Open government

Pandering to the base is a tradition as old as politics itself. But in the social media age, it’s easier than ever for politicians to take those tailored messages—the kind they might not like to share with the whole world—and disseminate them only to the people who are most likely to agree. And targeting allows campaigns to silo thousands of possible audiences with just a click, making it harder than ever to hold politicians accountable for all of it.

Some have taken to calling this type of ad a “dark post,” an overly nefarious name for what is, in actuality, just the way digital ads operate today. Technically speaking, Trump's ad buy works the same as one for the pair of Zappos shoes that somehow follows you around the internet. You’re seeing those shoes because Facebook thinks you're in the market for shoes. But President Trump isn’t running a shoe store; still less than a year into his term, he's already running a reelection campaign. And when the president sends one subset of the population a message that the rest of the population can’t see—especially one that's at odds with reality—it feels like a fundamental failure of government transparency.

A group of Democratic senators has joined in a call for the Federal Communications Commission to allow for public "review and comment" on tens of thousands of network-neutrality complaints provided through a Freedom of Information Act request in May, saying the FCC has not provided sufficient opportunity to vet them.

They said the documents were only produced a few days before the August Open Internet Order proceeding deadline and were only posted to the FCC website recently. “Although the Commission has undertaken an historic proceeding to undo the Open Internet Order, the FCC has failed to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to comment on the tens of thousands of filed complaints that directly shed light on proposed changes to existing net neutrality protections,” they wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “The public deserves an opportunity to review and analyze evidence that has a direct impact on the proceeding.” The senators want Chairman Pai to tell them what efforts the FCC has taken to analyze the complaints, responses from ISPs and other documents, how it will incorporate them into the record and when, whether the FCC will issue a public notice and comment cycle on them.

Signing on to the letter were Senators Ed Markey (D-MA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Al Franken (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Kamala Harris (D-CA).

The National Hispanic Media Coalition filed a joint Motion, with 20 additional organizations, in the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding asking the FCC to enter into the record all open internet complaints, ombudsperson correspondence, and carrier responses since the 2015 Open Internet Order, and set a comment period to allow for public input on the new evidence. NHMC initially asked for all related documents in May and, as of this writing, has not received any of the attachments to the ombudsperson emails and has received only 823 pages of the 18,000 carrier responses to consumer complaints about issues they experienced.

It’s easy to get fixated on all the “smart” innovations out there—roads that talk to you, cars that talk to the road, and all kinds of sensors. But if it’s not the gadget that makes a city smart, then what does?

The heart of a smart city is actually the data and the brain is using that data to change your decision-making process, to make you react faster in cases where the city needs to react, to make you predictive where you can be to save money or provide a better service, or to give you a better appreciation of what's happening in your city. 85 percent of the data that you need to run a smart city, you’ve probably already got. Any city can be a smart city, or a smarter city, just by getting better control of their data and by understanding what it's saying to them. And it's going to say something different to every city, because every city has different needs and requirements, and different governance structures.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly tore into President Trump’s voter commission for reneging on a promise to fully disclose public documents before a July 19 meeting, ordering the government to meet new transparency requirements and eliciting an apology from administration lawyers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly of Washington said the Election Integrity Commission released only an agenda and proposed bylaws before its first meeting at the White House complex. But once gathered, commissioners sat with thick binders that included documents the public had not seen, including a specially-prepared report and a 381-page “database” purporting to show 1,100 cases of voter fraud, both from the Heritage Foundation, and also received a typed list of possible topics to address from the panel vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the panel’s after-the-fact argument was “incredible” when it said it did not believe documents prepared by individual commissioners for the July meeting had to have been posted in advance.

Shortly after Ajit Pai was named chair of the Federal Communications Commission in February, he said he wanted the agency to be “as open and accessible as possible to the American people." Six months on, the agency is falling short of Pai’s lofty goal in some key areas.

Critics are especially concerned about the FCC’s handling of complaints from the public about internet providers and the causes of a May 7 outage of the public-comments section of the agency’s website. "Chairman Pai promised to make the FCC more transparent, but the early returns aren't looking good," said Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). "The FCC seems more concerned with helping Big Cable than living up to his promise." Many complaints about a lack of transparency at the FCC relate to the commission’s plan to reverse some of its net-neutrality rules, which prohibit internet providers from favoring some forms of traffic over others. The FCC’s proceeding failed to mention that the agency has received more than 47,000 informal complaints about alleged net-neutrality violations since the rules took effect in 2015.

Governments increasingly rely on mathematical formulas to inform decisions about criminal justice, child welfare, education, and other arenas. Yet it’s often hard or impossible for citizens to see how these algorithms work and are being used.

San Francisco Superior Court began using PSA in 2016, after getting the tool for free from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, a Texas nonprofit that works on criminal-justice reform. The initiative was intended to prevent poor people unable to afford bail from needlessly lingering in jail. But a memorandum of understanding with the foundation bars the court from disclosing “any information about the Tool, including any information about the development, operation and presentation of the Tool.” Many governments said they had no relevant records about the programs. Taken at face value, that would mean those agencies did not document how they chose, or how they use, the tools. Others said contracts prevented them from releasing some or all information. Goodman says this shows governments are neglecting to stand up for their own, and citizens’, interests. “You can really see who held the pen in the contracting process,” she says. The Arnold Foundation says it no longer requires confidentiality from municipal officials, and is happy to amend existing agreements, to allow officials to disclose information about PSA and how they use it. But a representative of San Francisco Superior Court said its contract with the foundation has not been updated to remove the gag clause.

AnonOps, a group affiliated with the online activist group known as Anonymous, posted what it says are the private cell phone numbers and email addresses for 22 Republican members of Congress in a bid to push for President Trump's impeachment, reigniting the use of hacked information in US political battles.

Rob Pfeiffer, chief editor of online publication The Anon Journal, said that the move was spurred by Trump's contentious reaction to violent clashes in Charlottesville. He did not know how the information was obtained, whether it was a leak or an online hack. He said some of the cell phone numbers, for example, had been verified as real. Among the politicians on the list were Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Charles Grassley of Iowa. The goal, said Pfeiffer, is for people to contact these members of Congress to more forcefully condemn the president and call for Trump's impeachment. Pfeiffer said more GOP lawmakers could see their personal contact information released soon.

Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, sued to compel the Trump administration to release names of at least some visitors to the White House complex, as was done in the Obama era.

The lawsuit contends that the current administration had planned to be less open about visitor logs but was failing to abide by even that lower standard it had announced in April. Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group, alleged in the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia that the Secret Service has rejected or ignored requests under the public records law for information about visitors to four agencies at the White House complex: the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality. Public Citizen harshly criticized the withholding of the visitor information, saying the failure to release them flouted a 2013 appellate court ruling and contradicted President Trump’s vows to “drain the swamp” of corrupting influences of money in politics in Washington.

An emerging debate about whether elected officials violate people's free speech rights by blocking them on social media is spreading across the US as groups sue or warn politicians to stop the practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Gov Paul LePage (R-ME) and sent warning letters to Utah's congressional delegation. It followed recent lawsuits against the governors of Maryland and Kentucky and President Donald Trump. Politicians at all levels increasingly embrace social media to discuss government business, sometimes at the expense of traditional town halls or in-person meetings. "People turn to social media because they see their elected officials as being available there and they're hungry for opportunities to express their opinions and share feedback," said Anna Thomas, spokeswoman for the ACLU of Utah. "That includes people who disagree with public officials." Most of the officials targeted so far — all Republicans — say they are not violating free speech but policing social media pages to get rid of people who post hateful, violent, obscene or abusive messages.