

Transparency is Bunk - twampss
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/transparencybunk

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cjoh
What Aaron doesn't give due attention to here is that improving existing
government transparency is part of a larger information ecosystem. Digitizing
previously paper-bound and siloed databases makes possible a new kind of
"connect-the-dots" work that used to take investigative journalists months to
do--or they simply didn't even try. His own project, Watchdog.net, has
pioneered a new way of finding links, or "handshakes" as he called it, between
campaign contributors and congressional earmarks, and the demographic data
he's cataloged is going to help power new tools for investigative types to
answer such questions as "How many members of Congress who represent districts
where X percent of their households have experienced a foreclosure last year
voted for the banking bailout?"

We're just at the beginning of a new wave of data- and citizen-empowered
watchdogging of government, and it would be a huge mistake to discount how
valuable these government transparency projects are in opening up the process
in fundamentally new ways. Yes, it's true that government still wants to hide
its dirt and the data it discloses is often only part of the picture. But the
more we open access to the existing data and involve people in connecting the
dots, the greater the appetite and demand for even more transparency, of the
sort even Aaron might find useful.

(My collegue Micah Sifry wrote this with me)

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eli
Indeed, and there are real examples of local reporters uncovering corrupt
congressman based on data in these public records. This is a lot harder if
they have to travel to DC and sit in a basement reading room to pore over
paper ledgers.

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silentOpen
Where 'harder' is 'more expensive' and we know that the present newspaper
model doesn't look like it can support expensive endeavors. Investigative
journalism in the info age is only possible if those practicing it have info
age tools.

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eli
Well, yes, but "harder" as in "more difficult" too. It's basically impossible
to do anything useful with data stored in a paper ledger that's only available
in a basement reading room a few hours a day and copies cost $0.15 a page.

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eli
Databases of campaign contributions and legislative data are just tools.
Posting the data (which is supposedly already "public," but is often hidden in
a basement somewhere) online doesn't sprinkle fairy dust over the capital.

But people can (and do) use these tools to write books like the ones he links,
and to pull data from different sources to uncover specific acts of corruption
and malfeasance.

Databases are just as useful to reporters and authors as anonymous leaks and
insider sources.

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josefresco
"The real action is buried in obscure subchapters of innocuous-sounding bills
and voted on under emergency provisions that let everything happen without
public disclosure."

Doesn't sound like transparency to me. The authors point seems to be that
efforts to be transparent, aren't actually. If Congress and others are hiding
the 'good stuff', we need to work on making _that_ transparent.

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quoderat
Or maybe Congress should meet for a few days every few years, so only the
really important things ever get worked on.

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scottdw2
That would never work. To start with, you can't stop members of Congress from
associating with each other. If you said "you get one week every 2 years to
pass everything", the entire congress would spend 1 year and 51 weeks in
secret meetings trying to figuring out what to vote for in their 1 week of
voting time.

All that would happen as a result is there would be a 2 year back log of
legislation, and it would take FOREVER for anything to get done.

The only real way to deal with corruption in government is to limit it's
power. As long as there are people in power, some of them are going to become
corrupt. That's just human nature. The best you can do is limit power, so that
the damage they can do is minimized.

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tjic
> you can't stop members of Congress from associating with each other.

Actually, many states have open meeting laws where, if it becomes clear that
politicians met and discussed certain topics, it __is __a crime, and it's
punishable.

They don't often get used, but I think that the threat does alter behavior at
least a bit.

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ben
I'd like to read about these, particularly about how they could be
Constitutional, but I can't seem to find the correct words for a Google
search. Would you post a link, or possibly a set of words to search for?

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zk
<http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php> provides an outline of open meeting laws
by state.

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eli
And that linked Sunlight Foundation essay at the bottom seems awfully ad
hominem.

