5 ms·

Transparency is Bunk

75 points by twampss 18y ago

josefresco 18y ago
"The real action is buried in obscure subchapters of innocuous-sounding bills and voted on under emergency provisions that let everything happen without public disclosure." Doesn't sound like transparency to me. The authors point seems to be that efforts to be transparent, aren't actually. If Congress and others are hiding the 'good stuff', we need to work on making that transparent.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  Real transparency would amount to such a large change in the system that it's unrealistic to think it can be tacked on. The scope of work is too large.
  - eli 18y ago
    Yeah, it sounds hard so we probably shouldn't even try.
    - randallsquared 18y ago
      I don't even know where to begin. Aaron has noticed that a simple goal like "transparency" can't be immediately, directly implemented, because the system is such that it's like trying to dig a hole in water. Of course, you can put a hole in water, since that's what a boat is, but doing it incrementally (a piece here, a piece there, then bailing out the water, checking for leaks, etc) is going to be much more difficult than just building a boat out of the water and putting it in. Activists always seem to start out wanting to "just make these specific changes" from within the system, and that usually works, in general, when the changes are in the direction the system is already going, "with the flow," as it were. If you want to make a change that is against the flow, it's far, far easier to make the change away from the system and then drop it in so that the system (government, a corporation, a church, or whatever) is forced to deal with it whole. This is a very interesting topic: part economics, part psychology, part politics, and more; I've spent a lot of time thinking about it over the last 10 years, but I am just an egg, understanding little. :) Re-reading, I notice that this is still unclear, so what I'm saying is that we need to focus on solutions that are primarily technical, because social and political solutions almost never work in the first place and tend to roll back as soon as the pressure lets up. The internet is killing copyright in a way that we anti-copyright folk would never have been able to do with "education" and "reform".
      - eli 18y ago
        I don't think anyone ever claimed transparency was a simple goal.
      - eli 18y ago
        what I'm saying is that we need to focus on solutions that are primarily technical, because social and political solutions almost never work in the first place Really? I think the opposite. I can think of very few times where a social problem has been solved purely by technology. (Anyway, I think the real answer is you need to attack the problem on all fronts at once)
        randallsquared 18y ago
        I can think of very few times where a social problem has been solved purely by technology. Here are some candidates, some more arguable than others: Slavery was destroyed by the steam engine. World wars are no longer rushed into due to nuclear weapons. The Pill contributed strongly to equal treatment for women. The automobile changed sexual mores drastically (whether you view this as a "solved problem" or not). Poverty itself was solved by technology (yeah, I know that statement will be controversial, but I think it's eminently defensible). In fact, I think a case could be made that technology is the only thing that has ever solved a social problem in anything like a permanent fashion.
- quoderat 18y ago
  Or maybe Congress should meet for a few days every few years, so only the really important things ever get worked on.
  - scottdw2 18y ago
    That would never work. To start with, you can't stop members of Congress from associating with each other. If you said "you get one week every 2 years to pass everything", the entire congress would spend 1 year and 51 weeks in secret meetings trying to figuring out what to vote for in their 1 week of voting time. All that would happen as a result is there would be a 2 year back log of legislation, and it would take FOREVER for anything to get done. The only real way to deal with corruption in government is to limit it's power. As long as there are people in power, some of them are going to become corrupt. That's just human nature. The best you can do is limit power, so that the damage they can do is minimized.
    - tjic 18y ago
      > you can't stop members of Congress from associating with each other. Actually, many states have open meeting laws where, if it becomes clear that politicians met and discussed certain topics, it is a crime, and it's punishable. They don't often get used, but I think that the threat does alter behavior at least a bit.
      - ben 18y ago
        I'd like to read about these, particularly about how they could be Constitutional, but I can't seem to find the correct words for a Google search. Would you post a link, or possibly a set of words to search for?
        zk 18y ago
        http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php provides an outline of open meeting laws by state.
    - 18y ago
cjoh 18y ago
What Aaron doesn't give due attention to here is that improving existing government transparency is part of a larger information ecosystem. Digitizing previously paper-bound and siloed databases makes possible a new kind of "connect-the-dots" work that used to take investigative journalists months to do--or they simply didn't even try. His own project, Watchdog.net, has pioneered a new way of finding links, or "handshakes" as he called it, between campaign contributors and congressional earmarks, and the demographic data he's cataloged is going to help power new tools for investigative types to answer such questions as "How many members of Congress who represent districts where X percent of their households have experienced a foreclosure last year voted for the banking bailout?" We're just at the beginning of a new wave of data- and citizen-empowered watchdogging of government, and it would be a huge mistake to discount how valuable these government transparency projects are in opening up the process in fundamentally new ways. Yes, it's true that government still wants to hide its dirt and the data it discloses is often only part of the picture. But the more we open access to the existing data and involve people in connecting the dots, the greater the appetite and demand for even more transparency, of the sort even Aaron might find useful. (My collegue Micah Sifry wrote this with me)
- eli 18y ago
  Indeed, and there are real examples of local reporters uncovering corrupt congressman based on data in these public records. This is a lot harder if they have to travel to DC and sit in a basement reading room to pore over paper ledgers.
  - silentOpen 18y ago
    Where 'harder' is 'more expensive' and we know that the present newspaper model doesn't look like it can support expensive endeavors. Investigative journalism in the info age is only possible if those practicing it have info age tools.
    - eli 18y ago
      Well, yes, but "harder" as in "more difficult" too. It's basically impossible to do anything useful with data stored in a paper ledger that's only available in a basement reading room a few hours a day and copies cost $0.15 a page.
eli 18y ago
Databases of campaign contributions and legislative data are just tools. Posting the data (which is supposedly already "public," but is often hidden in a basement somewhere) online doesn't sprinkle fairy dust over the capital. But people can (and do) use these tools to write books like the ones he links, and to pull data from different sources to uncover specific acts of corruption and malfeasance. Databases are just as useful to reporters and authors as anonymous leaks and insider sources.
eli 18y ago
And that linked Sunlight Foundation essay at the bottom seems awfully ad hominem.

75 points by twampss 18y ago

"The real action is buried in obscure subchapters of innocuous-sounding bills and voted on under emergency provisions that let everything happen without public disclosure." Doesn't sound like transparency to me. The authors point seems to be that efforts to be transparent, aren't actually. If Congress and others are hiding the 'good stuff', we need to work on making that transparent.

randallsquared 18y ago
Real transparency would amount to such a large change in the system that it's unrealistic to think it can be tacked on. The scope of work is too large.
- eli 18y ago
  Yeah, it sounds hard so we probably shouldn't even try.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    I don't even know where to begin. Aaron has noticed that a simple goal like "transparency" can't be immediately, directly implemented, because the system is such that it's like trying to dig a hole in water. Of course, you can put a hole in water, since that's what a boat is, but doing it incrementally (a piece here, a piece there, then bailing out the water, checking for leaks, etc) is going to be much more difficult than just building a boat out of the water and putting it in. Activists always seem to start out wanting to "just make these specific changes" from within the system, and that usually works, in general, when the changes are in the direction the system is already going, "with the flow," as it were. If you want to make a change that is against the flow, it's far, far easier to make the change away from the system and then drop it in so that the system (government, a corporation, a church, or whatever) is forced to deal with it whole. This is a very interesting topic: part economics, part psychology, part politics, and more; I've spent a lot of time thinking about it over the last 10 years, but I am just an egg, understanding little. :) Re-reading, I notice that this is still unclear, so what I'm saying is that we need to focus on solutions that are primarily technical, because social and political solutions almost never work in the first place and tend to roll back as soon as the pressure lets up. The internet is killing copyright in a way that we anti-copyright folk would never have been able to do with "education" and "reform".
    - eli 18y ago
      I don't think anyone ever claimed transparency was a simple goal.
    - eli 18y ago
      what I'm saying is that we need to focus on solutions that are primarily technical, because social and political solutions almost never work in the first place Really? I think the opposite. I can think of very few times where a social problem has been solved purely by technology. (Anyway, I think the real answer is you need to attack the problem on all fronts at once)
      - randallsquared 18y ago
        I can think of very few times where a social problem has been solved purely by technology. Here are some candidates, some more arguable than others: Slavery was destroyed by the steam engine. World wars are no longer rushed into due to nuclear weapons. The Pill contributed strongly to equal treatment for women. The automobile changed sexual mores drastically (whether you view this as a "solved problem" or not). Poverty itself was solved by technology (yeah, I know that statement will be controversial, but I think it's eminently defensible). In fact, I think a case could be made that technology is the only thing that has ever solved a social problem in anything like a permanent fashion.
quoderat 18y ago
Or maybe Congress should meet for a few days every few years, so only the really important things ever get worked on.
- scottdw2 18y ago
  That would never work. To start with, you can't stop members of Congress from associating with each other. If you said "you get one week every 2 years to pass everything", the entire congress would spend 1 year and 51 weeks in secret meetings trying to figuring out what to vote for in their 1 week of voting time. All that would happen as a result is there would be a 2 year back log of legislation, and it would take FOREVER for anything to get done. The only real way to deal with corruption in government is to limit it's power. As long as there are people in power, some of them are going to become corrupt. That's just human nature. The best you can do is limit power, so that the damage they can do is minimized.
  - tjic 18y ago
    > you can't stop members of Congress from associating with each other. Actually, many states have open meeting laws where, if it becomes clear that politicians met and discussed certain topics, it is a crime, and it's punishable. They don't often get used, but I think that the threat does alter behavior at least a bit.
    - ben 18y ago
      I'd like to read about these, particularly about how they could be Constitutional, but I can't seem to find the correct words for a Google search. Would you post a link, or possibly a set of words to search for?
      - zk 18y ago
        http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php provides an outline of open meeting laws by state.
  - 18y ago

cjoh 18y ago

What Aaron doesn't give due attention to here is that improving existing government transparency is part of a larger information ecosystem. Digitizing previously paper-bound and siloed databases makes possible a new kind of "connect-the-dots" work that used to take investigative journalists months to do--or they simply didn't even try. His own project, Watchdog.net, has pioneered a new way of finding links, or "handshakes" as he called it, between campaign contributors and congressional earmarks, and the demographic data he's cataloged is going to help power new tools for investigative types to answer such questions as "How many members of Congress who represent districts where X percent of their households have experienced a foreclosure last year voted for the banking bailout?" We're just at the beginning of a new wave of data- and citizen-empowered watchdogging of government, and it would be a huge mistake to discount how valuable these government transparency projects are in opening up the process in fundamentally new ways. Yes, it's true that government still wants to hide its dirt and the data it discloses is often only part of the picture. But the more we open access to the existing data and involve people in connecting the dots, the greater the appetite and demand for even more transparency, of the sort even Aaron might find useful. (My collegue Micah Sifry wrote this with me)

eli 18y ago
Indeed, and there are real examples of local reporters uncovering corrupt congressman based on data in these public records. This is a lot harder if they have to travel to DC and sit in a basement reading room to pore over paper ledgers.
- silentOpen 18y ago
  Where 'harder' is 'more expensive' and we know that the present newspaper model doesn't look like it can support expensive endeavors. Investigative journalism in the info age is only possible if those practicing it have info age tools.
  - eli 18y ago
    Well, yes, but "harder" as in "more difficult" too. It's basically impossible to do anything useful with data stored in a paper ledger that's only available in a basement reading room a few hours a day and copies cost $0.15 a page.

eli 18y ago

Databases of campaign contributions and legislative data are just tools. Posting the data (which is supposedly already "public," but is often hidden in a basement somewhere) online doesn't sprinkle fairy dust over the capital. But people can (and do) use these tools to write books like the ones he links, and to pull data from different sources to uncover specific acts of corruption and malfeasance. Databases are just as useful to reporters and authors as anonymous leaks and insider sources.

eli 18y ago

And that linked Sunlight Foundation essay at the bottom seems awfully ad hominem.