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The 2012 presidential race has been more blistering, negative and caustic than the race four years ago — and the general election hasn’t even officially started yet.
According to a study by the Wesleyan Media Project, 70 percent of campaign ads run so far this election cycle have been negative, compared with 9 percent over the same period of time in the 2008 presidential campaign. Super PACs, the big-money outside groups well-known for carpet-bombing opponents with attack ads are largely to blame, according to the study. Outside groups have been responsible for 60 percent of all ads aired so far this year, according to the study. Of those ads, 86 percent were negative, and 14 percent were positive. But for all their big spending, super PAC aren’t the only culprits.
Most negative political ads of 2012 so far
At 30 seconds a spot, and sometimes 60, it would take more than six months to watch all 526,633 presidential election ads that have run on television since the general election began in earnest in early April.
It breaks down to roughly one spot promoting President Barack Obama or attacking Republican challenger Mitt Romney for every spot taking the opposite stance for the Nov. 6 election, according to data compiled by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks ads on national network, national cable and local broadcast stations. Of the 526,104 presidential ads supplied by groups that paid for at least 200 such commercials to run from April 10, when Romney effectively clinched his party’s nomination, to Aug. 20, the last day for which data are available, 264,542 came from campaigns or groups that favor Romney and 261,562 came from pro- Obama organizations. That’s a partisan breakdown of 50.3 percent Republican to 49.7 percent Democratic. While the cumulative total points to partisan parity, it hasn’t been like that for long stretches of the campaign.
You’d Need Six Months To Watch Every Presidential Campaign Ad
The wireless industry association CTIA issued guidelines for the processing of text message-based contributions to political candidates, committees and political parties.
The Federal Election Commission approved the use of mobile phone donations in June and recently addressed lingering industry concerns. These SMS-based shortcode donations got their first high profile exposure in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, when the Red Cross raised $32 million in under a month. CTIA administers the shortcode system. Its advice to carriers includes the right to refuse proposals from some committees, although FEC filings indicate that refusals should be for business and not partisan reasons. Political organizations collecting funds should use a single shortcode to help ensure that donors don't exceed limits of $50 per month and $200 per year from any one mobile number, the CTIA said. The fundraising campaigns and organizations will receive mobile numbers from the "aggregators" charged with processing the donations on behalf of the wireless carriers. The contribution amounts are relatively small, and much of the value to text-message based donations is in the collection of mobile numbers, which can be used for subsequent campaign communications.
Wireless Industry Puts Out Text Donation Guidelines
Many governments have invested heavily in packet inspection and related technologies, which allow them to build a picture of what passes through their networks and what comes in from beyond their borders. The tools secure networks from attack -- and help keep tabs on citizens.
Narus, a subsidiary of Boeing, supplies “cyber analytics” to a customer base largely made up of government agencies and network carriers. Neil Harrington, the company’s director of product management for cyber analytics, said that his company’s “enterprise” customers -- agencies of the US government and large telecommunications companies -- are ”more interested in what's going on inside their networks” for security reasons. But some of Narus’ other customers, like Middle Eastern governments that own their nations’ connections to the global Internet or control the companies that provide them, “are more interested in what people are doing on Facebook and Twitter.” Surveillance perfected? Not quite, because DPI imposes its own costs. While deep packet inspection systems can be set to watch for specific patterns or triggers within network traffic, each specific condition they watch for requires more computing power—and generates far more data. So much data can be collected that the DPI systems may not be able to process it all in real time, and pulling off mass surveillance has often required nation-state budgets. Not anymore. Thanks in part to tech developed to power giant Web search engines like Google’s—analytics and storage systems that generally get stuck with the label "big data"—"big surveillance" is now within reach even of organizations like the Olympics.
Big Brother on a budget: How Internet surveillance got so cheap
After their third meeting August 29, industry, privacy advocates and other stakeholders made little headway in actually developing an industry code of conduct for mobile applications but may be making some progress in finding ways to work together.
The latest meeting hosted by the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration once again focused on where to begin actual discussions on developing an industry code of conduct for mobile apps transparency. The code is part of a larger effort proposed by the Obama administration aimed at improving online privacy for consumers by encouraging companies, privacy advocates and other stakeholders to develop industry codes of conduct. The first proposed code is focused narrowly on providing more transparency in what information developers and sellers of mobile apps are collecting from users and how they are using that data. The half-day session hosted at the Commerce Department centered on trying to narrow down the list of topics that stakeholders should begin focusing on. While some industry representatives argued that the process needs to begin by nailing down a definition of a mobile app, privacy advocates said there needs to be a better understanding of what practices industry is engaged in right now including what information is being collected from app users and how is it used.
Stakeholders Continue Slog on Mobile App Privacy
As U.S. District Judge Denise Cote prepares to issue a verdict on the Department of Justice’s proposed e-book pricing settlement with three publishers, she has granted two parties that oppose the settlement — the Authors Guild and attorney and licensing expert Bob Kohn — permission to weigh in as amici curiae, or “friends of the court.” Judge Cote previously granted Barnes & Noble and the American Booksellers Association, which also oppose the settlement, permission to file an amicus brief. Judge Cote has now decided to accept the entirety of a brief that the Authors Guild proposed on August 15. However, she is limiting Kohn’s submission to five pages. He had submitted a 55-page brief and will have to file a new, five-page one by September 4 in order for it to be accepted by the Court.
Court lets Authors Guild, attorney weigh in on Apple e-books case
The smartphone market is not all that complicated right now. When you look at operating profits, as Asymco has done, it's clear that Apple makes almost all the money, while Samsung and HTC fight somewhat successfully for the scraps. But actually selling phones for profit is not the only success factor in the industry, as Samsung found out last week. You've got to have some patents to protect yourself from lawsuits and competitors.
Facebook was cleared by the state of California to issue stock for its purchase of Instagram. State officials declared the transaction was “fair, just and equitable” at the conclusion of a hearing in San Francisco before the Department of Corporations.
The decision was expected. The hearing was unusual but not for California. California is one of six states that lets companies seek permission to issue stock rather than dealing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook agreed to buy popular mobile photo-sharing app Instagram in April for $300 million in cash and nearly 23 million Facebook shares. The shares were valued at $31, making the purchase worth at the time a cool $1 billion. The transaction is no longer worth as much after Facebook’s bungled initial public stock offering in May. The social networking giant priced its shares at $38. Since then the shares have dropped below $20. But Instagram founder and Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said in the hearing that he understood the ups and downs of the public markets and that the transaction is now worth more like $750 million.
Facebook cleared by California to issue stock in Instagram deal
The Republican Party's 2012 platform includes a section devoted to ripping the Federal Communications Commission as out of date.
"The most vibrant sector of the American economy, indeed, one-sixth of it, is regulated by the federal government on precedents from the nineteenth century," the party writes. The FCC was created in 1934, but it took over some of the responsibilities that had belonged to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was created in 1887 to regulate railroads. "This is not a good fit," the GOP writes. "Indeed, the development of telecommunications advances so rapidly that even the Telecom Act of 1996 is woefully out of date. An industry that invested $66 billion in 2011 alone needs, and deserves, a more modern relationship with the federal government for the benefit of consumers here and worldwide." The party accuses the Obama Administration of being "frozen in the past."
GOP platform slams FCC as stuck in the 19th century
Spectrum policy isn’t the most incendiary or outlandish of the planks in the now-public Republican platform. But for pure disingenuousness, it ranks pretty near the top.
To put this as simply as possible: The U.S. is running out of the airwaves that transmit TV, radio, and phone signals. Or at least, it’s running out of the big chunks of airwaves—called spectrum—that aren’t reserved for the government or already licensed to telecom companies and other private corporations that have their own exclusive channels. Running out entirely would choke off new wireless communication, putting a serious damper on economic growth. The GOP platform derides the Obama administration’s broadband policy, saying the feds spent lots of money and still left millions of people—especially in the rural heartland—without Internet access. To fix this, Republicans propose freeing up pieces of spectrum currently occupied by federal agencies and allocating them to the private sector through auctions, which have generated $60 billion for the treasury since the government started holding them in 1994. Here’s the problem: Auctions haven’t done much to expand access in the rural areas Republicans claim to love.
Why Republicans Aren’t Serious About Getting Rural Areas Online