Politics and the Internet

Technology is changing politics, government and civic life. This timeline shows the accelerating pace of change in the United States, in the international arena, and online.

This timeline was researched by Kristina Redgrave, Diane Chang, Becky Kazansky, Andrew Seo and Micah Sifry, and edited by Micah Sifry. It is a work-in-progress. If you would like to suggest an important development that we may have missed, or make a correction to the record, please [use this form](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNQT3NYNG5zOGFTRm1sQXpxY0NQZEE6MQ#gid=0).;xNLx;;xNLx;Partial research support provided by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Copyright 2012 Personal Democracy Media.;xNLx;;xNLx;Note: Some events that are dated on the first of a month occurred during that month but the exact date is not recorded. Events are color-coded blue for USA, purple for international and green for online.

1968-04-01 00:00:00

First vision of networked society

As computers grew more powerful, visionaries foresaw the rising potential of collective intelligence. In "The Computer as a Communication Device," published in Science and Technology, computing pioneers J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor wrote: "We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information—not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it." Their article also contains an early discussion of "on-line interactive communities."

1968-12-09 00:00:00

Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos"

On this day at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, inventor and computer pioneer Douglas Englebart, along with 17 researchers working with him at the Stanford Research Institute, made a 90-minute live demonstration of an array of experimental technologies including the computer mouse (which he invented), video conferencing, hypertext links, word processing, "what you see is what you get" editing, and collaborative real-time editing. The historic demonstration is widely regarded as having blazed the trail toward human-computer interaction, showing how the computer could be used for everyday tasks. Video of Englebart's presentation can be watched

1969-04-06 00:00:00

Computer engineer Steve Crocker posts RFC-1

Request For Comment-1 was the first of many open standards planning documents that created the protocols of the Internet. This approach to decision-making was later summarized by engineer David Clark as "rough consensus and running code."

1971-11-01 00:00:00

Email is invented by Ray Tomlinson

Tomlinson, an engineer at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, implemented the first system that enabled users to send mail from different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, you could only send mail to another user on the same computer. Tomlin used the @ symbol to show that the user was "at some other host rather than being local." Tomlinson, on sending a message to his group explaining how to send messages: "The first use of network email announced its own existence."

1974-02-19 00:00:00

Introduction of electronic voting machines

The direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machine is patented in 1974 and is first used in elections in 1975. Commercially called the visual voter, the machine used phototransmitters and projected light but did not contain a computer.

1974-05-01 00:00:00

TCP/IP Invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

The Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol are core to the architecture of the internet, and enable computers to reliably move bits around the network, using a technique called packet-switching. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote a paper for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers describing TCP that was formally published in May 1974. Why is this a political development of importance? Cerf told techPresident: "The design of the internet architecture is captured in the TCP and IP protocols. It confers equality on all interlocutors on the network (a supercomputer is treated as equal to a laptop from the protocol point of view). This means that peer-to-peer was built into the network from the beginning and was kind of rediscovered with Napster, Skype, Bit-torrent, etc. The end devices did not and do not need to know about the topology of the Internet, the number of networks involved, the exact path of packets, etc. There is decoupling throughout the system because it is layered and this has given the system remarkable ability to absorb new technology and to allow what we call 'permissionless innovation' - just do it."

1982-03-01 00:00:00

The Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) is adopted

DARPA worked with BBN Technologies, Stanford University, and the University College London to develop a stable, operational version of the Internet Protocol Suite. Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first networking protocols defined in this standard. TCP/IP v4, developed in 1982 and still in use today, was declared in March of that year to be the standard for all military computer networking.

1984-06-01 00:00:00

Cult of the Dead Cow, first computer hacker organization, founded

Lubbock, Texas-based Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) was one of the first organizations to engage in online activism, which they called "hacktivism." cDc believes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to user rights on the Internet and that free access to information online is a human right. Unlike recent hacker groups such as Anonymous, cDc opposes the use of hacking techniques to disrupt the information infrustructure of states, even those engaging in repressive practices. Instead, it advocates developing software that aids the forbidden actions of those who are repressed. cDc also organized HoHoCon, one of the first modern hacker conventions, starting 1990.

1985-02-01 00:00:00

The Well online community founded

Short for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, the Well is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. It was started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant and began as a dial-up bulletin board system. Users were told "You own your own words."

1990-07-01 00:00:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation founded

The non-profit advocacy and legal organization was formed out of a conviction that internet civil liberties needed to be fleshed out and fought for. The co-founders were John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore. Barlow himself had been visited by the FBI in April of the same year for allegations of theft of source code. The visit convinced him of a coming “great paroxysm of governmental confusion during which everyone's liberties would become at risk.”

1990-12-25 00:00:00

Tim Berners-Lee Releases First Web Browser

The groundwork for the first web browser was proposed in 1989 by Berners, then refined by Berners and Robert Cailliau in 1990. The first WWW system was rolled out in August of 1991 for CERN's community of high energy physicists. It included a simple browser, web server software and a library, providing the basis off of which developers could build their own software.

1990-12-28 00:00:00

HoHoCon, the first modern hacker convention, convenes

The first HoHoCon (also known as Xmascon) was held in Houston, Texas by members of the Cult of the Dead Cow. The convention invited "all Hackers, Journalists, and Federal Agents" to attend; four more annual conventions followed.

1991-03-26 15:39:18

First Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference

This annual conference of academics and technologists was originally sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and since 2000 has been run under the aegis of the Association for Computing Machinery. The first CFP, which took place in Burlingame, CA, began with the following call to arms from its lead organizer, Jim Warren, a computer programmer and journalist. He wrote, "we are at a crossroads—as individuals, organizations and governments increasingly depend upon computerized information and digital communications....Customs, policies, regulations and statutes governing this new environment will be created. The question is: Who will create them and what will they be?”

1991-08-06 00:00:00

The World Wide Web is Born

On this day, Tim Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date marks the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.

1991-12-09 00:00:00

Al Gore "invents" the Internet

Actually, Gore introduced the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, which established the National Research and Education Network, a precursor to the Internet.

1993-05-01 00:00:00

Sen. Edward Kennedy posts first congressional website

Senator Ted Kennedy was the first national politician to launch his own website. At the time, there was no infrastructure to support Members of Congress who wanted to go online. Chris Casey, his systems administrator, suggested that Kennedy establish an online presence in an attempt to reach out to constituents. At first the site was on MIT's servers, and then later was moved to an official congressional server in 1994.

1994-01-17 00:00:00

Carl Malamud Launches Free Online Access to SEC EDGAR Records

Until this day, the only way to access the Securities and Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) database of filings from public corporations and financial entities was to go to a special reading room in Washington, DC, or to pay private information services exorbitant fees. Armed with a $660,000 two-year research grant from the National Science Foundation, Carl Malamud set out to change that.

1994-10-13 00:00:00

Cookies First Released

Cookies were first used in web communications when a version was released with the launch of version 0.9beta of Mosaic Netscape. These cookies helped Netscape determine whether visitors had previously visited their site. Cookies later developed as a vehicle websites use to communicate user information with web browsers, and for advertisers and marketers to use in tracking web visitors and targeting information at particular visitors. This has come to have serious implications on user privacy and security.

1994-10-20 00:00:00

Whitehouse.gov launched by the Clinton Administration

The first official website managed by the White House was launched on this date. Here's how the Clinton administration described its achievement: "In an effort to make government information more readily accessible to citizens across the country, Vice President Gore, joined by Associate Director for Technology in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Lionel S. (Skip) Johns and world-renowned artist Peter Max, today (10/20) unveiled the first interactive, multimedia, electronic citizens' handbook on the White House, including detailed information about Cabinet-level and independent agencies, and information about the First Family and the White House. "Welcome to the White House: An Interactive Citizens' Handbook" provides a single point of access to all electronic government information on the Internet, a vast electronic computer network used by people in more than 150 countries. Examples of accessible material demonstrated at today's event include information about the President and Vice President and their families, a virtual tour of the White House, detailed information about Cabinet-level and independent agencies, a subject-searchable index of federal information, and a map of Washington, D.C."

1996-02-01 00:00:00

China begins government regulation of the internet

China's State Council issued Order No. 195: "Interim Regulations on International Interconnection of Computer Information Networks in the PRC," setting off the development of a unique gateway system for internet access from China to international networks. One month later, China required users and ISPs to register with the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Order No.195 divided China's networks into Interconnecting Networks (INs) and Access Networks (ANs). The Informatization Group, part of the State Council -- China's top civil authority -- announced it would put all development of "interconnected networks" (a translation of chinese characters that refers to computer networks with filtered gateway access to to the outside world) under the stewardship of four government agencies. By December, western sources were reporting at least 100 international sites to be blocked in mainland China.

1996-02-08 00:00:00

Communications Decency Act becomes law/Turn the Web Black protest occurs

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on February 8, the Communications Decency Act (CDA) aimed to criminalize the transmission of materials that were "obscene or indecent" to minors. That same day saw the Turn the Web Black campaign, a 48-hour online action led by the Voters Telecommunications Watch, during which many websites turned their background color black to protest the law. The EFF ran a parallel Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign. On June 12, 1996, a panel of Philadelphia federal judges blocked the part of the CDA relating to indecency, in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union. The Supreme Court upheld their ruling on June 26, 1997.

1996-02-08 00:00:00

John Perry Barlow writes "A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace"

Co-founder of the EFF, Barlow wrote the declaration in response to the passing into law of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, also calling out China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, and Italy for censorship. He called for the Internet to be borderless and to form social contracts independent of government involvement. Within six months, 40,000 websites carried a copy of the declaration.

1996-08-12 00:00:00

First online chats during a party national convention

In August 1996, the Republican National Convention became the first convention of either party to have a website and conduct online "chats." Using IRC chat forums, the convention hosted in San Diego that year had dozens of Members of Congress and GOP officials participate in chats with thousands of voters unable to attend in person. Notable participants were presidential nominee Senator Bob Dole and then sitting Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

1996-09-01 00:00:00

Conservative web forum FreeRepublic founded

Jim Robinson started FreeRepublic as an online gathering hub for grassroots conservatives. Protests and write-in campaigns were organized through the site during the Clinton impeachment.

1997-12-17 00:00:00

The term “weblog” is first used

Jorn Barger, editor of the blog Robot Wisdom, was the first to use the term weblog. He used it to describe the process of "logging the web" as he surfed. Inspired by Dave Winer's Scripting News site and running on Winer's Frontier publishing software, Barger began posting daily entries to his site in the hope of finding "an audience who might see the connections between [his] many interests." These postings featured "a list of links each day shaped by his own interests in the arts and technology," thus offering a "day-to-day log of his reading and intellectual pursuits." The term was later shortened to “blog" by Peter Merholz of Peterme.com.

1998-01-01 00:00:00

Mozilla project born

The Mozilla project got its start at a time that AOL ceased supporting the Netscape browser. The code for Netscape Communicator 4.0 was open sourced and placed under the Netscape Public License. The mascot for the Netscape Communications Corporation -- the Mozilla lizard -- went on to represent their new open source browser projects. The Mozilla Foundation itself was officially registered as a non-profit on July 15, 2003.

1998-06-30 00:00:00

Chinese citizen charged with using the Internet for the purposes of political subversion

The Chinese government put tech businessman Lin Hai on trial on 12/4 for "incitement to subvert the government," under Article 105 of the Criminal Code. He was accused of distributing 30,000 Chinese email addresses to pro-democracy journal "VIP Reference," published by Chinese dissidents in the United States. The journal compiled "politically sensitive content" published in Taiwan and Hong Kong and distributed it via email in order to make it available to the Chinese mainland and outside. Lin Hai was sentenced to two years in jail.

1998-09-04 00:00:00

Google Founded

Google started as a research project by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in January 1996. Page and Brin created PageRank, a new type of web page ranking system that analyzed relationships between websites. Google's official mission statement, from the beginning, was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." In May 2011, Google reported clocking 1 billion unique visitors for the first time.

1998-09-28 00:00:00

MoveOn.org is born

Internet entrepreneurs Wes Boyd and Joan Blades's petition calling on Congress to censure President Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal and move on to more pressing issues quickly went viral, launching the national organization MoveOn.org. They sent it to 100 friends and family, but within a week had garnered more than 100,000 signatures. They later merged forces with Eli Pariser, whose post-9/11 petition for a peaceful response to the attacks garnered half a million signatures in a month. MoveOn now has more than 5 million members.

1998-09-30 00:00:00

ICANN established

ICANN was established in 1998 as a response to the US government's move to privatize the management of Internet naming and addresses. ICANN now operates as a contractor to the US Department of Commerce to carry out the IANA role of internet naming.

1999-05-01 00:00:00

First China-US "cyberwar" takes place simultaneously with the war in Serbia/Kosovo

Chinese hackers (claiming to be independent of its government) targeted U.S. government sites in protest of the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, leaving text such as "Protest USA's Nazi action! Protest NATO's brutal action!" on their servers. Whitehouse.gov was under DDoS attack for 3 days, forcing a temporary shut down.

1999-06-01 00:00:00

Napster is founded

The peer-to-peer file sharing service was founded by Shawn Fanning and uncle John Fanning with Sean Parker either as co-founder or early employee.

1999-10-31 00:00:00

Presidential candidate Bill Bradley raises a million dollars online

The first presidential candidate to push online fundraising raised $650,000 over the web in the third quarter of 1999 and went over a million by the end of the year, according to his campaign manager Gina Glantz. The campaign had petitioned the Federal Elections Commission early in 1999 to approve matching funds for internet credit card contributions.

2000-01-01 00:00:00

First Blog Post on BoingBoing.net

Originally a zine started in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, BoingBoing became a site in 1995 and a blog in 2000. Its pages are a compendium of free culture thinking and activism, though its editors prefer the moniker "a directory of wonderful things."

2000-02-01 00:00:00

Presidential candidate John McCain raises $1 million online in 48 hours

On the heels of an upset win over Governor George W. Bush at the New Hampshire primary, Senator John McCain raised $1 million on his website in 48 hours. This was an online fundraising record at the time. The average donation was $110.

2000-02-22 00:00:00

OhMyNews, South Korea's online citizen journalism site, is founded

OhMyNews is the first online newspaper to solicit, accept, edit and publish articles by its readers, inspired by the slogan "Every Citizen is a Reporter." At its height, 80% of its content was generated by the public. The Korean edition closed in 2009, while an international edition continues to be published at http://international.ohmynews.com.

2001-01-01 00:00:00

The first gamified political activism website launched

Launched by the Republican National Committee in 2001, the GOPTeamLeader.com volunteer website was the first "gamified" political web site that awarded points for actions taken on the site, a store for redeeming points earned, the first live chats with high level Administration officials with volunteers and was a critical piece of the Republican efforts offline.

2001-01-15 00:00:00

Wikipedia founded

Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia as a complimentary project to Nupedia, their free online encyclopedia written by experts. Wikipedia is the first user-generated online encyclopedia. The site works on a collaborative model allowing users from around the world to contribute to and edit entries, centered on a core principle of "neutral point of view." There are editions of Wikipedia in 280 languages and more than 85,000 active contributors working on more than 21,000,000 articles.

2001-01-17 00:00:00

Philippines protestors use SMS text messaging to topple government

In early 2001, five days of protests coordinated by text message led to the resignation of President Joseph Estrada, who was on trial on charges of corruption and mismanagement. When it was announced on television news broadcasts that 11 senators had voted against unsealing evidence that would have easily convicted Estrada, the public was outraged. Immediately, Filipinos began to send text messages to one another and to coordinate protests against the allegedly corrupt leader. About one million people participated in mass demonstrations.

2001-05-12 00:00:00

Liberal Democratic blog MyDD founded

MyDD was founded by Jerome Armstrong. It originally stood for "My Due Diligence"--a reference to his using the site to evaluate Democratic political candidates. The site was temporarily shut down in 2003 when Armstrong went to work for the Howard Dean campaign. The site inspired Markos Moulitsas to start Daily Kos in 2002, and later helped foment a grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2004. In January 2006 its name was changed to "My Direct Democracy." Armstrong made one of the first references to the term "netroots" on the blog.

2001-07-01 00:00:00

Napster goes offline

Napster was embroiled in litigation and was eventually forced to suspend service; it came back later in the year as a subscription service. Meanwhile, a plethora of other distributed filing sharing services, including Kazaa, Limewire and Morpheus, rushed to fill the void.

2001-08-26 00:00:00

Afghanistan's Taliban bans Internet access country-wide

Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered the decree on Radio Shariat, making an exception only for the Office of the Supreme Leader, where the Internet could "be accessed by a trusted man. "Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil stated: "We want to establish a system in Afghanistan through which we can control all those things that are wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam."

2001-09-07 00:00:00

First blog in Iran launched by Salman Jariri

Jariri's blog was handcoded in Unicode. Three weeks later, Hossein Derakhshan started his own blog. More importantly, he soon published a detailed Persian guide to blogging, using the free site Blogger.com. Soon there were thousands of Iranian bloggers.

2001-09-17 00:00:00

The first "warblog" appears, launched by Matt Welch

Warblogs(also known as "milblogs") first appeared in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, written primarily by American bloggers who were focused first on the war in Afghanistan and then later Iraq. Many bloggers were unhappy with mainstream media coverage of these wars. Libertarian writer Matt Welch is recognized as the first to blog under this banner; law professor Glenn Reynolds is given credit for popularizing the field via his Instapundit blog.

2002-04-01 00:00:00

Arizona is first state to implement online voter registration

Arizona was the first state to implement online voter registration in 2002. Over 70% of voter registrations in Arizona now take place online. There are 11 states that offer or will soon offer online registration (Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington).

2002-05-26 00:00:00

DailyKos blog founded

Markos Moulitsas founded DailyKos after serving in the military. He was among the first bloggers to get press credentials at Democratic National Convention in Boston. Unlike many early blogs, the site was built on Scoop, a tool that allows users to post their own "diaries" and rate those of others, allowing a vibrant community to form. Along with regular users, Moulitsas brought in a smaller group of "front page diarists" to make regular contributions. DailyKos recently topped two billion page views and has more than 200,000 registered diarists.

2002-06-12 00:00:00

Meetup.com Launches

Launched by Scott Heiferman, Matt Meeker, and Peter Kamali, Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. Heiferman says he was inspired to start the site after seeing the outpouring of community support after 9/11 in New York City, and then reading Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone and wanting to do something to revitalize social capital. There are now 92,000 local Meetup groups for which 1.5 million RSVP every month. Meetup was used most famously by Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2003-4, and is also popular among supporters of Ron Paul and the Tea Party.

2002-09-20 00:00:00

Tor ("The Onion Router") launches

Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory, and then funded by the EFF, Tor is a free browsing tool that allows individuals to keep their identity and network activity anonymous by separating routing and identification. The Free Software Foundation estimates that 36 million individuals have freedom of expression and access to information as a result of Tor. Tor has arguably played a critical role in supporting activists in revolutionary movements, such as Egypt and Iran.

2002-12-20 00:00:00

Trent Lott Resigns As Senate GOP Leader

Fifteen days after speaking at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott resigned his leadership post. While the mainstream media largely ignored his comments, bloggers ranging from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit had seized on remarks he made praising Thurmond's segregationist past. Instead of fading into obscurity, the issue mushroomed until Lott was forced to step down.

2003-01-01 00:00:00

Gary Hart is first presidential candidate to blog

While testing the waters for a presidential run, former Colorado senator Gary Hart set up Garyhartnews.com, promising to do his own blogging on subjects such as security and terrorism. His spokesman at the time -- in a Wired article -- said he was averaging 47,000 hits a day.

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