One of the many perks of being at the Berkman Center this year has been to learn about all sorts of interesting and important legal matters that otherwise would either not make it on my radar or would be hard for me to appreciate/understand without background and context. The New York Times now reports on an issue that Berkman fellow Steve Schultze first introduced me to last Fall: the complexity involved in accessing unclassified government documents online that are theoretically free to the public, but in reality can be quite hard to access. The article identifies some major problems with PACER (the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records system) and also discusses some important efforts to make the material more accessible to the public. Included is work by (and an interesting photo of:) CT commenter – but more importantly friend of CT;) – Aaron Swartz.
Steve’s blog points us to Show Us the Data whose purpose is to “identify the 10 Most Wanted Government Documents”, that is, “unclassified documents or data that .. exist–on paper or in government computers and databases–that would be of value to the public if posted and regularly updated on an agency’s Web site.” Check out Steve’s blog and that voting site for more on truly freeing up free government documents.
{ 22 comments }
HH 02.13.09 at 3:08 pm
Domain boundaries are carefully guarded by organizations. Organizations whose domain is the assembly and control of information jealously guard access to that information. The radical threat of the public Internet to the integrity of most of these information access boundaries is now well understood, and stealthy rear-guard actions are under way to retard Internet-enabled public access to information of all kinds.
The best guidance for understanding what is happening is T.S. Elliot’s observation that
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Thus we will hear endless claims made that organizations are protecting privacy, accuracy, political sensitivity, and efficiency – all in the name of retarding simple schemes of universal access to information that was formerly closely held. This is why the institutional transparency heralded in Gelernter’s “Mirror Worlds” will take ten times longer to achieve than common sense would dictate. People are very adept at concealing their motivations.
Aaron Swartz 02.13.09 at 4:07 pm
I believe this is the second or third time that CT has referred to me as a CT commenter. I wonder if I get an official membership card at some point. Or perhaps a promotion to “friend of the blog”?
Michael Weiksner 02.13.09 at 4:23 pm
I had a crash course in the intricacies of public records with a viral GOTV campaign in 2003 called ‘RegisteredToVoteOrNot.com’ (now defunct). The NYT surprised us by covering it on the front page. But unfortunately, the angle: “Online public records–too public?” There is definitely a difference between theoretically- and practically-available information.
But I really wanted to add a tweet I read yesterday: ” dweinberger: Wish the Stimulus contained $100M to scan the Library of Congress into The Commons. Ah, dreams! ” Some information would clearly be a great investment in creativity and the public good, with little or no downside imaginable.
tom s. 02.13.09 at 4:40 pm
Too modest.
You should offer CT an “As commented on by Aaron Swartz!” sticker for their front page.
Eszter Hargittai 02.13.09 at 4:42 pm
Aaron, how would you like to be referred to next time? It seems it would have been presumptuous of me to say “friend of the blog”, but if you give me permission, I’m happy to do that next time.;-) (I can’t speak for my co-bloggers, but I like to include bits like that, because it seems helpful to acknowledge connections of that sort when they exist.)
Eszter Hargittai 02.13.09 at 4:43 pm
Tom, cute.
Sumana Harihareswara 02.13.09 at 6:11 pm
Y’all know about AltLaw, right?
Eszter Hargittai 02.13.09 at 7:13 pm
Yes, thanks Sumana, it’s one of the resources mentioned in the NYTimes article.
salacious 02.13.09 at 7:18 pm
“Included is work by (and an interesting photo of:) CT commenter Aaron Swartz.”
http://www.xkcd.com/541/
Aaron Swartz 02.13.09 at 8:15 pm
I’ll trade an “As commented on” sticker for a “friend of the blog” sticker any day. And that goes for Whimsley too, Tom!
Eszter Hargittai 02.13.09 at 8:35 pm
Got it, post updated.;)
Matt 02.13.09 at 8:58 pm
Man, I sent in my 10 box-tops and $5 to Henry for my “friend of CT” button _months_ ago and am still waiting. I’m starting to think it might have been some sort of scam…
beamish 02.14.09 at 12:30 am
This post illustrates the importance of Randall Munroe’s TED presentation.
Righteous Bubba 02.14.09 at 12:37 am
Somewhat OT trivia:
Brett Bellmore 02.14.09 at 12:41 pm
“Wish the Stimulus contained $100M to scan the Library of Congress into The Commons. ”
Who knows, maybe it does. Nobody would know, including the members who voted on it. The stimulus package is certainly a great example of opacity: Released hours before the vote in the form of unscanable PDF, with so little bandwidth allocated people are still trying to download the huge files.
Obama’s transparency promise didn’t last long…
salient 02.14.09 at 4:37 pm
Salacious – I think Eszter’s found the solution to that problem, actually. It’s the awkward spacing that makes Randall’s parentheticals look mismatched. Or use \ddots{\smile}?
Ginger Yellow 02.14.09 at 7:26 pm
Hey, at least the US has Pacer. I work directly opposite London’s Royal Court of Justice and it’s still a pain in the arse getting supposedly public documents.
KCinDC 02.14.09 at 9:33 pm
I see Brett is spreading the latest Limbaugh lie.
Ginger Yellow 02.14.09 at 9:46 pm
It was released though, which is more than you can say for some bills. Support the Read The Bills Act/
Brett Bellmore 02.15.09 at 2:07 pm
I think “mistake” is probably a better choice of words, but I’ve just confirmed that the pdf is searchable.
KCinDC 02.15.09 at 9:43 pm
Maybe Brett’s statement was a mistake rather than a lie, but I don’t think the same applies to Limbaugh. Has he issued a correction?
Brett Bellmore 02.16.09 at 12:33 pm
If never getting around to issuing a correction for a mistake makes it a lie, our newspapers are full of lies. (And, indeed, I’ve noticed that journalists’ mistakes seldom undermine their papers’ editorial stances.) Are we holding Limbaugh to a higher standard than, say, the Detroit Free Press? (Which I fought a decades long losing battle with, to get them to live up to their corrections ‘policy’.)
I’m all for the idea that journalistic mistakes should be corrected without exception, but maybe we could get journalists to adopt that policy before entertainers.
None the less, I’ll suggest it.
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