[Peace-discuss] GIA

[John Baldridge]

What an excellent idea.  I've been exploring the site, and I think it has
great potential to become a powerful grassroots watchdog tool.  At the
moment, the site is probably overloaded with traffic; they will need a
better server/connection.  I also have questions about how information is
verified, and who is in charge of moderating the content of the site.
Still, I like it.

John.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Paula Velde" <velde at students.uiuc.edu>
To: "SPA core discuss list" <spa-core-l at listserv.uiuc.edu>;
<peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com>
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 10:57 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] GIA


>
>
>
> MIT Media Lab unveiled Government Information Awareness (GIA) today.
> -paula
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59495,00.html
>
> http://opengov.media.mit.edu/
>
> Government Prying, The Good Kind
> by Michelle Delio, Wired News
>
> "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest,"
> according to the architect of the Declaration of Independence and third
> president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.
>
> Given that sentiment, it's tempting to think Jefferson would have approved
> of a new Web-based repository intended to close what the site's developers
> describe as an ever-widening gap between citizens' ability to monitor the
> government and the government's ability to monitor its citizens.
>
> Researchers at the MIT Media Lab unveiled the Government Information
> Awareness, or GIA, website Friday. Using applications developed at the
> Media Lab, GIA collects and collates information about government
> programs, plans and politicians from the general public and numerous
> online sources. Currently the database contains information on more than
> 3,000 public figures.
>
> The premise of GIA is that if the government has a right to know personal
> details about citizens, then citizens have a right to similar information
> about the government.
>
> GIA was inspired by the federal government's Terrorist Information
> Awareness, or TIA, program. Government officials have said that TIA's sole
> purpose is to identify potential terrorists by comparing information in a
> broad range of databases that might point to patterns indicative of
> terrorist activity.
>
> But many privacy advocates see TIA as an overly intrusive effort to
> monitor Americans' lives in minute detail, from credit card purchases to
> travel plans.
>
> "Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form their
> own intelligence agency; to gather, sort and act on information they
> gather about the government," said MIT graduate student Ryan McKinley, who
> developed GIA under the direction of Christopher Csikszentmih lyi, an
> assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab's Computing Culture group.
>
> "Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government by
> the people and for the people," McKinley said.
>
> GIA allows people to explore data, track events, find patterns and build
> profiles related to specific government officials or political issues.
> Information about campaign finance, corporate ties and even religion and
> schooling can be accessed easily. Real-time alerts can be generated when
> news of interest is breaking.
>
> "History shows that when information is concentrated in the hands of an
> elite, democracy suffers," said Csikszentmih lyi. "The writers of the
> Constitution told us that if people mean to be their own governors, they
> must arm themselves with information. This project brings that American
> spirit of self-governance into the era of networked information
> technology."
>
> GIA site users can submit information about public figures and government
> programs anonymously. In an attempt to ensure the accuracy of submitted
> data, the system automatically contacts the appropriate government
> officials and offers them an opportunity to confirm or deny submitted
> data.
>
> But like an FBI file, information is not purged if the subject denies its
> veracity; the denial is simply added to the file. McKinley wryly added
> that those government officials who have nothing to hide have nothing to
> fear from GIA.
>
> McKinley enthusiastically encourages participation by "programmers,
> political activists from all denominations, lawyers and anyone else who is
> interested in supporting GIA."
>
> "Computers alone cannot monitor the government," said McKinley. "While we
> can aggregate data that already exists, a lot of valuable information is
> not stored in existing databases, but rather in the collective knowledge
> of the American citizenry. GIA introduces a way to consolidate and share
> this knowledge."
>
> "The MIT program is a wonderful idea: sunshine disinfects," said political
> activist Bill Scannell, who has recently been engaged in a battle against
> the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, which
> would require background checks on all airline passengers when they book
> an airline ticket. These background checks would review credit reports,
> banking and criminal records.
>
> "As their employers, we American citizens have more of a right to know
> about government workers living at public expense than they have to know
> about us," Scannell said.
>
> GIA looks like a standard website, but it is actually a suite of
> information technologies that actively peruse data, accept contributions
> and post alerts about government.
>
> "We've had to solve the problem of how to build a useful, egalitarian and
> massively scaleable database of sensitive information collected from
> diverse and unknown sources," said McKinley.
>
> GIA is "open source" -- the databases it utilizes are openly presented for
> public perusal and use elsewhere.
>
> "If we are to maintain a democracy, it's crucial to ensure
> accountability," said Csikszentmih lyi. "At least as much effort should be
> spent developing technologies that allows citizens to track their
> government as for government to monitor civilians."
> ----------------------------
>
>
> paula velde
> velde at uiuc.edu
> www.uiuc.edu/ro/sila
> www.uiuc.edu/ro/peaceaction
>
> "there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent
> people" - howard zinn
>
>
>
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