The "panic button" will send out a text message to everyone in the user's address book, then erase both that address book and the phone's call history. This will be an important tool, given how thoroughly governments comb through dissident's communications technology as a matter of course these days.

"The initiative is part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's push to expand Internet freedoms," wrote the Mail, "because of the crucial role Facebook and Twitter has had in fueling pro-democracy movements in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere."

Since 2008, the U.S. government has spent $50 million on firewall workarounds and other tools for defying censorship. Whether it's been of any real on-the-ground value, is another discussion.

Contests, both military and philosophical, have moved onto geek ground for good and this is one aspect of the U.S.'s reaction to those conflicts.

Panic button photo by star5112 | other resources Dan Rowinski, Government Computer News

However, perhaps authoritarian governments shouldn't block social media - it may actually be helpful to them!

Morozov noted that in the Iran Twitter protests of June of 2009, services such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs were actually operational and being used by activists. According to Morozov, this was great for the Iranian government - as it enabled them to "gather open source intelligence." The government could identify how Iranian activists connect to each other, by looking at their Facebook pages or Twitter connections.

Kaiser Kuo commented in yesterday's post about the same issue in China:

"...it's astonishing how cavalier some critics of the CCP [China Communist Party] are on Twitter, making no effort to disguise their identities, making their network of friends totally transparent (you can use any of a number of Twitter tools to see the extent of interconnectedness, friend overlap, number of @ messages back and forth, etc) and leaving a completely searchable history. Anyone with a serious anti-CCP agenda would be an idiot to use Twitter."

Also worth noting: Morozov said in his TED talk that cyber-activism may be offset by what he termed "cyber-hedonism." He claimed that people are becoming passive due to the Internet. He said that we often assume that the Internet is going to be the catalyst of change, but it may actually be "the new opium for the masses."

Morozov's theories were challenged in the comments to that TED video. One commenter claimed that "we focus on the obvious totalitarian regimes while our so called democracies use propaganda on a daily basis."

Regardless, Morozov raises some very valid points. While the Web promotes freedom of expression, at the same time it enables authoritarian regimes to monitor their citizens and identify troublemakers.

Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments.

Photo: harrystaab

Digg is partnering with CNN's iReport on this. Diggers will be able to either submit their questions in writing through the Dialogg page or they can upload a video to iReport. According to Digg, they will ask the top rated questions, but given the often rowdy nature of Digg, it will be interesting to see if the questions will be censored in any way and how the Digg users would react if that happened.

As Digg's CEO Jay Adelson announced last week, Digg will have a substantial presence at the Democratic and the Republican conventions. Giving Digg's users at least some influence over the reporting from there falls right in place with Digg's overall style.

Not New - But Still a Good Thing

Overall, there is, of course, little that is new about this style of doing interviews, which is quite similar to the YouTube debates. Even Slashdot, Digg's virtual grandfather, often uses it to decide on interview question. At the same time though, anything to get young people interested in politics is a good thing in our opinion and Digg definitely has the ability to reach a lot of folks who would otherwise not be interested in the political process. Also, given that Digg, at its core, is still a technology site, its users are likely to ask a lot of tech oriented questions that a lot of the politicians probably never thought about much.

Looking at the top rated questions so far, net neutrality is ranking high above legalizing marijuana and repealing the Patriot Act.

Think of it as Trulia plus, with a social justice angle, or Zillow for people interested in more than just the price of a house.

I think this is a great idea and hope the project will succeed. Launching first in Chicago in Q3 of this year, it would be great to see MoveSmart go nation wide. MoveSmart is one of the first entrants in the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, an event that will bring nonprofit mashups together with developers, feedback and funding. $100,000 will be distributed by NetSquared to selected finalists at the event in May. Check out the work over there and consider lending a hand.