MIT project lets citizens 'Google' feds (counter Terror infowith Fed info)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/06/government.google.ap/index.html

MIT project lets citizens 'Google' feds
Site lets public track government officials
Monday, July 7, 2003 Posted: 10:35 AM EDT (1435 GMT)

http://opengov.media.mit.edu/GIA/TIA/

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- Its creators hope it will become a Google of government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of information to help citizens track their leaders as effectively as their leaders track them. On Friday, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab debuted a Web site called "Government Information Awareness," that aspires to be far more than just another, dime-a-dozen assemblage of government documents and resources. Instead, GIA hopes to create a self-sustaining community where, as occurs with popular Web sites eBay and Google, the users keep it running and credible. <Snip>

GIA's name and mission are a kind of reverse version of "Terrorism Information Awareness," a $20 million Pentagon project to help sift through electronic information with the goal of preventing terrorist attacks. "It seemed very odd that the same level of effort isn't spent working on technologies that help citizens understand the government's links, networking and influences," said Ryan McKinley, a graduate student behind the project. McKinley hopes it will offer new ways to pull together information, helping users, for instance, identify politicians who belonged to the same fraternity, then cross-referencing the list to their voting records or campaign contributions. McKinley has "seeded" the site with politics-related databases but beginning Friday its content will be contributed largely by users. For example: posting an environmental group's ranking of a senator's voting record. <snip>

but the link was slashdotted. This is some impressive stuff. Their bots will "watch" C-Span for information, and alert you if someone you have flagged appears. Impressive.

I was thinking about something like this a few years ago, but I didn't have the time or will to follow through on such a massive databasing project.

Three cheers for MIT.

Jeremy

the info has credibility with the media that we'd have a hard time getting.

This could be a really important innovation. The mind boggles. It sure turns the tables on the creepy TIA project. This may be a bigger part of our political future than it may at first appear.

Nice work MIT!

- B

This could be very helpful (gross understatement).