As Secretary of State, Clinton focused heavily on creating programs that promote international commerce. The theme of the conference was to celebrate the global impact of the many public-private partnerships formed under her tenure and to celebrate the launch of four new initiatives, including the Alliance for Affordable Internet, which collectively are valued at around $86.5 million.

“In the 21st century, diplomacy and development is not in any way confined to government-to-government relations,” she said. “Those have to be tended, those have to be respected, those have to be nurtured and grown, but at the same time, in this increasingly inner connected networked world, we wanted to reach out people to people […] Many of the challenges we face extend beyond traditional political and geographic divisions. How do we grow the global economy and give those hundreds of millions of young people, men and women a chance at a decent job?”

Access to the internet and digital literacy skills are vital for securing gainful employment, both at home and abroad. Clinton stated that only 25% of people in developing countries are online, as opposed to 75% in the developed world. A “key element” of economic growth and innovation is to lessen this gap and “help the next billion people come online.” Making the internet more accessible and affordable is a stepping stone towards economic independence and empowerment.

In an article this morning, Bloomberg reporter Elizabeth Dwoskin delved deeper into the story surrounding the Alliance and its implications. “If successful, the project could end up helping many people in poor countries get onto the Web. It could also cement long-term ties between the State Department and the companies- while opening new markets and reaching new customers for Silicon Valley.”

Dwoskin interviewed Ann Mei Chang, a “25-year veteran of Silicon Valley” who left her job as  senior engineering director at Google to join the State Department in November of 2011. Chang moved to Nairobi, Kenya which many have pegged as Africa’s emerging tech hub, and began investing why Kenya has had greater technological success than its neighbors. She said that in most developing countries, an entry-level internet connections can cost as much as an individual’s monthly income. This is primarily due to high taxes on equipment like computers, mobile phones, and modems; a lack of the physical infrastructure (IXPs) to support the Web; and telecommunications monopolies that limit access to infrastructure or make it prohibitively expensive to set up.

Addressing these barriers is a critical part of making the internet accessible to underserved populations.

“The idea behind the Alliance is to use corporate and diplomatic power to push foreign governments to change was and policies- in this case, the obstacles that governments put up to wider Internet penetration.”

There is a lot of excitement right now about emerging technology hubs around the world and the potential for online educational, health, and social companies to create meaningful change. Change, as I learned as a Peace Corps volunteer, is most significant when it comes from within. Internet access may not be a basic human right, but the right to work for fair pay, the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, and the right to education are. Without shaping policies and infrastructure at a foundational/national level that promote equal access and digital literacy, the ability of the internet to transform the whole world is restricted.

If that doesn’t sell you, just think of the impact a billion new users will have on the growth prospects for U.S. tech companies.

Watch video of the press conference.

BlastRoots was founded by Washington D.C. mover-and-shaker Chris Hull. Hull spent his career working in politics. He has worked for state and national legislatures, as well as for a national party committee, public policy think tanks, lobbying groups, and public affairs firms. His primary role was to advise organizations of all sizes, from grassroots campaigns to global corporations, on how to best achieve their political aims. He is also an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University.

A few years ago, Hull’s attention began to wander away from from serving special interest groups and towards creating a system where a majority of the population is not unhappy with the way government works. A Gallup poll conducted last year found that satisfaction with the government was at a record low of nearly 30%. Hull believes that these numbers would go up if voters felt they had a greater impact on policy.

“I felt for a long time that someone should automate me out of existence,” Hull said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head and I realized this was made possible by the social networking revolution. It is undeniable that the internet has changed politics by making it easier for people to organize online.”

He left his public affairs job and set out to create a platform that combined the knowledge, resources, and tools of political insiders with the capabilities of internet technology. Hull’s cofounder John Merz previously served as the Director of Technology for the AOL Greenhouse. The men combined their political and technical expertise to create what they believe is the ultimate grassroots lobbying platform.

“In my judgement, there was not a company that took the know-how of Washington and how things actually work, and applied these new lessons of technology to it, opening it up to the public. What we really need is a transparent and open marketplace where people can access these services and use them to participate in the political process.”

Hull said BlastRoots bridges the gap between platforms like Change.org and Causes which are entirely focused on grassroots momentum, and the “enormous but completely subterranean” industry in Washington that influences public affairs for a very high price.

BlastRoots is now in beta. Visitors to the site can create their own campaign using a step-by-step guide, browse existing campaigns to join, or blast out an idea to their social network to incite action. The dashboard offers tools to create a grassroots lobbying campaign, including a customized petition template, a database of email addresses and Twitter handles for directly contacting the members of Congress, customized print-and-send letter templates, and recruitment features. There are also analytical features to track progress, measure impact, and follow up as needed.

The idea is to help people without a lot of expertise, connections or money, change the world. According to an analysis BlastRoots conducted on the political advocacy market, $17.2 billion was spent on federal lobbying, non-profit advocacy, political contributions, and campaigns in 2012. However, while these numbers are high and climbing, the increase is partly driven by relatively small online donations.

“Our view is that spending not only on politics, but on policy – advocacy and lobbying – will eventually flow more and more from ordinary citizens, much of it gathered online,” Hull said in a discussion on Politico. “That’s a promising trend.”

BlastRoots is based in Washington DC. It’s core team consists of 6 people, all dedicated to the goal of a more democratic lobbying system, and the ideal of a more democratic America.

Startup Spotlight is a weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

Several of the country’s largest tech companies have joined forces to protect the Internet from bad policies, harmful legislation, and ignorant political figures.

The group, officially called the Internet Association, is made up of all the big name companies, including Amazon, AOL, eBay, Expedia, Facebook, Google, IAC, LinkedIn, Monster Worldwide, Rackspace, Salesforce, TripAdvisor, Yahoo, and Zynga. Both Microsoft and Apple are absent from that list, but the group’s roster is still plenty powerful.

“The Internet Association’s policy platform is based on three planks: protecting Internet freedom; fostering innovation and economic growth; and empowering users,” the group wrote in an official announcement today. “The Internet Association and its member companies engage in direct advocacy, educating policymakers on the profound positive impacts of the Internet and Internet companies on jobs, economic growth, freedom, creativity, commerce, productivity, education, prosperity, and the global economy.”

The Internet Association is led by President and CEO Michael Beckerman, who has a background of getting things done on Capitol Hill. And in addition to stating its own policy platform, the group is opening up its membership to other companies.

Similarly, another coalition of Internet companies banded together a few months ago to form the Internet Defense League, which is a more grassroots effort to raise awareness about harmful policies, legislation, etc. that could negatively impact Internet Freedoms. (Also, this group uses a Cat Signal to raise awareness rather than money and congressional influence.)

Via TNW

Capital building photo via Frank Jr/Shutterstock

Facebook is making its presence felt in Washington D.C. with an increasingly padded wallet allocated to courting the nation’s lawmakers.

The social network, according to its second quarter lobbying report (see below), spent $960,000 on lobbying expenses from April through June of this year. That’s roughly the same amount that Facebook spent on lobbying for all of 2011, and a 200 percent year-over-year increase in lobbying spend.

Altogether, Facebook has shelled out a total of $1.61 million on lobbying costs in the first half of the year.

Why the big bump in Capital Hill-related expenditures? With a burgeoning user base of 901 million people, the social network has been catapulted to the center of the nation’s consciousness and forced to address matters such as the implications of confusing privacy settings or concerns around facial recognition technology.

“Our presence and growth in Washington reflect our commitment to explaining how our service works, the actions we take to protect the more than 900 million people who use our service, the importance of preserving an open Internet, and the value of innovation to our economy,” a Facebook spokesman told The Hill.

Specifically, Facebook has spent to educate members of Congress and other federal agents on its security and privacy practices, as well as advocate for and oppose a number of pieces of legislation that could affect its business.

In the second quarter, Facebook’s lobbying agenda included everything from foreign relations matters and protecting the online safety of children (which may relate to its ambitions to open up the network to kids under 13) to patent reform, corporate tax issues, and reform of the immigration system as it relates to high-tech workers.

Photo credit: Pan Xunbin/Shutterstock

Tim Cook opened the lines of communication between Apple and Washington, DC even further with a visit to the nation’s capital this past Tuesday.

Cook, who follows Steve Jobs as chief executive of Apple, is seemingly more willing to interact with the government than his predecessor. Cook spent his time in Washington quietly meeting with a number of political big wigs, including House Speak John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

According to sources cited by Fortune, the conversations didn’t touch on Apple’s product roadmap, or lawsuits against Apple, such as the Department of Justice lawsuit regarding e-book price fixing. Instead, they focused on building the Apple-Capitol Hill relationship. Indeed, one source said Cook is interested in policy making and “recognizes the role an engaged CEO can play in making a difference on those policy priorities.”

As Fortune notes, Apple spent only $500,000 on lobbying in this year’s first quarter 2011. Google, on the other hand, continued to increase lobbying efforts, spending $5.03 million in the same quarter. Google has focused on privacy and cyber security legislation, and also paid lobbying attention to the CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) bill. Indeed, Google increased its lobbying spending by 240 percent since the first quarter 2011.

via Fortune; Tim Cook image taken by Heather Kelly

If its lobbying spend is any indication, Google is trying to woo the government. The search giant spent triple what it did a year ago on lobbying efforts in Washington, according to The Hill.

Google’s spending in Washington, D.C. has increased as government agencies continue to scrutinize the company’s data privacy practices. Just last week, the FCC fined Google a paltry $25,000 for “deliberately impeding” investigations into its “accidental” snooping of Wi-Fi networks. And earlier this year, Google attracted a ton of attention for completely revamping its privacy policies.

The company’s main concerns in D.C. have been privacy legislation, including rules on online tracking, and cyber security legislation, including the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill. CISPA could enable companies to share private user information with the government to help it fight and prevent cyber security attacks. Google has not taken a position one way or the other on CISPA, so it’s hard to tell which side it’s playing.

Getting down to specifics, Google spent $5.03 million on lobbying from January to March, which is a 240 percent increase over the $1.48 million it spent in the first quarter of 2011. That’s not much compared to the $10.6 billion in revenue it cleared in Q1 2012, but every bit helps in Washington. Google CEO Larry Page used that earnings call to announce a Google stock split, something else it could be lobbying about.

Photo credit: Vasilevich Aliaksandr/Shutterstock

The Financial Times reported earlier today that Muris is helping the company defend its privacy practices before lawmakers and regulatory agencies as it faces extra scrutiny.

Facebook may be paying Muris as a consultant or as an outside attorney. The company wouldn’t comment on the arrangement. Certainly Muris’s relationships and know-how inside the FTC would come as an asset.

In any case, Facebook has rapidly grown its presence on Capitol Hill during the last year to try and explain its value to lawmakers and to influence legislation that might curb its data collection or ad targeting abilities. It hired Tim Sparapani from the American Civil Liberties Union last year along with Noyes, who was a long-time technology policy reporter. A fourth employee, Corey Owens, said he joined in March.

Facebook’s moves come at a time when lawmakers are paying increased attention to social networking and its implications for privacy.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) unveiled a discussion draft of a consumer privacy bill earlier this month while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., NY) wrote a letter to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg last month that criticized the company’s new instant personalization program, which automatically shares data with pre-selected partners. It worked on an opt-out, rather than opt-in model. Schumer said he would sponsor legislation that would give the FTC greater power to regulate privacy issues, if the agency didn’t feel it had enough authority.

Facebook spent $41,390 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010. That’s on top of the $207,878 it spent last year — the first year Facebook began releasing such disclosures. Although these numbers are tiny compared to the $4.3 million Google spent on lobbying last year, expect them to grow with the company’s influence and ambitions.

What’s interesting about Facebook’s lobbying in D.C. is what it spends money on despite its small size. It was the only consumer Internet company out of Google, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple to reach out to intelligence agencies last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms. It has lobbied the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — an umbrella office founded in the wake of Sept. 11 that synthesizes intelligence from 17 agencies including the CIA and advises the President — for the last three quarters on privacy and federal cyber-security policy. It has reached out to the Defense Intelligence Agency too.

Andrew Noyes, the company’s manager of public policy communications, says most of Facebook’s work in D.C. consists of basic education — helping legislators and agencies understand how to use the social network for campaigning, reaching out to their constituencies and in their regular line of work. The U.S. Navy used Facebook to alert Hawaiians of a possible tsunami from the Chilean earthquake earlier this year, while the company says 35 government agencies are using social media for governance.

He said the meetings with intelligence agencies were similar. “We disclose this because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. (To be fair, Google and Microsoft also lobbied the Department of Defense last year although they did not reach out to intelligence agencies.)

At the very top of Facebook’s agenda in D.C. is privacy, he said. There’s much at stake. The ease of data collection and sharing on the web is on a collision course with privacy. The suite of projects the company unveiled yesterday at its f8 conference in San Francisco may spark further privacy concerns about the mass of data it will now be tracking on users as they traverse the web. To head off concerns that it is too cavalier with pushing users to be more public, Facebook made a savvy move when it brought longtime privacy advocate Tim Sparapani from the American Civil Liberties Union on-board last year.

Even though the company says its role in D.C. is about awareness for now, developing these relationships will help Facebook get ahead of and influence legislation that may curb its ad targeting abilities. For the last year, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) has pledged that he would draft a web privacy bill, but little has come of it so far. Facebook’s competitor Google has already become a punching bag for privacy advocates; ten governments including France, Germany and the U.K. issued a letter to the search giant on Monday asking it to do more to protect consumer privacy, while legislators have asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into Google Buzz.

[Photo via Bob Jagendorf]

Facebook Lobbying http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf