of ABC:

DIANE SAWYER: As we move away from this primary campaign into the next phase– again, on Yahoo, we got two questions most often, first about Seamus– which as you know is out there forever– would you do it again?

MITT ROMNEY: Certainly not with the attention it’s received.

DIANE SAWYER: You said it was the most wounding thing in the campaign–

ANN ROMNEY: It’s crazy.

DIANE SAWYER:–so far.

ANN ROMNEY: The dog loved it. The dog was, like–

DIANE SAWYER: But the dog got sick, right?

ANN ROMNEY: Once, he– we traveled all the time and he– he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs. But– he would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation. It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel for t– in– in– in a kennel for two weeks, so.

Crazy because he was excited? Or scared sh*tless? You be the judge.

I can see the campaign ads now: Barack Obama – loves dogs, puts his on the White House Christmas card. Mitt Romney – thinks his dog loves being tied to the roof of a car.

Somehow, in this crazy season of politics, dog-oriented ads don’t even seem like a stretch.

[Image Courtesy]

As Google has done with previous events that it has played a large role in, everything from CES to SXSW, don’t be surprised if you see some customized features begin to roll out ahead of August’s convention such as indoor maps of the arena, several Google+ Hangouts, and a livestream of several events via YouTube.

Susan Molinari, Google’s Vice President of Public Policy, said in a statement, “By incorporating our tools and technology, we are offering a behind-the-scenes look at the convention process and allowing voters, delegates and viewers to shape the conversation.” Molinari was a notable addition to Google’s lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., earlier this year as she became the latest former Republican politician to assume a high-profile position in the company’s policy wing.

Google’s been keeping itself busy with thus far with the primary stages of the presidential election. Earlier this year, the company created a Election & Politics section within its general news aggregator, and has also put together several election tools for people to use in order to more closely follow the results of the Republican primary contests. Back in 2010 for the midterm elections, interested parties were able to tune into YouTube in order to livestream the election results.

Convention CEO William Harris said, “Having Google as a partner ensures the most engaging convention experience in history. Our goal is to bring the convention to you, no matter where you are or which device you use.”

Interestingly, on the GOP’s website for the 2012 convention visitors are given the option of signing in with their Facebook account but not with their Google+ account. Whoops. Guess even the GOP can’t deny Facebook’s overwhelming popularity advantage over Google’s social networking service.

Since Google has become the adoptive technology resource for the RNC, it will be interesting if the Democrats try to tap Facebook in order to be their official social media platform for the party’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., in September. There really is nothing quite like taking sides in very public and very superficial rivalries.

Citing concerns for his ailing daughter, Santorum bowed out at a press conference in Gettysburg, Pa. Santorum apparently called Mitt Romney a day earlier to tell him of his decision to suspend his campaign.

In the conference, Santorum sought to paint his campaign as a success.

We were winning in a very different way. We were touching hearts and raising issues that others didn’t want raised.

We can’t have a strong economy without having strong familes and a strong moral fiber.

Amazing thing that sweater vest. The Twitterverse went wild… the sweater vest became the official wardrobe of the Santorum campaign. We sourced that in a company that was making them in Minnesota. We’re the best customer they’ve ever had in their entire history.

It’s been a wonderful story after story. Even today, we have people working for us in Texas to make sure we have a winner-take-all primary. It turns out it wasn’t my voice, it was your voice.

People say, “How does this happen?” How were we able to come from nowhere? Miracle after miracle, this race was as improbable as any race you are likely to ever see for President.

Against all odds. we won 11 states. We won more counties than all the other people in this race combined.

We made a decision to get into this race at our kitchen table. We made a decision that this race is over for me, we will be suspending the campaign effective today.

We are going to continue to fight to defeat President Barack Obama. We are going to take back the House. We are going to take back America.

He spoke of a “violent and radical Islam” his campaign opposed, the excitement of the Tea Party with his campaign. He quoted Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address about all men being created equal.

The conference room was full of press, but had been packed along the sides with Santorum staffers and supporters. They applauded loudly as he left the room. Santorum refused to take any questions, including one about whether he would now endorse Mitt Romney.

As expected, the Twitter snark kicked in immediately…