Elections Database 1787-1825
A New Nation Votes is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. The data were compiled by Philip Lampi; The American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives have mounted it online. So far 18,146 elections (about 54% of Lampi's overall collection) have been made digital. Read more about this database:
- A New Nation Votes: Election Data from 1787 to 1825, By Elisabeth Grant, AHA Today, (May 17, 2011). Those interested in conducting their own analysis can download the entire A New Nation Votes dataset or the dataset for a single state.
- Revisiting the Early American Republic: The New Nation Votes Database Enables a New Political History, By Rosemarie Zagarri, Perspectives on History (May 2011) [membership required].
Google, Facebook, Twitter oppose California Privacy Law
It almost seems like this is privacy week. After stories about a new book on privacy and Eli Pariser's compelling TED talk about how "search personalization" silently filters out useful information, now we have this:
- Take Your Paws Off Our Privacy Laws! Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga Formally Oppose California Social Networking Bill, by Liz Gannes, All Things Digital (May 16, 2011) A coalition of industry associations and Internet companies including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, Match.com and Skype this afternoon submitted a formal letter of opposition to proposed California legislation that would mandate new privacy policies for social networking sites.
Re-launching data.gov with interactive data
Launched just two years ago as a site for users to find and download "bulk" data sets from federal government agencies, Data.Gov is re-launching a "next generation" version with datasets that are "interactive" meaning you can search, filter, and explore data on the fly with your web browser. "You can also create charts and maps, and APIs are available for developers."
- http://explore.data.gov/
- Next Generation Datasets
- Introducing the New Data.Gov Platform. Socrata [a Seattle-based startup that has quietly been helping cities and states around the country to get their data online.] "Discover The New Cloud-Based Data.Gov Platform In This 10-Minute Video Tour."
- Data.gov relaunches as a cloud-based open data platform, by Alex Howard, Gov20.govfresh (May 16, 2011)
Privacy: “I have nothing to hide”
We often hear the argument that it is okay for the government to gather or analyze personal information because only those who have something to hide need worry. As the British government slogan says, "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."
Libraries take a different approach to privacy. As the American Library Association says, "Privacy is essential to the exercise of free speech, free thought, and free association."
Yet we continue to hear the "nothing to hide" argument. Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University, examines the argument in detail and exposes its flaws in an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security:
- Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide', by Daniel J. Solove, Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Chronicle Review" (May 15, 2011) [subscription required] Commentators often attempt to refute the nothing-to-hide argument by pointing to things people want to hide. But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist [Bruce] Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty "premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong." Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.
Chapter 1 of the book is also freely available:
- Nothing To Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy And Security, Chapter 1, by Solove, Daniel J., Yale University Press, 2011. SSRN.
Solove argues that, in many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests. Bruce Schneier, the security expert Solove quotes above and the author of the excellent monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram, makes a similar argument in a recent presentation on security issues:
- The security mirage, Bruce Schneier. TEDxPSU. (Oct 2010), video, 21 min.
As we have mentioned here before, (see, for example, Will GPO guarantee user privacy? Can it? and PRIVACY: Key Challenges Facing Federal Agencies and "Policy neutral" does not mean "neutral policies"), privacy has important policy implications for individual FDLP libraries and their approaches to access to government information. What is your library policy? Will your library choose to retain its role as a protector of privacy, or will it abandon that role to government agencies?
Continue readingLunchtime listen: Eli Pariser on filter bubbles
Eli Pariser, founder of MoveOn.org and author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, gave a very interesting and smart -- and somewhat disconcerting -- talk at TED in Long Beach, CA in February, 2011. Pariser points out the unintended consequences embedded in search personalization where users get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden their worldview.