Transparency

Release The TPP Text: Light Brigade And Sit-In

December 5, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Petitions and Online Actions Democracy, Sovereignty, TPP, Transparency

In Australia and New Zealand last month, tens of thousands of people turned out to protest the TPP. Most of the anti-TPP protests in Japan have been attended by thousands of people too. Can we do the same in Washington,DC? The more of us who show up, the stronger our message will be to the negotiators and the administration that the era of trade deals that undermine our democracy and sovereignty and that threaten human rights and the future of the planet is over. It's time to stop trying to sneak these corporate give-aways through Congress and move to an era of trade that works for everyone, that protects people and the planet rather than destroying them. Our focus while the trade negotiators are here is to release the text of the TPP to the public so we can understand what is being written in our name.

TPP Talks Come To DC: Time To Release The Text!

November 22, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corporatism, TPP, Transparency

We've just learned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators are coming to Washington, DC in early December so that the President can finalize the text. As you may well know, the parts of the TPP that we've seen show that this agreement will severely undermine our ability to protect our communities and the planet. The TPP extends way beyond a traditional trade agreement and puts in place laws that would not pass through Congress in the light of day. The TPP deregulates corporations and gives them enhanced power to sue from the local to the national level if laws interfere with their expected profits. And the court that would be used operates outside of our legal system and can't be challenged. Imagine life if the TPP passes: we would not be able to ban fracking or stop corporations from other toxic practices; we would not be able to give preference to local producers of goods and services; and we would lose more jobs to countries with lower wages and worker protections which would hasten the race to the bottom.

Lessons From Iceland’s Failed Open Source Constitution

October 5, 2014 Helene Landemore, www.slate.com Organize! Constitution, Democracy, Transparency

Who should write the constitution of a democratic country and, indeed, any country? The answer seems obvious: its people. Yet the constitutions of existing states, including democratic ones, have usually been written by small, rather unrepresentative subsets of individuals. Solon is supposed to have single-handedly laid out the foundations of democratic Athens. The U.S. Constitution was penned by a few dozen white men. More recent examples of constitutional processes involve the usual elites: professional politicians and state bureaucrats. But even elected or otherwise democratically authorized constitutional drafters are at best metaphorically, “We, the People.” Not only are typical constitutional processes rather exclusionary and elitist, but they also tend to be characterized by an utter lack of transparency.

Copwatch Cameras Being Shared In Ferguson

August 29, 2014 GoFundMe, www.gofundme.com Create! Camera, Ferguson, Militarization, Police, Transparency

WeCopwatch has been on the ground in Ferguson for the last week Copwatching and connecting with residents in the Cantfield neighborhood. (the location where Mike Brown was murdered). The space is autonomous, and has been stepping up as a community to be able to host the large volumes of people who come to pay their respects, and to also have a safe space for those who are grieving. There is a general consensus that more cameras are needed and with daily police attacks, it makes sense to to get them into people's hands as soon as possible. We're in the process of getting a bulk camera order together so that residents in each building in Cantfield Neighborhood have cameras. Protesting will eventually slow down, but this is the type of mutual aide that is lasting and extremely effective.

Hard Questions Raised By Officers Wearing Cameras

August 25, 2014 Vivian Ho, www.sfgate.com Educate! Cameras, Police, Transparency

Police departments around the Bay Area and the country are equipping officers with wearable cameras in an effort to capture video evidence that could head off the kind of dispute that exploded after an officer killed an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo. Use of the cameras is now expected to swell, with Ferguson among the cities planning to buy them as part of a profound shift in law enforcement that comes two decades after the mass emergence of videos of violent police encounters. But while police leaders and critics are in rare agreement over the cameras - the watchdogs see accountability, the police see a way to protect officers from unfounded accusations - the technology's spread is raising questions. In some cases, including a friendly-fire shooting that left a BART sergeant dead in January, officers failed to turn on cameras at crucial moments. Attorneys for people shot by police have had to sue to see footage. And it remains a point of debate whether an officer who shoots someone should be able to review the video before making an official statement. Moreover, videos of police shootings do not necessarily calm debate over whether they are justified. Police in St. Louis released a cell phone video this week of two officers killing a suspect who advanced with a knife, an effort to show the shooting was warranted in the wake of the controversial killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, which was not video-recorded.

Secretive White House Office For Lobbyists

August 4, 2014 Heather Rogers, www.propublica.org Educate! Lobbyists, Secrecy, Transparency, White House

In early 2011, after years of study, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration moved to reduce the permissible levels of silica dust wafted into the air by industrial processes like fracking, mining or cement manufacturing. The move came after years of public comment and hearings, and reflected emerging science about the dangers posed by even low levels of dust. OSHA predicted the rule would save 700 lives annually and prevent 1,600 new cases of silicosis, an incurable, life-threatening disease. The proposal stirred fierce opposition from an array of industries, which argued that the costs of reducing silica levels far outweighed the potential benefits. When OSHA pushed ahead, the lobbyists took their arguments to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a division of the Office of Management and Budget. Few people have ever heard of OIRA even though it is part of the White House and has broad authority to delay or suggest changes in any draft regulation. OIRA's deliberations on the silica rule began in February 2011, and lasted two and a half years. During that time, records show, its officials held nine meetings with lobbyists and lawyers for the affected industries, but sat down only once with unions and once with health advocates. Last August, the office sent a revised version of the rule back to OSHA; the worker protection agency has yet to act.

Snowden Proved Right: You Can’t Work Inside The System

July 6, 2014 Greg Miller, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! CIA, Secrecy, Transparency

“I submitted a FOIA and it basically destroyed my entire career,” Scudder said. “What was this whole exercise for?" His request set in motion a harrowing sequence. He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension. In an interview, Scudder, 51, cast his ordeal as a struggle against “mindless” bureaucracy, but acknowledged that it was hard to see any winners in a case that derailed his CIA career, produced no criminal charges from the FBI, and ended with no guarantee that many of the articles he sought will be in the public domain anytime soon.

1.8 Million People Call For TPP To Be Made Public

June 4, 2014 Fuseworks Media, www.voxy.co.nz Resist! Petition, Popular Protest, TPP, Transparency

A petition of more than 1.8 million people worldwide, calling for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be made public has been delivered to Australia’s Parliament this morning. Australian Parliamentarians and representatives from a range of Australian and international organisations, including 350.org, Avaaz and SumOfUs, have joined forces to call on the negotiating Governments to disclose the details of the TPP. The TPP is a highly secretive and expansive free trade agreement between the United States and twelve countries in the highly biodiverse Pacific Rim, including Australia, Mexico and New Zealand. To date, it has been negotiated in secret with no external input other than that of 600 corporate lobbyists. Leaked text reveals that the deal would empower corporations, including big oil, coal and gas companies, to directly sue governments in private and non-transparent trade tribunals over laws and policies that they allege reduce their profits.

Why I Don’t Want To See The Drone Memo

May 21, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org Educate! Drones, Transparency

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us a secret memo that gets us out of the bit about Thou-shalt-not-kill. And, lo, as I was driving home from the committee hearing I was pulled over for speeding, and I said unto the officer, "I've got a memo that lets me speed. Would you like to see it?" and he said, "No thank you, and not your grocery list or your diary either." Transparency in drone murders has been a demand pushed by U.N. lawyers and pre-vetted Congressional witnesses, and not by the victims' families. Nobody asks for transparency in child abuse or rape. "Oh, have you got a memo that explains how aliens commanded you to kill and eat those people? Oh, well that's all right then." Seriously, what the filibuster? I don't want to see the memo that David Barron wrote "legalizing" the killing of U.S. citizens with drone strikes, after which (or is it beforehand?) I'll decide whether he should be a federal judge. Laws don't work that way. A law is a public document, known to or knowable to all, and enforced equally on all. If a president can instruct a lawyer to write a memo legalizing murder, what can a president not instruct a lawyer to legalize? What's left of legality?

Transparency Camp Creates Solutions For Better Governance

May 10, 2014 Staff, www.transparencycamp.org Create! Government, Transparency

TransparencyCamp is an "unconference" for opengov, an event where, every year hundreds of people gather to share their knowledge about how to use new technologies and policies to make our government really work for the people—and to help people work smarter with our government. As an "unconference," TransparencyCamp emphasizes the important contributions that each and every attendee brings with them into the sessions, workshops and conversations that are a part of this event. In fact, attendees (yes, all of them) are engaged in the process of making the schedule for the conference (AKA “the wall”) with the organizers and are encouraged to step up and lead sessions themselves. TransparencyCamp was started by the Sunlight Foundation in 2009. Since then, the event has grown dramatically in scope, scale and concept.

November 8-10, Global: Aaron Swartz Memorial Hackathon Events

November 6, 2013 Staff, www.nyc.aaronswartzhackathon.org Resist! Aaron Swartz, Organizing, Transparency

Inspired by the work he did and the people he touched, we are organizing recurring hackathons at locations all over the world in memory of Aaron Swartz. The next set will be synchronized on the weekend of November 8-10, 2013. The event will bring together the varied communities that Aaron touched to figure out how the important problems of the world connect, and to share the load of working on those problems. Within weeks of Aaron's death in January, 20 hackerspaces, schools, and libraries organized Aaron Swartz Memorial Hackathon events all over the world. In our collective shock and grief, we came together to console ourselves, remember Aaron, and, in his memory, to work on important problems ranging all the way from open access advocacy to a web.py database refactor. Half a year later, we still feel an immense shock and loss, and after many conversations with people who attended one of the initial events, still think that we need to be there for each other and focus on the things that are important.

Texas Opens Up Public Officials’ Communications

August 25, 2013 Alisha Green, www.sunlightfoundation.com Create! Government, Transparency

This move, indeed a first of its kind from what we can tell, seems poised to set a new precedent for how public officials' communications are regarded and disclosed, giving Texans an important level of insight into the decision-making process between official proceedings. It also opens up options for the decision makers, who had previously been banned from communicating among each other between official meetings. It's an experiment that, if successful, we hope more states will examine, as most online accessibility to state legislative proceedings is spotty, at best. Of course, the strength of a policy, transparency-related or otherwise, lies in its interpretation and implementation, and we’ve seen plenty of cases in other states where government officials have tried to thwart public records requirements by communicating about public matters on personal email accounts. Thankfully, Texan lawmakers were paying attention, too.

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