Does Craigslist founder Craig Newmark want to go into politics? His comment during a keynote at the annual Computers Freedom & Privacy conference in Washington this week that he is considering whether to “dedicate a big chunk of my life” to those who are driving change in Washington certainly opened up the possibility.

“Things are changing in ways we’ve never seen before in human history,” Newmark said, adding that he wants to “find the people who are doing the real work” and act as their cheerleader and champion. “As a nerd and former engineer I’m used to being the person who does stuff. Now they tell me my great value is primarily being a person who talks about the good work other people do,” Newmark said.

Newmark also lauded the Obama administration’s recently launched open government initiative and Data.gov, a site intended to “democratize data” by offering raw feeds of government information.

Links to articles from the conference are here.

UPDATE: Craig tweeted me to tell me that he’s not interested in going into politics. Here’s what he wrote:

craignewmark@brianblum no, not interested in politics, very interested in governance.