The Open Rights Group and 38Degrees have raised nearly £12,000 from 672 supporters in mere hours as part of their campaign against the Digital Economy Bill, which is set to be rushed through parliament next week.

The groups are looking to raise enough funds — they say £20,000 is needed — to place ads in newspapers and websites so that “on the day of the key vote they’ll see our opposition over their cornflakes, on their way in to work and over tea in Parliament”.

The upside to campaigning on digital issues is the ease with which you can raise funds — the people you’re appealing to for support are all online anyway.

The donation page is here, and if you’re feeling cheap, you can also send an email to your MP here — with 38 Degrees being slick new media types, both actions are quick and easy to do online.

I just want to make this clear, because a lot of media outlets today seem to be very, very confused.

A researcher in Teesside has put out a report apparently saying that the rise in syphilis in that area is because of casual sex found over the internet. It’s beyond me how he can pin it so specifically on web hookups and not, say, binge drinking in bars or really rowdy church groups, or but hey, he’s the head of public health for the area, not me.

The original press release from last week about the rise in syphillis is here, and there’s just one bit where the web comes in:

Unprotected sex, especially with casual partners, is the biggest risk for syphilis. Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. It is important that people avoid high risk sexual behaviours and practise safe sex to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.

If it’s true (and I doubt it) that such sites make it easier to get laid, then surely he has some research to connect this trend with syphilis.

So where’s the evidence? It seems the researcher also spoke to the The Sun newspaper.

Kelly told them:

I don’t get the names of people affected, just figures. And I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites…

Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. There is a rise in syphilis because people are having more sexual partners than 20 years ago and often do not use condoms.

A few things to note here.

First, he’s basing his assumption off “several” people. There were over 3,500 syphilis cases UK wide last year. I would assume several out of any 3,500 people in this country did indeed message their friend-with-benefits, or used a dating site to pick up, or made a digital booty call over the year.

That’s not causal, however. That social networking exists and people use it to communicate is a correlation, not the cause, of this disease spreading more. Indeed, we should be studying how the other 3,493 people became infected, don’t you think?

Second, he’s assuming social networking sites do indeed make it easier to get laid — has anyone ever in the history of the universe ever hooked up just using mainstream social networking sites? How would that work — I ask purely out of professional interest, as the amount of time I spend online, you’d think I’d get lucky all the time. Again, does he mean using the sites to communicate or is he talking about dating sites?

Third: he clearly, clearly, clearly pins the blame not on the web, but people failing to use condoms.

Last, where did he mention Facebook? At no point does he mention Facebook. So why does the Sun (and others following its lead) use it in its headline?

Maybe it’s because Facebook is the largest such site in the world and can therefore be used as shorthand for the rest of them. Or, maybe it’s because the Sun — which is owned by News Corp, which owns rival site MySpace — just likes making its competitors look bad.

So unless you’ve got an absolutely filthy keyboard, you’re not likely to pick up a disease from Facebook. But if you do shag a stranger, use a condom, alright?

The yet to be announced but looming election is supposed to be the most web-friendly yet in the UK, with the parties looking to learn from Obama’s winning campaign to gain votes from a younger audience by engaging them with social media.

A major target for that is Twitter.

Proving that they don’t understand the vicious humour on the site, the Tories tried to get “#cashgordon” trending, with any tweet using the phrase automatically pulled into a feed on a dedicated Cash Gordon website.

You can imagine the Tory enthusiasm for the project — “hey, it worked for the #welovethenhs campaign, why not for us?”

But for all its mob mentality, Twitter is an independent beast that doesn’t take kindly to heavy-handed marketing.

Like the epic, hilarious failure that was the Skittles incident, the Cash Gordon feed was soon flooded with crude abuse — click here for some of it.

If that weren’t enough, some cheeky geeks included a bit of javascript in their tweets, which redirected the entire page to the Labour site, as well as more standard web favourites, such as porn and Rick Astley.

Anyway, the tweet for Cash Gordon campaign was quickly killed off and for a while just redirected to the main Conservative site, but it’s now back — with a moderated tweet feed, that as of writing was last updated six hours ago.

The site also asks if you’d like to sign up for the site using Facebook Connect, gaining “action points” every time you help spread the word. The upside of Facebook Connect is the Tories know who you really are — your Facebook account proves your identity and keeps you from doing anything too stupid — but the new game doesn’t let you speak your mind, restricting users to spreading the pre-written Tory word.

So no surprise then, that the Facebook Connect game has just 661 users signed up, while the open and honest and real-time unmoderated Twitter edition garnered headlines — albeit of the wrong sort.

From a marketing standpoint, there may be an argument that the unmoderated Twitter campaign was more of a success, as many of the articles about the epic, amusing failure mentioned the point of the Cash Gordon campaign, which was to highlight the union donations that will help power Gordon Brown’s election run. So points to the Tories for that.

But from a technology standpoint, the Conservatives have managed to look even less web-savvy than before, fitting their stereotype of old geezers who don’t get these new fangled things and certainly don’t understand the youngsters they were trying to appeal to in the first place.

My mum — and yours too, I’m sure — used to say this: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

That’s not bad advice for six-year-olds, but I’d expect better from the government.

Yesterday, I went to a speech delivered by identity minister Meg Hillier, who was telling attendees what’s next for the contentious and expensive programme at an event hosted by think tank the Social Market Forum.

She admitted that the government has had some communication issues with the card roll out, saying it would have been “much better if we talked to people before we made an announcement.”

“Please, feed in your ideas,” she pleaded.

The thing is, I don’t think she wants my ideas. I don’t think she wants the ideas of anyone who doesn’t like the cards. I don’t think she nor the Labour government want feedback from critics — be they campaigners like NO2ID or opposition government parties or people who simply don’t like big databases. I think she and her party only want to hear “nice” things.

I say this because she then accused people against the scheme of using the government’s two year failure to talk about ID cards to “scaremonger.”

A few moments later, a Social Market Forum plant in the audience lobbed a softball of a question at Hillier, accusing critics of “paranoia”.

Hillier noted that the public is “happy to share [personal data] if you trust the system and see some personal value.” She couldn’t seem to understand why we the public are happy to unthinkingly hand our data to Amazon or PayPal, but balk at giving it to her government, despite frequent data losses.

With a tone suggesting she thought the headlines a bit unfair, she said: “Every time a data stick is lost it’s a big deal.” She also suggested the media were being unfair in their description of the scheme, saying she’s “never ever read an article that doesn’t call them the government’s ‘controversial’ ID cards”. (I’ve since decided to use “contentious.” I hope she appreciates it.)

And when one man asked a question about the prospect of being fined or even jailed for not updating the ID card database if you move — which is part of the current legislation — he was scoffed at and mocked by the people standing around me at the back of the room, who were clearly working the event, though it wasn’t clear if they were with SMF or the Identity and Passport Service or something else.

One lady wrote “NO2ID” on her notepad and showed it to her friends, clearly expecting a response, like it was a joke. Another man with an IPS badge couldn’t stop grinning like a fool and looking around for someone to join in with him every time a negative question was asked (I don’t think he realised I was a journalist, despite the notepad). Others flitted around passing notes, showing notebooks with messages on them to each other. It was hard to focus for all the whispering. I felt like I was back in school.

What did I gather from this? The government and its think tanks don’t think much of dissent. They don’t respect your opinion, not if it differs from their own. They don’t want your feedback, unless it’s “nice.”

This differs quite a bit from what the Identity Card Commissioner — who sadly didn’t appear to be at the event — told me a few weeks back. While his office may turn out to be a fairly toothless watchdog, he feels it necessary to talk to critics:

[If] I listen to people who are against the whole thing and get them to tell me why they are against the whole thing, that helps me to decide where to put my effort to scrutinise the system…They certainly are people who have thought about it more than most people… Therefore one wants to hear for oneself what they have to say because it helps to decide what your priorities should be when you scrutinise the whole scheme.

He later added this, in a lesson the government should learn, of the scheme:

It deserves to be scrutinised not just by me but by people completely outside the system altogether.

Right now, when it comes to ID cards, the government isn’t listening to people’s concerns. But come the May general election, I suspect the message will become harder to ignore.

There will be a battle fought in the tech world this year — and it’s over readers.

Not e-readers. I mean readers, people who read books. Really.

The next big thing in tech is tablets, thanks to Apple’s iPad and leaked images of Microsoft’s really rather slick looking Courier. And what are those tablets for? Reading, whether it’s newspapers, magazines, books or web content.

Indeed, one of the coolest looking uses for the iPad is its slick looking ebook reader and store, while the Courier is being described as a “digital journal.”

And then there’s ebook readers themselves — Amazon is betting on the Kindle, while devices from Sony and other makers are popping up in Borders and other bookstores.

Even the iPhone is helping drive it, with today’s news that there are 27,000 books available via the App Store, compared to 25,400 games.

So will 2010 be the year that books and the luddites who turn their paper pages become the target consumer of the tech industry?

That’s what the experts seem to think. Who would have called that? Music, movies, sure. I get that. Better technology means better sound, better pictures, in a portable device.

But unlike music (from vinyl to MP3s) and movies (VHS to streaming HD), the technology behind books hasn’t much changed — ink on paper works pretty well.

Sure, developers have come up with E-ink, making reading on a screen a lot less annoying than it could be, and there’s something to be said for having one device instead of stacks of books on shelves (of course, the opposite is true, too), but unlike music and movies, e-readers aren’t actually much of an obvious improvement, especially given the cost.

But that’s not stopping the big players in tech trying to grab the attention of reading fanatics. So if last year was about apps, will this year be about ebooks? Will this herald a resurgence in reading? Only time will tell, but it’s hard not to see an improvement going from iFart apps to Austen…

I just got back from CeBIT, which means I’m about ready to curl up and sleep for three and a half days straight — and that’s after attending just the first half of the monstrous Hannover tech show.

While sitting in the conference centre listing to keynote speeches, I was stuck by how many of the talks were stressing the benefits of the cloud, always-on-connectivity, and accessing data where ever we go. Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Adobe and more went on and on about it.

Then, I went to separate talk, held by SAP at their own conference-within-the-show (CeBIT is that big that it swallows other events whole). There, speakers were talking about linking up all aspects of a city, so traffic and air quality and energy use could all be monitored to improve systems.

The overriding idea is that we must — no, will — be connected all the time, and it will make the world a better place. I don’t have the energy to agree or disagree with that, but only want to note this: finding a wireless connection at CeBIT was a pain in the ass.

I carried my lovely little Eee PC everywhere I went, balancing it on my knees to take notes. The Press Centre had a connection, but it frequently fell over or stalled out. And while the conference centre itself had a wireless connection, the rest of the campus didn’t. If I went to go see the Future Parc or SAP’s World Tour, I struggled to get online.

Sure, the show is massive, with some two dozen aircraft hangar style halls, and sorting that out is no easy thing. But if you can’t connect up one of the world’s top tech shows, how in the hell to you propose to link up a city?