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First POST: Decay

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, May 21 2014

The USA Freedom Act surveillance reform bill is getting watered down; Data.gov's 5th anniversary is no cause for celebration; Iran cracks down on "Happy" YouTube video sharers; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Civics Lessons

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, May 5 2014

Code for America wants civic tech to work for everyone, not just City Hall; how Netflix faces an uphill battle for influence in Washington, DC; why Bitcoin is a scam; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Civics Lessons

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, May 5 2014

Code for America wants civic tech to work for everyone, not just City Hall; how Netflix faces an uphill battle for influence in Washington, DC; why Bitcoin is a scam; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Corruption, Shmorruption!

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, April 2 2014

The Supreme Court upends the rest of the campaign finance system; Mozilla's embattled CEO makes his case; peer-to-peer mobile bluetooth messaging service FireChat takes off in Taiwan; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Can You Hear Me Now?

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, December 17 2013

Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon blasts the NSA's phone metadata collection program; Edward Snowden sees vindication in the preliminary ruling; the Internet Archive unveils an amazing visualization of the "geography of US TV news"; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Taking Over

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, November 26 2013

How privacy concerns will fit into the next populist wave in US politics; Glenn Greenwald and Paul Carr spar; why the number of lobbyists in Washington is probably double what you think; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Reverberations

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, October 7 2013

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: The NSA vs the Tor Project; was Healthcare.gov just overwhelmed by unexpected demand; China's "maker" movement; the Supreme Court still "doesn't get" email; and much, much more. Read More

Disclosure: I'm Joining Public Lab's Board, and Here's Why

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, January 28 2013

Department of Disclosure update: I'm pleased to announce that I've joined the volunteer board of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. Founded in 2011 by a collective of seven, Public Lab, as it's known in short, is a community that develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation, like balloon mapping and kitchen-table spectrometers. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible “Do-It-Yourself” techniques, Public Laboratory is nurturing a collaborative network of practitioners who are actively re-imagining the human relationship with the environment. Read More

Posting Calendars Ain't Easy, at Least at the CFPB

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, March 25 2011

Posting the calendars of elected officials was one of the earliest calls to come out of the open government movement, but the Consumer Financial Protection Board's Matt Burton suggests one possible reason pick-up has ... Read More

Can I Get a Witness...to Declare Their Financial Ties

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 9 2011

From the transparency-in-action files, observed: popping up on congressional committee websites now are the "Truth in Testimony" declarations that are newly required to be posted within a day alongside ... Read More

News Briefs

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NYC Open Data Advocates Focus on Quality And Value Over Quantity

The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications plans to publish more than double the amount of datasets this year than it published to the portal last year, new Commissioner Anne Roest wrote last week in an annual report mandated by the city's open data law, with 135 datasets scheduled to be released this year, and almost 100 more to come in 2015. But as preparations are underway for City Council open data oversight hearings in the fall, what matters more to advocates than the absolute number of the datasets is their quality. GO

Civic Tech and Engagement: Announcing a New Series on What Makes it "Thick"

Announcing a new series of feature articles that we will be publishing over the next several months, thanks to the support of the Rita Allen Foundation. Our focus is on digitally-enabled civic engagement, and in particular, how and under what conditions "thick" digital civic engagement occurs. What we're after is answers to this question: When does a tech tool or platform enable actual people to make ongoing and significant contributions to each other, to a place or cause, at a scale that produces demonstrable change? GO

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Tweets2Rue Helps Homeless to Help Themselves Through Twitter

While most solutions to homelessness focus on addressing physical needs -- a roof over the head and food to eat -- one initiative in France known as Tweets2Rue knows that for the homeless, a house is still not a home, so to speak: the homeless are often entrenched in a viscous cycle of social isolation that keeps them invisible and powerless. GO

Oakland's Sudo Mesh Looks to Counter Censorship and Digital Divide With a Mesh Network

In Oakland, a city with deep roots in radical activism and a growing tech scene at odds with the hyper-capital-driven Silicon Valley, those at the Sudo Room hackerspace believe that the solution to a wide range of problems, from censorship to the digital divide, is a mesh net, a type of decentralized network that is resilient to censorship and disruption and can also bring connectivity to poor communities.

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