GMGruman writes "The BBC has stirred up quite a row in Britain about a shocking use of taxpayer funds: creating iPhone apps to provide citizens services. As InfoWorld blogger Galen Gruman notes, it's apparently bad in Britain for the government to use modern technology during a recession, a mentality he likens as a shift from 'cool Britannia' to 'fool Britannia.'"

schliz writes "Online poll-based political party Senator Online is looking for senate candidates to contest the next Australian Federal Election. The party does not have any policies or an official stance, and promises to conduct online votes on major issues and act in Parliament accordingly. It has already appointed its candidate for the state of New South Wales through an online recruitment campaign in which candidates had to receive a minimum of 100 endorsements — either via its website or Facebook 'fans' — and raise a minimum of $200. This will be Senator Online's second Federal Election. When it contested in 2007, it received between 0.05 and 0.09 percent of each state's votes."

kfogel writes "Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Nevada, is using a copyright 'cease-and-desist' letter to stop her opponent, incumbent Harry Reid (currently majority leader in the US Senate), from reposting old versions of her campaign website. The old pages are politically sensitive because Angle campaigned from the far right in the primary, but is now toning that down for the general election." As kfogel notes, the letter "also accuses the Reid campaign of intending to impersonate Angle's campaign, which seems doubtful, but who knows?"

mostxlnt writes "As we noted, the new Tory UK government has launched a website asking its subjects which laws they'd most like repealed. There are proposals up for repeal of the Laws of Thermodynamics: Second, Third, and all (discussion thread on this one closed by a moderator). One comment on the Third [now apparently deleted] elucidated: 'Without the Third Law of Thermodynamics, it would be possible to build machines that would last forever and provide an endless source of cheap energy. thus solving both potential crises in energy supply as well as solving the greenhouse gas problem in one step... simples... eh?'"

boombaard writes "The day before yesterday CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that, from now on, there is a new rule in effect, which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom or response vessel around Deepwater Horizon (official announcement). The rule, announced by the US Coast Guard, forbids 'photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. In order to get closer, you have to get direct permission from the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans,' while 'violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. What's even more extraordinary is that the Coast Guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet, before scaling it back to 65 feet.'" Read below for the Coast Guard's statement on the new rule.

Diamonddavej writes "The LA Times reports that Californian legislators are close to dropping the translucent green rock Serpentine as the state rock of California because of its tenuous association with chrysotile asbestos. Sen. Gloria Romero declares in her bill (SB 624) that Serpentine should be dropped as California's state rock because it 'contains the deadly mineral chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, exposure to which increases the risk of the cancer mesothelioma.' The bill has backing from mesothelioma support groups. Critics point out that Serpentine is a group of 20 different minerals, and Californian Serpentine rarely contains much chrysotile, never mind its dangerous fibrous asbestos form. Its is suspected that lawyers involved in asbestos compensation claims and cleanup companies will profit from the bill. Vast tracts of California where bedrock is made of Serpentine could be declared hazardous to health... even if it contains no crysotile at all! It looks like SB 624 will be passed; it won unanimous bi-partisan support from an Assembly committee last week."

Jamie points out this excellent piece, well timed for America's Independence Day, that says spectrographic evidence has established that the one word Thomas Jefferson fully blotted out from an early draft of the Declaration of Independence was not "resident," or "patriot," but rather "subject." This, he replaced with "citizen."

Archness1 writes with an excerpt from Declan McCullagh's piece at CNET about the recently renewed push for a sales tax on Internet purchases, led by Massachusetts Representative Bill Delahunt. "At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren't required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't be required to cough up the sales taxes that they would if shopping at a local mall." That could all change, though.

Firefalcon writes "The UK Government launched Thursday the 'Your Freedom' website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to 'identify laws that should be repealed.' In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought-out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta."

gauharjk writes "India's Department of Telecommunications has been asked by the government to serve a notice to Skype and Research In Motion to ensure that their email and other data services comply with formats that can be read by security and intelligence agencies, or face a ban in India if they do not comply within 15 days. A similar notice is also being sent to Google, asking it to provide access to content on Gmail in a readable format."

rdnetto sends in this clip from TorrentFreak. To pursue these plans the Pirate Party needs to win 4% of the seats in Parliament in an election coming up in September. "After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site switched to a new ISP. That host, the Swedish Pirate Party, made a stand on principle. Now they aim to take things further by running the site from inside the Swedish Parliament. ... The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from inside the Parliament, by Members of Parliament."

Mab_Mass writes "The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has an interesting article on the relationship between scientists and the public. [Here's the paper itself, as a PDF.] Rather than point the finger at an 'ignorant' public, this article chastises the scientists for a poor understanding of how to communicate with non-technical people. With a look at the issues of climate change, nuclear waste disposal, genetics, and the future of the Internet, the article provides examples of how the experts in these fields are failing to present their message in a way that encourages public discussion and support."

FlorianMueller writes "After pursuing Microsoft and Intel, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes is now preparing an initiative that could have an even greater impact on the IT industry: a European interoperability law that will affect not only companies found dominant in a market but all 'significant' players. In a recent interview, Mrs. Kroes mentioned Apple. Nokia, RIM and Adobe would be other examples. All significant market players would have to provide access to interfaces and data formats, with pricing constraints considered 'likely' by the commissioner. Her objective: 'Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.' The process may take a few years, but key decisions on the substance of the bill may already be made later this year."

JDRucker writes "Supporters are concerned. Very concerned. Would-be whistle-blowers hoping to leak documents to Wikileaks face a potentially frustrating surprise. Wikileaks' submission process, which had been degraded for months, completely collapsed more than two weeks ago and remains offline, in a little-noted breakdown at the world's most prominent secret-spilling website."

GovTechGuy writes with some harsh words from Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, speaking at a conference Tuesday in Washington, DC: "'The "wisdom of the crowds" is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb,' Curtis said. 'It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter.' Curtis pointed to his own experience moderating comments on Fark, which allows users to give their often humorous take on the news of the day. He said only one percent of Web comments have any value and called the rest 'garbage.' Another example Curtis pointed to is the America Speaking Out website recently launched by House Republicans to allow the public to weigh in on the issues and vote for policy positions they support. Curtis called the site an 'absolute train wreck.' 'It's an absolute disaster. It's impossible to tell who was kidding and who wasn't,' Curtis said."

Mark Atwood points out this critical commentary on the IEEE's response to the outcome of In Re. Bilski, which points out the contrast between work done by IEEE luminaries like Donald Knuth and lobbying for software patents.

MexiCali59 writes "Liberal watchdog CREW has joined Republican Congressman Darrell Issa in calling for an investigation into whether White House staffers regularly use private email accounts to communicate with lobbyists. The allegations, first reported last week by the New York Times, would likely constitute a violation of federal law as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year."

Several readers sent in the story of an alleged Russian spy ring busted yesterday by the FBI after a decade-long investigation. The FBI says that Moscow trained and planted long-term "moles" in the US in order to infiltrate the upper echelons of US government and business circles and pass back intelligence to the Russians. Twelve people have been charged; ten were arrested in the US (one is at large) and one in Cyprus. Wired and the New York Post have colorful coverage. Wired's leans on the tradecraft and discusses steganography, while the Post favors the femme fatale angle (alleged spy Anna Chapman). The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the US actions were unfounded and pursued "unseemly" goals. One of many choice quotes from copious coverage: "They couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas." From the WSJ report: "Officials said no secrets were compromised or revealed in the alleged plot, and the spy operation seems to have yielded little of value given some of the elaborate methods deployed. None of the 11 charged by US prosecutors was accused of accessing any classified or sensitive US government information."

jamie found a story up on Daily Kos revealing that the polling firm they had contracted with for 18 months, Research 2000 or R2K, apparently made up or at least manually tweaked its polling results. The blog published a preliminary report by a team of statistics gurus (Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman), and it is an exemplar of clarity and concision. The team reports, "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls." Daily Kos will be filing a lawsuit against its former pollster. "For the past year and a half, Daily Kos has been featuring weekly poll results from the Research 2000 (R2K) organization. These polls were often praised for their 'transparency,' since they included detailed cross-tabs on sub-populations and a clear description of the random dialing technique. However, on June 6, 2010, FiveThirtyEight.com rated R2K as among the least accurate pollsters in predicting election results. Daily Kos then terminated the relationship. One of us (MG) wondered if odd patterns he had noticed in R2K's reports might be connected with R2K's mediocre track record, prompting our investigation of whether the reports could represent proper random polling. ... This posting is a careful initial report of our findings, not intended to be a full formal analysis but rather to alert people not to rely on R2K's results."

eldavojohn writes "The recent shift in NASA's spaceflight goals has caused great stress in the space community and those related to efforts in space. A White House update to the policy is said to emphasize cooperation with the international community and looks to be a move away from individual nations competing in space. Instead, the document urges intense competition (PDF) in the commercial sector and reasons that 'The United States considers the sustainability, stability, and free access to, and use of, space vital to its national interests. It is the shared interest of all nations to act responsibly in ways that emphasize openness and transparency, and help prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust.' Space.com also notes that you can submit your comments and thoughts to the task force Obama appointed to determine new directions. No doubt this avoidance or departure from another Space Race will have a lot of people concerned that the US is out of the game."