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More sources are now claiming the Chinese government is behind the recent cyberattacks against Google and 33 other Silicon Valley companies, reports security firm Verisign iDefense. The attacks, revealed yesterday via a posting on Google's official blog, were hacking attempts on the technology infrastructure of Google and other major corporations in sectors that included finance, technology, media and chemical, said Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise.

Although Google's politely-worded blog post doesn't come out and directly blame the Chinese government for these attacks, many have suspected that is the case, including, apparently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now even more sources are coming out to confirm the Chinese government's involvement. According to Verisign, their sources within the defense-contracting and intelligence-consulting communities also believe "agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof" are to blame for these recent attacks.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, politicians and reporters quickly discovered the power of Twitter. These days, Twitter has become yet another tool for politicians to get the word out about political initiatives and for reporters to reach out to their readers. In October, social media analytics firm Sysomos took a closer look at the political Twittersphere and how politicians like President Obama and California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger use this tool and who they connect with on Twitter.

Britain's Conservative Party plans to offer a £1 million taxpayer-funded prize for a website that can "harness the wisdom" of voters. The price will be given to the team that develops a platform that enables large groups of people to come together online to solve common problems and develop new policies. According to the Guardian, some of the ideas for this site include services that help to identify wasteful government spending or rate the quality of schools and hospitals. It is worth noting, though, that the Conservatives will only give this prize away if they win the 2010 elections.

In the wake of a leak of an international trade agreement on online file-sharing and copyright violation, U.S. House representatives are introducing legislation to curtail the greatest of American freedoms: the illegal download.

Let's not kid ourselves, dear readers. P2P's best use cases all revolve around the liberation of data, software, music, movies, and other copyrighted and rather expensive content. You may direct your angry emails to Rep. Edolphus Towns (NY-Dem.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, politicians and reporters quickly discovered the power of Twitter. These days, Twitter has become yet another tool for politicians to get the word out about political initiatives and for reporters to reach out to their readers. Today, social media analytics firm Sysomos took a closer look at the political Twittersphere and how politicians like President Obama and California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger use this tool and who they connect with on Twitter.

A 22-year-old iPhone application developer by the name of Red Daly is claiming that Apple rejected his new application from inclusion in the iTunes App Store due to its political nature. His app, iSinglePayer, was designed to educate its users on the benefits of a single-payer health care system, a hotly debated issue here in the U.S. In addition to data-filled bullet points, the app also taps into the phone's GPS to determine who the user's local congressperson is, how much money the health care sector donated to their campaign, and a "tap to call" button to connect app users with lawmakers.

According to Daly, an Apple representative spoke to him by phone to inform him that the rejection of the app was due to its "politically charged" nature. Well that, and the fact that Apple doesn't allow political apps from single developers.

Traditionally, political participation has always been highly correlated with income and education. According to a new report (PDF), this is still holds true for those who participate in political activities online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, online users with a higher income are still far more likely to participate in political activities online than those with lower incomes. At the same time, though, the Pew study also sees some hints that new forms of civic engagement through social media services could soon change this pattern.

Los Angeles residents recently began seeing a new sort of Obama poster plastered across their city. Instead of promoting "hope," these posters feature U.S. President Barack Obama wearing the Joker's clown makeup from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight." Even those outside of L.A. have likely seen this image somewhere as it soon took on a viral nature, appearing both online and in other cities across the country. The politically charged (and rather disturbing) photo serves as a counterpoint to the prolific and iconic "hope" posters that became popular during Obama's campaign. Regardless of which side you favor, one thing can be said about this photo: it definitely grabs your attention.

According to a report today from the BBC, Iranians are able to text message one another for the first time since the day before the presidential elections.

SMS service, which political dissidents had used to spread messages and organize protests, has been restricted since June 11, causing many Iranians to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites to broadcast and communicate.

In the quest to open government processes to citizens, collaboration and participation were identified as explicit goals in a presidential memo issued earlier this year.

Upon the appearance of a tenuously connected web of blogs, sites, wikis, and forums, many were excited about the refreshing availability of public channels for dialogue between ordinary Americans and policy makers when it comes to deciding what the 21st century American government will look like. On the other hand, the participation in these initiatives has been dwarfed by what one might see on ICanHasCheezburger. In spite of what could be seen as lackluster citizen response, The Open Government initiative's final drafting phase, which was to have closed already, has been extended until July 3.

The US Office of Management and Budget issued new reporting guidelines this week for recipients of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the normally polite geek watchdog organization the Sunlight Foundation has come out swinging.

"...[A]bsent from the new instruction is a requirement to make raw data public," Sunlight's co-founder and Executive Director, Ellen Miller, wrote this morning. "By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure."

The Twitter firehose is glutted with retweets, hashtags, and information of every possible bias and contradition surrounding one topic: The recent election in Iran and supposed fraud in tallying votes for the losing candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

In the aftermath of the election, during which a (some say statistically improbable landslide) victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced, the social media buzz grew into a roar as a meme began to circulate: Where Is My Vote. A website, several Facebook pages, and now thousands of tweets have ensured few social web users have not yet heard of the controversy and the Iranian government's response of censorship.

France's highest court, the Constitutional Council, ruled that access to the internet is a "fundamental human right" this week in striking down a controversial "three strikes" anti-piracy law called Loi Hadopi, according to a report today from the UK Daily Mail. Were such an opinion agreed upon by other governments around the world, the implications would be striking.

The long awaited catalog of public data from the US government launched this morning at Data.gov. Developers, watchdogs and data nerds around the world rejoiced - but the initial offering is a bit of a let down.

New federal CIO Vivek Kundra is in charge of the site, which will act as a central repository for government data, including XML, CSV, KML files and more. At launch a mere 47 data sets are included and they appear to lean towards the least controversial matters. None the less, it's exciting to see the effort happening. Hopefully some awesome mashups are on the way!

Today is an important day in the history of politics and technology - the US Senate voting record is finally available in machine-readable XML (extensible markup language) format. Mashups, vote tracking and comparison applications, will now be welcomed in the front door of Congress as first class technologies.

On May 1st South Carolina's Senator, Jim DeMint, officially asked the Senate Rules Committee to make the data available and just four days later the feed is here. Not everyone is happy about about the information being made publicly available like this, however.

Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is visiting Iraq to bring the microblogging service into government and civil society there. In an interview with CNN's American Morning (embedded below) Dorsey says he hopes Twitter can help make the new Iraqi government more accessible and help spread good news from Iraq out to the rest of the world. Dorsey is traveling with a State Department delegation hoping that new social media will facilitate greater social stability in Iraq.

You'll see in the video below that CNN Anchor, Kiran Chetry, asks silly questions about terrorists using Twitter (it is available on cell phones, which terrorist have used) and about Oprah on Twitter. There's a reason why traditional media is being so effectively challenged by emerging media - the latter is more interesting and in many cases acts more like a meritocracy.

Omid Reza Misayafi, one of a number of Iranian bloggers arrested for "insulting" the government and religious authorities in that country, is dead. Misayafi's death was reported on Global Voices Online via an Iranian human rights site in Farsi and we learned of it from The Committee to Protect Bloggers.

No cause of death is yet known, but the Committee says torture of bloggers is common in Iran and they are usually placed in close proximity to the most dangerous criminals in any facility. Misayafi was sentenced in December to 30 months in prison "for insulting Islamic Republic Leaders." The man said he was a cultural blogger, not a political one, and only wrote a few satirical articles that got him into trouble.

Few topics are galvanizing the American public right now like the stimulus bill and how the stimulus money will be spent. ShovelWatch is a joint project of not-for-profit news organization ProPublica, PRI's The Takeaway, and WNYC Radio that plans to track the "stimulus from bills to building." ShovelWatch currently aggregates the best stories about the stimulus bill from all three sites and will feature more original reporting from citizens in the future. The site also features some of the most informative infographics about the stimulus bill.

It's Presidents Day here in the United States but for most people it's just a day off work. Cynics, fair-weather political watchers, "Joe Six Packs" (did you want to avoid hearing that phrase again?) - we present to you below some of our favorite online resources for casual political awareness. We'd suggest that these sites will facilitate a basic foundation of day-to-day political awareness.

These are our favorites, we'd love to hear your suggestions as well.

We've written a lot about how Barack Obama's Internet strategy was a significant reason for his success last year - first in the Democratic nomination, then the Presidential election. We've analyzed how the Obama campaign made masterful use of social media and we've commented on Obama's use of the Internet as President - not to mention the rise of the goverati. Tonight we came across an extensive presentation about Obama's overall Internet strategy. We think it's well worth a read, so we've embedded it below.