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I was asked to contribute as a guest author to economist.com/debate on online privacy regulation, which I happily did. There are two kinds of learnings for me: the first is a matter of the subject, the second a matter of online debates.

Regarding the first issue, I have to admit that it seems I underestimated the mistrust in elected representatives compared to the mistrust in private companies, which are often not to be held accountable in any way as long as no privacy legislation gives you a right to hold them accountable. In Germany we mistrust the government a lot, but at least they are the elected untrustworthy. Since there is little reason to trust in binding corporate rules or other self-regulatory approaches for a whole and non-definable branch such as ‘all data processing and storing companies’ I don’t see the possibility of something like a third way besides privacy legislation and international cooperation on both the standards but in particular on the enforcement issue too.

The second issue is that I would really like to see the format of the Economist debate on German language newspaper or magazine websites as well. The only thing I am not that happy with yet is the voting system. The Economists question ‘agree with the motion’ is an invitation for campaigning (I’ve seen ‘click-no-campaigning’ on Twitter, and it was interesting to see that most of the written comments were mostly pro while the vote was very narrow in the end). The number of how many changed their minds on the issue during the debate is only visible as a mouseover – this could be enhanced, since convincing someone of a different opinion seems to be much more interesting than how many readers agree with the one or the other side of the fence in a non-representative way. Maybe there could be a change to the voting model that only on the first one or two days the voting is open and after that you are only allowed to change your opinion. This could help avoiding campaigning effects a little at least, I guess.

Last week, Google announced that it will launch StreetView for Germany this year. At the same time, they said to publish a new tool for objections against having your house or flat or the one you are living in right now (yes, many houses and flats are just rented in Germany) shown there.

An interesting debate. And it’s very exhaustive at the same time for me, personally. There is no easy yes or no to a service such as Street View. The company made so many mistakes with the whole concept in a German view, that it can not just ignore it. Now it’s a heated political debate and I think I’m not exaggerating when thinking that if companies like G don’t become more professional they are running into serious trouble soon. The moment for the announcement, during summer holiday season, with many unclear half-statements and the german speaker staff unable or maybe just not allowed to answer many questions raised, unable to react even to the most obvious bullshit statements (including such as tv stars talking about street view as a live video service. no, it’s not tv to be blamed here.) the company failed miserably on making this debate a debate on data protection, publicness and other main questions. Looks as if there is not mainly a kind of gap between privacy culture but mainly a difference in those available and those in command.

Now the debate in Germany started to turn away a bit from Street View itself and more to the general approach and views on data protection, privacy and publicness in the digital world. Without big G, for now. It’s disturbing, if a CEO of a huge IT companyis talking quark (curd cheese) such as ‘young adults should change their name when turning 18′, if a company known for it’s software is failing to test their tools compatibility with IE8, if they lack the transparency they claim to promote elsewhere. They still rely on their old model of ‘if I run my service in the US, I’m out of trouble’. No, you are going to run into serious trouble in the long run instead. And maybe it’s better you learn quickly that being huge and potentially influential does not equal to being grown up.

Joe Trippi, one of the most highly reputated online campaigners on earth, asks whether it’s time to establish an equivalent of my.barackobama.com after he succeeded in the US presidential election: a platform my.whitehouse.gov to get people involved into the needs and deeds of the next president of the United States.

I think this is a very nice idea, but I’d recommend to go one step further: my.whitehouse.gov for US citizens, and your.whitehouse.gov for all those who are affected or interested in the US presidents policy making but not being citizens of the United States of America. Never forget: the president of the USA is not only important to US citizens. He also plays a political role on world level.

The world is looking on the United States today: the results of todays US presidential election will surely lead to one thing - a new president of one of the most important, maybe politically still the most important country on earth.

So it’s time to think about the man who’s going to leave the White House now. What do the eight years of George Walker Bush being in charge leave behind for the rest of the world?

First of all, the end of the Bush administration with all it’s failed foreign policies is a broadly welcomed day. Being the winning loser of the first election in 2000 against Al Gore, Bush with his legendary hands-on-anti-intellectualism showed the world what happens, if you give someone a knife without telling him that it’s a dual use good. You can slice bread with it or you can slice people. Regarding the use of knives, there was not much bread in Bushs two terms. Instead of making the world a more safe, more human rights respecting, less problematic and a more free place, he managed to weaken security, causing and awaking strong anti-americanism not only in the countries he attacked. Bush did more for dictatorships around the globe than most dictators do. Maybe he did even have the right opinion (democracy is good, dictatorship is bad, the poor and starving deserve a better life and so on), but his deeds are what he has to be measured on.

Second, no one will miss Bush. The firebrand rhetorics of non-intellectual missionary quality, combined with the inability to interact seriously on international level - which would have meant i. e. to accept negotiations on eye level even though the partners might appear weaker in some way.

Third but nonetheless important, Bush failed on one of the most crucial (no, not crusadial)  issues: finding new approaches to promote democracy and equality in the critical regions of Africa and Asia. Bushs doctrine based on the main power the US without doubts can rely on: geostrategic military power. There’s no place on earth a US president could not reach with military power.  But there is more in the toolbox of politics than just brute force. We got to hope his successor will try out some more and maybe even international instruments. Even though it’s clear that the more the US play on international levels the involvement of countries will be enforced which sat in their couches until now. But in fact, it would have been stupid to accompany the misleading adventures of Bush.

Expectations are high - on both, the electorate and the upcoming president - and low, compared to Bushs political performance. Bushs burdens are heavy weighted, but it’s not impossible to smooth his failures out. You just gotta belive. And by the way: thank you for nothing, Mr. Bush.

Today, I attended the speech of Barack Obama at Street of the 17th of June/Siegessäule. As I did, another estimated 200.000 people came to hear Obama speak. On my way back, on an escalator at central station, I was asked by two nice elderly US citizens why I’ve been there since they could simply not understand what’s on a u.s. presidential candidate so interesting to so many people here.

My answer was just half of the truth, I have to admit. I said that I studied political science and one of my main subjects was political communication. I was interested in the setting, the scenery and the speech of a presidential candidate abroad. But thinking about it later, I have to add some more remarks (even though this post is going to have some lengths). Continue Reading »

In Europe, the presidential campaign is widely noticed. Since most of the population shook it’s head over the Bush ./. Gore fiasco in 2000, was pretty upset and astonished by the re-election of “Cowboy George” (god damn, he lied on iraq, promotes only the interest of the wealthy oil and ammo companies - that’s the way he’s seen in Europe), it became expecting very much from Barack Obama.

He’s smart, he’s black, he’s the most left candidate in the american political spectrum. Europeans were amazed, even though the emptiness of the “Change” rhetorics was critisized as some kind of wildcard-politics.

Now Obama filled some of the empty spaces in his political program. And Europeans are irritated and disgusted by it. There’s no country in Europe having gun laws like the US and there’s no country in Europe having violent crime rates as the US has (within the EU at least). Obama aims at the White House, seems to flip flop towards the so-called election deciding center, the volatile voters. It’s a clear political chess move: John McCain is not able to counter it by aiming at those who favor stricter gun control laws. But it seems to be strange to all those who expected Obama to be a liberal in the european meaning.

Politics all over the world will be widely affected by the outcome of the presidential election. But just a very small group of estimated 50% of the americans have a vote on this issue. The President of the United States of America is the leader of the worlds largest, structural and cultural well-established democracy. But due to that, he’s ruling not only between Hawaii and New Haven.

It’s time to have a direct vote on the general secretary of the UN. Then, the US citizens would be able to have their president again without so much interest from all over the world. And the europeans would not be surprised anymore by finding out that US politicians turn out to be US politicians.

Imagine you are a real conservative. You believe in principles such as law and order, you think everyone breaking laws should be arrested and some at least receive death penalty. And you think you found someone who shares the same ideas and values you do. He’s a politician at the GOP, a tough guy known for being a real conservative.

And then he turns out to be one of the founders of one of the most famous cracking group with more than 20 years history. This is the story of Tony Krvaric, as Rawstory reports. Swedish born Krvaric is said to be Strider, one of the founders of the Fairlight software cracking group. For some time, their slogan was: when dreams come true.

Some worlds have collapsed, I’m quite sure.

[via Torsten]

Something quite remarkable about the number of paper based magazines/newspapers which are printed on no demand:

But the problem isn’t with individual magazines but with the whole industry: As long as publishers consider it acceptable to destroy, unsold, twice as many copies as they ship to newsstands, the word “magazine” won’t deserve to appear in the same sentence as “green.” (Average newsstand sell-through is only about 34 percent.)

Jeff Bercovici at the Mixed Media Blog reports. Maybe that’s well known, but at least to me, that sounds very low. I don’t know the numbers for Germany, but I will try to find or research.

(via OTR)

Michael Arrington, the main writer and founder of TechCrunch, sometimes picks up topics from Germany. For example today. “German tech bloggers can’t stop posting” about a new startup which is announcing it’s upcoming launch by using some online spots without any message, he writes.

In fact, I never heard of it. And I think my eyes and ears are quite open to new stuff. “Deutsche Startups”, which Arrington links to, in my opinion is nothing but a PR blog (self description: “to inform in extensio about aspiring german startups”), financed by well known venture capitalists and investors.

The thing I wonder about the most is that Arringtons posting is showing his cluelessness about the German scene. Of course the german market is much smaller than the US market, but it’s much harder to find any successful “viral marketing”-dontknowwhat here. And according to the well-hated Technorati (which is probably wrong but the same degree of being wrong for all, so you can compare the data anyway), the buzz about this company is much higher in the english language world. For german language blogs, it counts 20 references only right now. That’s just: nothing.

I’m sorry Michael, but that’s something you could and should have checked out before writing your post.

I’m working on eCampaigning related stuff since 2002. This was the time when - during the Federal Election in Germany - many people believed we would see the internet to be the revolutionary power of campaigning. At that time, this was nonsense, of course. And it still is, since european politicians in general are offliners - mainly because of their age.

There is not much good literature on eCampaigning in a political context in Europe. At least, I do not know it and I strongly believe to be quite good informed on that. We have to read books like »Blog Wars«, like »The Revolution will not be televised« and to compare it to our political system and the background patterns of a very specific political culture in every single european country. To get a general understanding of what’s going on in terms of politica science, I usually recommend Pippa Norris «A Virtuous Circle», a truely great book on the change of campaign mechanism. Even though it’s not covering the last years of evolution of internet based political campaigning, it’s worth reading.