Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Obama's Social Network

A group of more than 20,000 supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama have used his official social network to organize an online protest against his stance on legislation set to be taken up by the U.S. Senate tomorrow.

The users of the social network MyBarackObama.com have organized a grass-roots protest online that opposes Obama's support of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act. The act would continue the controversial surveillance of e-mail and phone calls by the U.S. National Security Agency that started after Sept. 11, 2001, and would likely end lawsuits against the telecommunications carriers that participated in the program. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve the legislation last month.

This is an interesting phenomenon. I hope that these protesters are successful in persuading Obama to change his position on this bill. And while I am critical of Obama's position here, I applaud how this social network makes him more available to his constituents.
Posted by csm at 12:46 PM
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1 comment:

BAWDYSCOT said...

This is exactly the type place I see for the Internet, the Great Democratizer. Unfortunately I think Barak will give lip service to these supporters, but I feel he will go right along with the others in Congress. I am not really sure why he will support this enlargement of federal surveillance power, but it makes me suspicious. You would think this would be an issue right up the Democrats alley, individual freedom from government intrusion, but they are lapping this up. Could this be the beginning of our government's wresting control of the Internet(one more slippery slope)?

Here is an interesting article on the FISA subject:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/fisa-compromise.ars

July 8, 2008 at 2:33 PM

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