Open Government Gets Its Week in the Sunshine. This week is Sunshine Week -
a gentle name for celebrating the serious business of uncovering
secretive government practices. Taking its cue from the famous line by
Justice Brandeis that "sunlight is ... the best of disinfectants", this
year's Sunshine Week reflects on a year of continuing efforts to increase
government visibility, and a renewed interest by the press, activists,
and netizens in investigating its secrets.
Projects like our own Freedom of Information Act Lltigation
for Accountable Government (FLAG) project have been working hard to
use statutory tools like FOIA and the Privacy Act to uncover the misuse
of technology by the state. Josh
Richman's overview of FLAG's work in several of Sunday's papers
highlights the work our Washington office does, from uncovering the
edges of the warrantless wiretapping program, to probing the connections
between the NSA and Windows Vista's development.
EFF's work monitoring Washington developments in the world of technology
are helped by many other dedicated sites, like OpenCRS, which distributes the
fascinating, but previously restricted, Congressional Research Service
reports, and OpenSecrets,
which can illustrate Washington connections that are otherwise obscure
(want to know why Bill Frist was so keen on the Audio Flag? Inquire
within.) Researchers at EPIC,
coalition groups like Open
The Government and the politicians behind H.R.1309,
which seeks to update the FOIA laws to react faster to inquiries, help
keep the tools of exposing government sharp and relevant.
Meanwhile, across the Net, hackers and activists have been working to
extract, sift and re-present what information federal and state
governments do provide in a way that ordinary citizens can use.
There's now a wealth of sources to choose from, from the amazing work by
the volunteer-run GovTrack.us, to
the new OpenCongress that
builds on GovTrack's database and more, to the many new APIs that can
stitch all of this data together.
Each of this tools, like each of our organizations, builds on the
others. This week, the Sunlight Foundation is sponsoring a $2000 prize for
the best Web mash-up of Congressional information, as judged by EFF
friends Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, and Craig Newmark. We look forward to
seeing how far the sunlight breaks this year. [EFF: Deep Links]
4:04:59 PM 
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