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Transparency

Why I Don’t Want To See The Drone Memo

May 21, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org ,
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 ,
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 , ,
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 ,
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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