

NPR Crowdsources ID of lobbyists at congressional health care hearing - tptacek
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/hearing-pano/

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pg
This is a great idea. I bet more stuff like this would have a significant
impact-- like the amateur tail-number watchers at airports who helped uncover
the secret "rendition" flights.

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sp332
That sounds pretty cool. Got a link?

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dtf
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1>

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yan
I heard about that on NPR this morning, I'm all for it. My only concern, do
they have any privacy rights against this? Or does the gov't building imply
same protections as being in public?

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evgen
They are at a public meeting, in a government building, exercising their 1st
amendment rights to petition their government. They have absolutely no privacy
rights here. They are not compelled to identify themselves but they have no
protection against others identifying them nor are they likely to receive such
protection given the legitimate concerns the public has over corruption (the
Lobbying Disclosure Act [2 USC 1605] does permit lobbyists to perform routine
information discovery, such as attending this event, without requiring
disclosure but the fact that they are not required to report their attendance
would probably not be enough for a court to find any expectation of privacy
for anyone attending such an event.)

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rrhyne
That's true only until they lobby congress and get a national lobbyist
protection act passed.

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pj
They should have an image map over the faces and you can click on the face and
then it goes to a form where you can add details about the person.

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colins_pride
I love this idea; how does the sponsoring site ensure the quality of the user
supplied data?

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pj
NPR will have to use other sources to verify the information people on the
internet submit. They can build it so that the submitted information isn't
publicly available until it's verified.

Perhaps if they get multiple people suggesting that a particular person is
_this_ person, then that may be a good indicator.

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mlLK
Could someone put into proper context why this is crowdsourcing? It's an
interesting application but I don't think it has anything to do with
crowdsourcing.

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stjohn
They ask people to email them if they know anyone in the pictures.

