Danny Glover of Technology Daily, who also writes the Beltway Blogroll for National Journal, has a post up claiming to have found the "First Blog Scandal of Campaign 2008," but in my humble opinion it's much ado about nothing.

You might recall the great controversy in Connecticut from a few months ago, when Joe Lieberman's web site crashed the night before the Democratic primary (which he then lost). Lieberman's team was quick to accuse Ned Lamont, his challenger, of hacking Lieberman's site and email system. We wrote about it on August 8th, the day of the primary.

Today, Lamont and his supporters were cleared by the U.S. attorney's office of having anything to do with the incident.

Even though Lamont's team immediately denied any involvement and even offered to help fix the problem, Lieberman's staff was quick to accuse them of hacking the site. Some from the Lamont campaign speculated that Lieberman had failed to pay his bills. The Stamford Advocate reminds us of some of the rest of the ugliness:

The giant social networking hub MySpace was in the news yesterday for announcing that it will soon be scouring its 100 million-plus member pages for known child molesters, using existing databases to match them not just by their names, but also by their physical descriptions, include details such as age, hair color, height, scars and tattoos.

If that doesn't make you wonder about possible cases of mistaken identity and other forms of creepy overkill, check out this story from blogger Scott Henson. Apparently, the warrantless tactics that some prosecutors are now using to pull information off of MySpace pages to track sex offenders are now spreading to much lower level crimes. Henson discovered a thread on the Texas District and County Attorney's public user forum where a bunch of prosecutors are discussing whether it's OK to go online and create a fake profile on MySpace in order to get a kid to "friend" them and thus give them access to their private MySpace page, where they might find evidence of someone bragging about a petty crime like vandalism. Here's an excerpt of what Henson found, with his comments included. The dialogue picks up after an assistant DA only identified as Gretchen someone named Stacey suggested checking some kids' MySpace accounts.

Joe Lieberman's campaign is charging that supporters of his opponent, Ned Lamont, hacked his campaign website and email system, and his campaign manager is asking for a criminal investigation. The Lamont campaign denies the charges, and has even offered to send their tech guru to Lieberman HQ to help them fix their problem. The Lamont blog even includes a link to a Google cache of Lieberman's website.

A lot of charges are being thrown around with little proof offered, and this story is taking a life of its own on the cable news shows ("We decide, then we report later...maybe"). The Lieberman campaign says this was a denial-of-service attack. The Lamont campaign posted a screenshot from the Lieberman site suggesting that its ISP might have suspended service due to non-payment of its bills. In the comments thread from that post you can find a statement from Lieberman's ISP saying their bills are paid up. Now various people around the Lamont campaign are saying the Lieberman people didn't plan for the amount of traffic their site would attract.

It's time to stand up and be counted, because the corporations who still think of the internet as an "information highway" want the power to set up toll booths and private speedways for their own content or that of high-paying customers, to the detriment of all of us. As Vint Cerf pointed out in a letter to Congressmen Joe Barton and John Dingell, whose Energy and Commerce Committee is pushing legislation drafted by the telcos that would wreak havoc:

The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation....Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online.

Unfortunately, thanks to their money and lobbying muscle, the telcos could push their plans thru Congress unless everyone who depends on its open and neutral structure speaks up.

The Washington Post has two must-read articles on the evolution of Internet use in China, starting with yesterday's feature on how a journalist's open letter criticizing pro-government editing practices at a top paper circulated to millions of readers despite attempts by official censors to block it, and continuing with today's story on the evolution of the Chinese Wikipedia.

Here's the core of the story:

Eleven years after young Chinese returning from graduate study in the United States persuaded the party to offer Internet access to the public, China is home to one of the largest, fastest-growing and most active populations of Internet users in the world, according to several surveys. With more than 111 million people connected to the Web, China ranks second to the United States.

Although just a fraction of all Chinese go online -- and most who do play games, download music or gossip with friends -- widespread Internet use in the nation's largest cities and among the educated is changing the way Chinese learn about the world and weakening the Communist Party's monopoly on the media. Studies show China's Internet users spend more time online than they do with television and newspapers, and they are increasingly turning to the Web for news instead of traditional state outlets.

The government has sought to control what people read and write on the Web, employing a bureaucracy of censors and one of the world's most technologically sophisticated system of filters. But the success of those measures has been mixed. As a catalyst that amplifies voices and accelerates events, the Internet presents a formidable challenge to China's authoritarian political system. Again and again, ordinary Chinese have used it to challenge the government, force their opinions to be heard and alter political outcomes.

My favorite quote, from a civil rights lawyer in Beijing. "If something is written well enough, they can't stop it from spreading. People will find a way to read it."

Whoever figured that mobile phone / text-messages were always a "good thing" for 21st century political organizing might consider this...

According to an article in the New Zealand Herald,Syrian protesters who burned and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were encouraged to organise by the Syrian authorities, and received text messages from Islamic study centres urging them to gather.

It looks like more Republican staffers than Democrats have their fingers caught in the cookie jar known as the Wikipedia. At least that's what this entry on the Wikipedia page shows for IP 143.231.249.141, which belongs to Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives and which is cited for "a large amount of vandalism." Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) was the first Congressman whose staff admitted cleaning up his Wikipedia entry--to remove an unflattering but true reference to his having broken a campaign pledge to step down after four terms--but he's hardly the only one. In no particular order, Wikipedia lists these Members' names and their reported infractions, along with several other politically-charged pages that were altered from House computers:

* Richard Pombo (Removing referenced to possible ties to Jack Abramoff and many other npov [neutral point of view] yet politically damaging items),

* Trent Lott (editing references to his rumored actions...)

* Phil Gramm (removing quotes I wouldn't want anyone to see if I had to run for re-election),

* Rick Renzi (removing a section titled "Ethical Questions,")

* Jim Ramstad (removing reference to his "moderate\ liberal" tendencies),

* Trent Franks (replacing article with official House bio),

* Darrell Issa (removing references to pro-palestinian actions),

* Talk:Jim Nussle (removing talk section titles 'Republican conspiracy'),

* Jim Nussle (removing references to his divorce),

* Darrell Issa (removing quotes supporting Hezbollah),

* Rick Renzi (replacing article with official House bio),

* Rodney Frelinghuysen (removing information about financial contributions),

* Sam Johnson (removing unflattering quotes),

* Mark Green (removing references to " unethical campaign finance practices",references to his ties with Tom DeLay, and other unflattering details),

* David Dreier (removing unflattering information about his 2004 campaign),

* Jerry Weller (adding self promoting crap and removing questions of a conflict of interest),

* Podcasting (This past summer, the House Republican Conference, under Chairman Deborah Pryce, began PodCasting all their press events.),

* Bob Taft (removing ties to Abramoff),

* List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,

* Ward Connerly (adding libelous comment),

* Ralph Neas (attempting to categorize him as "socialist"),

* MoveOn (changing liberal to "left-wing"),

* 2003 Invasion of Iraq (Suggesting a link between Iraq and al Qaeda),

* Eric Burns (political strategist) (blanking article),

* Randy Kuhl (removing scandal related information),

* Jim Sensenbrenner (removing information in "Controversy" section),

* Nancy Pelosi (entering libelous statements),

There's also an even longer list of page edits from U.S. Senate IP addresses, here.

According to the Lowell Sun, which first broke this story in the old media, more than 1,000 changes to Wikipedia entries have been made by House staffers in the past six months. In November and December, the paper reports, "users of the House's IP address were temporarily blocked from changing content because of violations described by the site as a 'deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia.'"