Goverment Information Awareness

[Chewbacca]

Here is the site itself: (it takes a minute to load)
http://opengov.media.mit.edu/

Here is a news article about it.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59495,00.html

"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest," according to the architect of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Given that sentiment, it's tempting to think Jefferson would have approved of a new Web-based repository intended to close what the site's developers describe as an ever-widening gap between citizens' ability to monitor the government and the government's ability to monitor its citizens. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab unveiled the Government Information Awareness, or GIA, website Friday. Using applications developed at the Media Lab, GIA collects and collates information about government programs, plans and politicians from the general public and numerous online sources. Currently the database contains information on more than 3,000 public figures. The premise of GIA is that if the government has a right to know personal details about citizens, then citizens have a right to similar information about the government. GIA was inspired by the federal government's Terrorist Information Awareness, or TIA, program. Government officials have said that TIA's sole purpose is to identify potential terrorists by comparing information in a broad range of databases that might point to patterns indicative of terrorist activity. But many privacy advocates see TIA as an overly intrusive effort to monitor Americans' lives in minute detail, from credit card purchases to travel plans. "Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form their own intelligence agency; to gather, sort and act on information they gather about the government," said MIT graduate student Ryan McKinley, who developed GIA under the direction of Christopher Csikszentmihályi, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab's Computing Culture group. "Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government by the people and for the people," McKinley said. GIA allows people to explore data, track events, find patterns and build profiles related to specific government officials or political issues. Information about campaign finance, corporate ties and even religion and schooling can be accessed easily. Real-time alerts can be generated when news of interest is breaking. "History shows that when information is concentrated in the hands of an elite, democracy suffers," said Csikszentmihályi. "The writers of the Constitution told us that if people mean to be their own governors, they must arm themselves with information. This project brings that American spirit of self-governance into the era of networked information technology." GIA site users can submit information about public figures and government programs anonymously. In an attempt to ensure the accuracy of submitted data, the system automatically contacts the appropriate government officials and offers them an opportunity to confirm or deny submitted data. But like an FBI file, information is not purged if the subject denies its veracity; the denial is simply added to the file. McKinley wryly added that those government officials who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear from GIA. McKinley enthusiastically encourages participation by "programmers, political activists from all denominations, lawyers and anyone else who is interested in supporting GIA." "Computers alone cannot monitor the government," said McKinley. "While we can aggregate data that already exists, a lot of valuable information is not stored in existing databases, but rather in the collective knowledge of the American citizenry. GIA introduces a way to consolidate and share this knowledge." "The MIT program is a wonderful idea: sunshine disinfects," said political activist Bill Scannell, who has recently been engaged in a battle against the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, which would require background checks on all airline passengers when they book an airline ticket. These background checks would review credit reports, banking and criminal records. "As their employers, we American citizens have more of a right to know about government workers living at public expense than they have to know about us," Scannell said. GIA looks like a standard website, but it is actually a suite of information technologies that actively peruse data, accept contributions and post alerts about government. "We've had to solve the problem of how to build a useful, egalitarian and massively scaleable database of sensitive information collected from diverse and unknown sources," said McKinley. GIA is "open source" -- the databases it utilizes are openly presented for public perusal and use elsewhere. "If we are to maintain a democracy, it's crucial to ensure accountability," said Csikszentmihályi. "At least as much effort should be spent developing technologies that allows citizens to track their government as for government to monitor civilians."

[Timber Loftis]

Idea sounds great. Of course, it's sad that our only tactic is to fight back vs. the gov't with what they do to us. In fact, GIA *should have always* existed and TIA should be banned.

Anyway, site won't load for me ATM, but I'll try later. Could by my firm's firewall and access limitations -- dunno.

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Idea sounds great. Of course, it's sad that our only tactic is to fight back vs. the gov't with what they do to us. In fact, GIA *should have always* existed and TIA should be banned. Anyway, site won't load for me ATM, but I'll try later. Could by my firm's firewall and access limitations -- dunno.

Yeah, the site took a few minutes to load the second time through for me, after I refreshed from page unavailable error. Perhaps the word is out on it and it has a lot of traffic. That can't be a bad thing! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Interesting, on the Executive branch page, it lists all of our Presidents and includes what religion they were/are and who they appointed.

Sounds like an interesting idea, will be good to see what they produce.

However, (you knew there was going to be one [img]smile.gif[/img] ) I want to point out that MIT in particular is one of the most....biased organizations I have ever come accross. I subscribe to the MIT Technology in Review Magazine and have to say, that while they are great at tech...they are lousey at keeping their personal biases and political slants out of the science articles. I really hate this. If you are going to do science, don't use it as a cover for your political spin please. It owuld be nice to read a technical review without having to wade through the bush jokes, slams and or innuendo.

[antryg]

Magik, don't you think it is a good thing to know the bias of any particular source? Let's face it, we are all biased. For instance if you told me a personal story that made ex-President Clinton the hero and a paragon of integrity and virtue, I would be more likely to believe it than if that same story appeared in The New York Times. Knowing the bias of a source helps lend credibility or disbelief to a report or story.

Especially in politics it is to often the case where my facts are correct and true and your facts are invalid because they are biased (in a way I don't like).
Let's acknowledge our bias and then present the facts/truth as we see it.

[Chewbacca]

Hey MagiK, maybe you shouldn't check out that site in case its all fact based encyclopedic information. I would hate to be responsible for ruining your opinion of M.I.T. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Just kidding! From what I saw it is all fact based encyclopedic information, but they have a "server overload" message up most the time, so I haven't been able to dig too deep. I guess a lot of people wanted to check out the goverment for the server to be overloaded so much. To quote myself, that can't be a bad thing! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[*\Conan/*]

Site Lets Citizens Monitor 'Big Brother'

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page E01


Ryan McKinley relishes the idea of turning Big Brother on his head.

Concerned about expanded government monitoring of individuals, McKinley, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has created an Internet repository for citizens to provide information about public officials, corporations and their executives.

The result, he hopes, will be a giant set of databases that show the web of connections that often fuel politics and policymaking, such as old school ties, shared club memberships and campaign donations.

McKinley, 26, was inspired by the military's Terrorism Information Awareness program, a controversial effort to use computers to look for patterns from seemingly disparate financial and other personal data as a way of tracking and halting potential terrorists.

"In order to avoid a totalitarian world, we need to figure out ways to make sure it doesn't become unilateral," said McKinley, who is careful not to disparage efforts to combat terrorism.

So McKinley, an Orinda, Calif., native who is using the project as his master's thesis for a degree in media arts and science, is drawing on the information-gathering prowess of millions of Internet users.

Dubbing it the Government Information Awareness project, McKinley has written a series of computer programs that will allow users to "scrape" existing online databases and add the information to his site (opengov.media.mit.edu). Individuals can also plug in information they might have developed or have access to, a potential boon for whistleblowers, said McKinley's thesis adviser, assistant professor Christopher Csikszentmihalyi.

So far, McKinley has populated the site with data from available sources such as lists of White House appointments of agency heads, biographies of members of Congress and campaign-contribution data compiled by public-interest groups. McKinley said he wanted to "seed" the site with such information to give people a sense of what was possible.

A search for a particular member of Congress yields a page of the accumulated information, providing in one place what might now require visiting multiple Web sites. Ultimately, McKinley said, such a search might include links to lawsuits involving that legislator, or information showing that a certain legislator and a big campaign donor were fraternity brothers in college.

The site also breaks down information by category, including the judiciary and major companies. McKinley even envisions the system tracking local officials and companies.

But unlike the tightly controlled TIA, formerly known as the Total Information Awareness program, McKinley wants no part of determining what is relevant or important information. Otherwise, he said, "there would be no hope of it being a democratic system."

McKinley acknowledges that this makes the site vulnerable to political extremists or individuals with axes to grind who might post scurrilous information about particular officials. The Web has already been the scene of notoriously bogus sites aimed at discrediting certain officeholders or executives.

McKinley developed some controls that he hopes will give readers of the site the chance to properly evaluate the quality of information posted.

Posters of information must identify themselves, although they are allowed to choose aliases when using the system. The object of the posted information is alerted, so that he or she can confirm or deny the truth of the material. The material always will get posted, but it will carry the response from the individual.

And a user can set the system to disregard certain posters whom the user regards as untrustworthy.

Over time, McKinley said, he hopes the system will self-regulate, with relevant and responsible information drowning out the false.

"I'm curious to see what happens," said McKinley, who pledged to stay with the project until it is self-sustaining.

Courts have generally held that Web site operators are not legally liable for misleading or even libelous postings by others.

Some information, however, might be more than a little unsettling to public officials, even if accurate. Soon after the Total Information Awareness program was announced, for example, enterprising Internet denizens posted for all to see the telephone number, home address and a picture of the residence of John Poindexter, the head of the program.

A TIA spokeswoman yesterday said the agency had no comment on McKinley's effort.

Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., head of technology policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the site is a natural evolution of the power of technology that can help check government abuse.

"If we're going to be watched, we have a right to watch the watchers," Crews said, likening the program to individuals videotaping police officers in the act of making arrests.

He said that if the McKinley site is hijacked by irresponsible parties, a better, more judicious site will take its place.

Many features of the site are not yet working, in part because it has been deluged with visitors and cannot handle the volume.

A special tracker monitors C-SPAN, the television network that broadcasts government proceedings, and can alert users when someone they are interested in comes on the air. Users can also set up the system to monitor a particular lawmaker and be alerted when new information on that person is added to the system.


*\Conan/*

[ 07-08-2003, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: *\Conan/* ]

Antryg...I hadn't thought of that...good point [img]smile.gif[/img]

Chewie.... good one. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]