Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation bowed to blow back on Facebook, Twitter and other digital platforms on Friday...

That viral protest ignited this week, around the same time as a social networking uproar sprang up against a conservative group’s attempt to force J.C. Penny to ditch openly-gay spokeswoman Ellen DeGeneres...

These successful movements come on the heels of a stunning online campaign by technology companies and average citizens against two pieces of federal legislation, the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and  the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), that were seen as Draconian and censorious.

“There’s a new political and media ecology that social networking provides and it’s not controlled by the mainstream media,” said Andrew Rasiej, the chairman of New York Tech MeetUp, a key opponent of SOPA and PIPA. “It’s controlled by citizens who are able to wield power at a speed that has the mainstream media, the politicians and the institutional players in shock.”

This is an exciting idea, but perhaps its a bit overstated

before Twitter and Facebook got hold of them, SOPA and Susan G. Komen were hardly household names.

Really? I think Susan G. Komen was pretty well known.

But this is the sort of attitude that demonstrates that there is a long way to go:

Tim Stevens, editor-in-chief of the technology blog Engadget, said Friday, "It’s not just techies anymore," he said. "It’s people who are interested in women’s rights and other civil liberties.”

So what are you saying Tim?

That techies aren't interested in women's rights and other civil liberties?

From Ellen DeGeneres to Susan G. Komen: Social Media Proves Unstoppable | Reuters

A missing pad could result in reduced brake system performance

Lol

2012 Chevrolet Sonic: Recalled for Missing Brakes

A Muslim businessman in Canada became a terror suspect for telling his sales staff in a text message to "blow away" the competition at a New York City trade show, a religious association said Friday.

Moroccan-born Saad Allami, who works as a telecommunications company sales manager, was arrested three days after he sent the message in January 2011 and detained while police searched his home, said the Muslim Council of Montreal.

How did they know?

'Blow away' text lands Muslim in Canada jail

The Blue Marble 2012 photo that we told you about last week, had an amazing reception with more than 3.2 million views to date. That’s why NASA Goddard Photo and Video decided to create another Blue Marble 2012 view, this time showing the Eastern Hemisphere.

The Eastern Hemisphere « Flickr Blog

Behold one of the more detailed images of the Earth yet created.

APOD: 2012 January 30 - Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP

While the Kepler mission turns up its ever-growing crop of exoplanets, a group of astronomers has announced an exciting find closer to home: looking towards Scorpius, there’s a super-Earth-sized planet just 22 light-years distant, with a habitable-zone orbit.

22 light years is an extremely small distance in astronomical terms. There is no way that humans could live on this planet, as it's gravity is 4.5 times that of earth, but there could be things living there. Water is quite abundant in our solar system and could be abundant there as well. With current technology we could send a robot probe to this place in less than 300 years.

I'm glad SETI isn't picking up any radio signals - any civilization sophisticated enough to have sent radio signals early enough that we could receive them now must be far more sophisticated than us, and would therefore destroy us if we ever encountered them and there was some conflicting interest in resources.

Jackpot: astronomers tag Goldilocks planet • The Register

Places like Miami and Phoenix — symbols of boom-time excesses and later the sites of fierce crashes — were not the weakest performers last year. That distinction goes to Atlanta.

A sprawling Southern metropolis, Atlanta has become one of the biggest laggards in the economic recovery.

In Atlanta, Housing Woes Reflect Nation’s Economic Pain - NYTimes.com

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), supported by Carpathia Hosting, today announced its plans to assess the scope of the issue facing Megaupload users who are at risk of losing their data. Carpathia has created this website, www.MegaRetrieval.com to assist users in contacting EFF. EFF will review the factual situations shared by users and, if possible, try to resolve their issues.

MegaRetrieval

The drama over Twitter's censorship policy has been interesting. Activists were initially angered, but then all of the usual tech policy analysts came to Twitter's defense. I wonder if the EFF was not consulted prior to the announcement.

I found this all a bit annoying because of my personal experience with Twitter, wherein they arbitrarily disabled my account and censored all of my tweets for two weeks without ever providing an explanation. This policy means they are going to be super careful if a government asks them to censor a post but their own AUP enforcement is going to be as draconian as ever.

In any event, this post on BoingBoing accuses all the defenders of spin:

The way they put it, you'd think it might have happened once or twice. But until now, Twitter has never taken account of other countries' limits and never removed tweets globally because of them...

"Previously, when a government demanded that Twitter remove a tweet or block a user, access to that content would be blocked from the entire world," wrote Mashable's Lauren Indvik, about government demands that were in fact ignored.

"The new system would allow countries and private businesses to submit complaints [over] Germany’s strict laws against pro-Nazi speech or China’s laws against criticizing the government. ... Previously, when Twitter received such a request, its only option was to take down the tweet on a global level, making it inaccessible from any country," wrote the AP, about requests that were never acted upon.

"Previously, the tweet would disappear for everyone," reported CNN, about tweets that never disappeared previously.

"Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally," wrote the EFF's Eva Galperin, referring to political censorship, not mere DMCA takedowns: "For example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk--which is illegal under Turkish law--the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody ... the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users."

Twitter confirmed to me that it has never censored a tweet at the request of a government.

Twitter's early-bird special on censorship - Boing Boing

New reports are saying that customs was tipped off about the two people, and their detention was not a result of data mining.

Its also possible that the eject decision was not a result of the content of the Tweets.

Schneier on Security: British Tourists Arrested in the U.S. for Tweeting