How I love the internet! Selma
----- Original Message ----- > Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 5:12 PM Subject: Website turns tables on government officials http://business.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/07/04/website_ > turns_tables_on_government_officials# > > or > http://tinyurl.com/g3wu > > Boston Globe > July 4, 2003 > By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff > > Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system, two > researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are celebrating > the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will let citizens > create dossiers on government officials. > > The system will start by offering standard background information on > politicians, but then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users > to submit their own intelligence reports on government officials -- > reports that will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy. > > "It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency," said Chris > Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab. > > He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information > Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total > Information Awareness program (TIA). > > Revealed last year, TIA seeks to track possible terrorist activity by > analyzing vast amounts of information stored in government and private > databases, such as credit card data. The system would use this information > to analyze the actions of millions of people, in an effort to spot > patterns that could indicate a terrorist threat. > > News of the plan outraged civil libertarians and prompted Congress to set > limits on the scope of such activity. The Defense Department then renamed > the program Terrorist Information Awareness, to ease public concern. > > But the controversy gave McKinley the idea for the GIA project. "If total > information exists," he said, "really the same effort should be spent to > make the same information at the leadership level at least as transparent > -- in my opinion, more transparent." > > McKinley worked with Csikszentmihalyi to design the GIA system. It's > partly based on technology used to create Internet indexes such as Google. > Software crawls around Internet sites that store large amounts of > information about politicians. These include independent political sites > like opensecrets.org, as well as sites run by government agencies. > McKinley created software that ferrets out the useful data from these > sites, and loads it into the GIA database. The result is a one-stop > research site for basic information on key officials. > > The site also takes advantage of round-the-clock political coverage > provided by cable TV's C-Span networks. McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi use > video cameras to capture images of people appearing on C-Span, which > generally includes the names of people shown on screen. A computer program > "reads" each name, and links it to any information about that person > stored in the database. By clicking on the picture, a GIA user instantly > gets a complete rundown on all available data about that person. > > The GIA site constantly displays snapshots of the people appearing on > C-Span at that moment. If there's a dossier on a particular person, > clicking on the picture brings it up. A C-Span viewer watching a live > government hearing could learn which companies have contributed to a > member of Congress's reelection campaign, before the politician had even > finished speaking. > > All of the information currently on the site is available from public > sources. But GIA will go one step further. Starting today, the site will > allow the public to submit information about government officials, and > this information will be made available to anyone visiting the site. No > effort will be made to verify the accuracy of the data. > > This approach to Internet publishing isn't new. It resembles a method > known as Wiki, in which a website is constantly amended by visitors who > contribute new information. The best known Wiki site, www.wikipedia.org, > is an online encyclopedia created entirely by visitors who have > voluntarily written nearly 140,000 articles, on subjects ranging from > astronomy to Roman mythology. Any Wikipedia user who thinks he has spotted > an error or wants to add information can modify the article. Unlike at a > standard encyclopedia operation, there is no central authority to edit or > reject articles. > > The GIA approach, though, raises the possibility that people could post > libelous information, or data that unreasonably compromises a person's > privacy. > > That troubles Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology & Liberty > Program of the American Civil Liberties Union. "We think that there should > be some restrictions on the publishing of personally identifiable > information, whether it involves government officials or not," he said. > > But he noted that the public has a right to know some things about a > politician that would be properly kept private about an ordinary citizen. > For instance, voters have a right to know where a politician sends his > children to school, if that politician has taken a strong stand on school > vouchers. > > "Do they have the right to publish every piece of data they're going to > publish?" Steinhardt asked. "It's going to depend on what they publish." > > In any case, Steinhardt said, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi have a First > Amendment right to set up the GIA project. And he said that it's a > valuable response to the government's TIA surveillance. "I assume the > point of this is, turnabout is fair play." > > On a page of the GIA website, at opengov.media.mit.edu, McKinley and > Csikszentmihalyi give their answer to questions about the legitimacy of > their actions. > > "Is it legal?" the site reads. "It should be." > > Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
