Hacking Congress .org
Josh Tauberer has set up a new site, HackingCongress.org, meant to be "the intersection of civics & technology." Josh invites you to create an account so you can participate and edit any content on the site. "It's basically a new wiki," he says.
HackingCongress is a new hub for projects at the intersection of civics & technology, fostering civic engagement and education, advancing government transparency, and supporting communication with government. ("Hacking" has a dual meaning in the computer world and in this case it is positive slang for creative programming.) The focus of this site is on projects related to the U.S. Congress and state-level legislatures. The goal is to be a hub, or at least a links page, for the developer community surrounding the intersection of civics and technology especially (but not exclusively) as it relates to the U.S. Congress. Create an account and start editing pages. Make sure your project is listed with a description you like, and add any other relevant projects, data sources, and APIs to the appropriate pages.There is already a lot there: Then beginnings of a list of the databases and APIs that are available for government transparency data; Links to ongoing projects broken down by type; An aggregator of of blogs in the open government tech community, planet.hackingcongress.org. ...and more! Continue reading
Online Sunshine Week Event: Opening Doors: Finding the Keys to Open Government
On Friday, March 20, 2009, 1 - 2:30 PM (EDT), OpenTheGovernment.org will present a free webcast of a panel discussion at The Center for American Progress.
The event will feature a discussion between speakers and the audience on what the Obama administration hopes to achieve, the policy issues facing this administration, the Obama administration's vision for e-government, and financial and economic transparency. Also during the event, Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org and Ari Schwartz, Vice President of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) will release a report based on the results of Show Us the Data, a web-based survey used to discover what information the public wants to get access to and use, but cannot. Confirmed Speakers: Dan Chenok, a member of President Obama's "Technology, Innovation and Government Reform" transition team, former branch chief for information policy and technology in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and currently senior vice president and general manager of Pragmatics, Katherine McFate, a Program Officer for Government Performance and Accountability in the Ford Foundation's Governance Unit, and Beth Noveck, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and author of Wiki Government (Brookings 2009). Invited: Vivek Kundra, newly-appointed federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).To view the webcast live on your personal computer, no pre-registration is required. Simply go to this page: Opening Doors: Finding the Keys to Open Government, where a URL will be available about 24 hours prior to the event. Continue reading
The danger of Kindle
Emily Walshe, a librarian and professor at Long Island University in New York, writes about the Kindle e-book reader.
- Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought, by Emily Walshem, Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2009.
In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.... You're not buying a book; you're buying access to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It's like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.Continue reading
When Google and others impose licenses on government documents and other works in the public domain
Access to Old Information, by Steven M. Bellovin, SMBlog, 8 March 2009. Bellovin notes that Google "requests" you use public domain books you download from books.google.com for "personal, non-commercial purposes." This isn't a new issue, of course, and Bellovin points out that Congressional Information Services, Inc. claims that its microfilms of a U.S. government documents cannot be reused "except for individual research." He continues:
What we are seeing is the use of contract law to obtain rights not granted by copyright. If we are not careful, we will see public information locked up. Worse yet, digital records can be protected by so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, making them inaccessible except on terms dictated by the physical record's owner. ...We need to ask about the fate of public documents (such as government records) and about the role of libraries.... [I]f a private company is going to be the designated publisher, it should not control how the documents are used.He also calls on libraries to do their part to keep this from happening, for "By agreeing to stringent restrictions, above and beyond what would be permitted under the Fair Use doctrine of copyright law, [libraries] undermine their own goals. I would add that, in the digital age, one way we can ensure free access to government information is by making the raw, complete digital information universally freely and accessible. Private sector companies can then add value and put their restrictions on their added value services, not on the content. Continue reading
EFF Launches Search Tool for Uncovered Government Documents
EFF Launches Search Tool for Uncovered Government Documents, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), March 16th, 2009.
In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy.Search EFF's FOIA Documents. Continue reading