by Steven R. Corman
The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) Summit took place last week in New York City.  The event was announced during a press conference on November 24 by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman and Jared Cohen of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff.
During the conference, Glassman described the summit [...]

by Nicholas Brody
This is the fourth part of a five part series on about the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog. In Part 1 we focused on reviewing DipNote management and processes. In Part 2 we looked at what the State Department bloggers were writing about. In Part 3 we conducted [...]

by Steven R. Corman
In two recent briefings, one for the MSM and one for bloggers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman spoke approvingly of an incident that took place in Colombia earlier this year.  It involved Facebook and a march against Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), a Bolivarian revolutionary guerrilla organization.  [...]

by Bud Goodall
The headlines from WatchAmerica show worldwide optimism and support for President-Elect Obama.  Yet, despite this large and welcoming window of public diplomacy opportunity, there are still 10 weeks to go before President Obama is sworn in and can officially represent America.  In the meantime, we have a world waiting to see if we [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Today the Washington Post reports that AQ Web Forums were “abruptly” taken down.  Abruptly?  Well not if abruptly means suddenly, as in it just happened.  This story has been circulating in the blogs for months, and it’s more like there have been a few waves of take-downs.  It even blipped-up elsewhere in [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Writing today in Danger Room, David Axe called members of the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team (DOT) “trolls.”  Axe was responding to some statements by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman’s in a bloggers’ roundtable earlier this week.  Glassman discussed a recent and unusual engagement with an Iranian [...]

by Chase Clow & Z. S. Justus

Recently the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department (NYPD) over its plan to use 3,000 surveillance cameras to help secure lower Manhattan against terrorist attacks. The NYCLU is chiefly concerned with the data the thousands of closed-circuit cameras captures. They [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Ars Technica reported yesterday on a letter sent by Congressman Brad Miller to the Inspector General of the Director of National Intelligence.  Miller, who is Chairman of a House subcommittee on technology oversight, sounded the alarm over a current initiative called “Railhead,” which is designed to upgrade the central database that contains [...]

by Nicholas Brody
Wikipedia is becoming a major source of news and reference information for the American public. A Pew internet poll found that 36% of online adults consult Wikipedia. That number jumps to 50% for college-educated adults. Among educational and reference websites, Wikipedia is by far the most popular, owning a 24.33% [...]

By Bud Goodall
Pardon my rant. I say that in advance but without apology. Today’s New York Times article about the United States Senate vote to approve President Bush’s plan to grant legal protection to telephone companies for cooperating with illegal wiretaps on American citizens as well as to expand existing government spy powers [...]