Ghostery is a free browser plug-in (available for Firefox and Google Chrome) that lets you watch who's watching you as you. By that, I mean Ghostery alerts you to scripts that are tracking you across the web while giving you the option to delete and block scripts from sites you don't know, offering you a better sense of your web privacy options.

Most sites track user interaction to some degree, whether it be for analytic purposes or for marketing.  The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic interactive presentation on the services that are tracking your clicks and the policies guiding their actions.

So what happens when you run SunlightFoundation.com through Ghostery? An unobtrusive pop-op will appear in the upper righthand corner of our webpage, showing you that we run Chartbeat, Google Analytics and Quantcast.

The first two measure raw traffic numbers to our site like visits, time-on-site, bounce rate and so on. Quantcast helps us figure out basic demographic information and the interests of our community.

What about governmental and political sites?

Democrats.org

GOP.com

U.S. Department of Treasury

Library of Congress

Crossroads GPS

Colbert SuperPAC

WhiteHouse.gov doesn't seem to work in Ghostery (we tried on multiple browsers) but they seem to be running Google Analytics and an AddThis social media sharing script. You can see for yourself if you look at the page source which is found under View in both Firefox and Google Chrome.

As the Wall Street Journal post shows you, many sites (if not most) across the internet track your behavior, including governmental and political websites.  It's in your best interest to know what they're tracking about you and what they do with that data.  Ghostery is a great tool to help you start.

Over the weekend, the New York Times treated us to an Op-Ed by liberal polemicist Frank Rich excoriating the Internet for failing to deliver some-kind idealized digital democracy. Rich's argument is largely incoherent and has been appearing in many columns written by professional opinion writers.

Rich's straw man Internet, the one heralded as the great equalizer bringing the have-nots up to the level of the haves, is decimated as Rich portrays the Internet as yet another space where the current Masters of the Universe can lie and obfuscate their way into people's hearts. I don't think anyone can deny that the Internet is yet another platform where those who wish to convey falsehoods, can and do. However, I cannot see how this is anything new.

Mark Kirk and Richard Blumenthal may have lied about their personal biographies, but they could have lied (and did!) on any number of platforms. It's not as though we didn't have lying politicians before the Internet. Elliot Spitzer and David Vitter were both avatars of morality before Facebook and Twitter were created.

The same can be said about Rich's tired observation that the Internet allows lies about President Barack Obama's place of birth to circulate widely. A lot of people believe erroneously that Obama is a Muslim or was not born in America. This is not due to the Internet. How many people believed erroneously that President Bill Clinton--or his wife--killed Vince Foster or ran a cocaine dealing ring in Arkansas? What percentage of Americans believed that Warren Harding had African-American ancestors? How many believe that 9/11 was an inside job?

Lies have always existed and always perpetuate themselves. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a good example. Maybe Rich wants to blame Guttenberg's press for that. Unfortunately for that argument, prior to Guttenberg's invention, rumors ran rampant through Europe that Jews conspired to poison wells and thus spread the Black Death -- a similar argument is made in the Protocols.

Humans lie. They are filled with potential for both great evil and great good. We know this. The Internet is just another platform, another tool, that is made up of this humanity.

Thus, the Internet isn't perfect. Of course, it provides a platform to lie and to obfuscate through PR. The Internet, because it is run by humans, is inherently human, with all the inherent flaws.

The Internet isn't a witch. It's you.

While the Internet allows the continued practice of negative behavior that existed before, it also allows good behavior that was previously impossible. The most recent example of this is Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" campaign.

Savage is using the Internet, mostly through YouTube, to talk directly to gay teenagers in America and the world who may be confused, threatened or considering suicide because they feel that the torment they feel as gay teenagers will never end. Savage launched the campaign with a video he made with his husband talking about their experiences as gay teenagers. The campaign has spread to include videos from firemen, ex-Marines and Tim Gunn, the star of the television show Project Runway all letting isolated teens know that there is a positive future that awaits them.

If reaching out through fiber-optic cables and over wireless networks--something that could not be done in an analog world--can save young people from suicide, running away or giving up that makes up for the hundred or so people who think that Barack Obama is a Muslim-Nazi-werewolf.

This isn't the first time that we've been privileged with the fears of a professional opinion writer. David Brooks, also of the New York Times, wrote about his fears that the Internet was driving us into ideological segregated communities. This ignores that Americans have long been drawn to sources of information and communities that support their own personal biases and views.

It should come as no surprise that professional opinion writers would cast aspersions about a medium that threatens their profession. The Internet has given everyone a forum to cast their opinion, whether it be right or not, tempered or inflamed. Perhaps this is why these opinion writers sound like a Renaissance Pope challenged by the mass distribution of printed materials.

There are more and more writers on the Internet, some equally as talented as the high paid elites at top newspapers. And helping these writers, the new and the old, is the ever-increasing amount of raw information flowing online.

As Gordon Gekko said in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, "The most valuable commodity I know of is information." Journalists, bloggers and those who write the stories of our world now have access to more information about government, science, law and so on than ever before.

Transparency is not simply what we write about ourselves on Facebook and Twitter, it is the ongoing dissolution of the barrier between the public and information.

Rich derides the Internet for failing to do what "analog journalists" do: report and tell the story about lying politicians, overbearing corporations and corruption in all sectors of the world. In many cases, though, it is the Internet itself that has enabled these "analog journalists" and countless bloggers to connect to the raw information that becomes the center-piece of an investigation or report.

The ready online availability of campaign finance information, personal financial disclosures, raw data from the Securities and Exchange Commission, earmarks, legislation, White House visitor logs and so on have allowed countless reporters to tell stories at a lower cost and in a faster time frame.

Social ties have also aided journalists in combing through massive piles of documents. The news blog Talking Points Memo relied on their followers to comb through hundreds of documents related to the improper firing of United States Attorneys during the Bush Administration. Talking Points Memo received the Polk Award for the work they did with the help of their audience.

While Rich concentrates on the negatives that exist on the Internet, negatives that have always existed no matter the era, he ignores the positives that are new and promising. The Internet reduces the costs of connecting people together, increases our ability to reach out to those in need and provides an endless bandwidth for information to help journalists, bloggers, writers, scholars and the public.

“Forty percent of internet users went online for government data or information in the preceding twelve months," according to the Government Online report released in April by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In other words, 92 million Americans (with 3/4s of Americans online) accessed data on the business of government.

Among the findings:

• 23% went online to see how federal stimulus money has been spent
• 22% downloaded or read the text of any legislation
• 16% visited a site that provides access to government data (such as data.gov)
• 14% looked for information on who contributed to elected officials

According to Pew, going online for data or information about the government “is not associated with greater or lesser levels of trust in government.” And although whites generally are more likely to visit government data sites, that distinction disappears for sites such as data.gov.

These findings may provide additional impetus for governmental efforts to improve the data offerings at recovery.gov, THOMAS.gov, data.gov, FEC.gov, and from the House Clerk and Senate Office of Public Records.

Two of the biggest proponents of net neutrality rules for broadband providers involved in closed door congressional committee negotiations have hired 112 former government officials to lobby as Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have both pushed new broadband Internet policies.

For the first three months of 2010, seventy-four percent of the lobbyists hired by both Google* and Microsoft have previous experience in government, according to data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics and lobbyist disclosure forms. This is a very similar number when compared to the percentage of former government officials hired to lobby for the top six telecommunications organizations.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation and the House Committee on Energy & Commerce are holding meetings with industry and consumer organizations in response to a series of actions by the FCC including a court decision that blocked the FCC's attempted implementation of net neutrality rules. Net neutrality rules would disallow broadband service providers from discriminating against users and content by preventing them from slowing access to certain users and charging money to acesss certain content.

The committees held their first meeting last Friday and plan to host another meeting on July 2.

Google and Microsoft are spending the most on lobbying among the pro-net neutrality organizations invited to the behind the scenes discussions with the two committees.

According to first quarter lobbying disclosures, the two companies have spent a combined $2.1 million on lobbying. By comparison, the two lobbying spenders opposed to net neutrality that were invited to the congressional meetings shelled out $10.5 million in the first quarter of 2010.

Despite spending far less than organizations opposed to net neutrality, Google and Microsoft have fielded a quality team of lobbyists with experience working for important lawmakers and on crucial committees.

Combined the companies have hired thirteen former staffers of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation or members of the committee and nine former staffers of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce or their members.

These lobbyists include Barry LaSala, the former chief of staff to the Senate committee's number two Democrat Sen. John Kerry, who lobbies for Microsoft. LaSala also lobbies for net neutrality opponent Verizon.

Andy Scott Wright, lobbying for Google, worked previously as the Chief of Staff to Rep. Rick Boucher, chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. Boucher is leading the meetings for the House Committee on Energy & Commerce.

The representatatives in the closed door congressional meetings for both Google and Microsoft have experience on the committees. Google’s Johanna Shelton previously worked on the House Committee on Energy & Commerce and Microsoft’s Paula Boyd used to work for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation.

Other Internet companies supporting net neutrality might be spending far less than Google and Microsoft, but they are also largely hiring former government officials to lobby for them.

Over eighty percent of the lobbyists retained by both eBay and Amazon.com—of these two only Amazon.com is engaged in the congressional meetings—have experience in government.

(*Disclosure: Google senior manager Kim Scott sits on the Advisory Board of the Sunlight Foundation. Kim Scott sits on the Advisory Board of the Sunlight Foundation, but no longer works for Google.)

A new survey out from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that Americans are going online to look for government information, participate and interact with the government and use online tools for transactions with the government.

A full eighty-two percent of internet users either looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the last year. Even more impressive, forty-eight percent have "looked for information about a public policy or issue online with their local, state or federal government." This is an impressive number and shows what Sunlight has long known, people are looking for information about their government and the internet is best place to deliver such information.

One statistic that amazed me was that nearly a quarter (23%) of internet users searched online for information on the how money from the stimulus bill was being spent. If you find yourself to be one of these people, this iPhone/Android application that Sunlight Labs developed may be what you're looking for. The app layers stimulus spending, as reported by Recovery.gov, over Google Maps to provide an on-the-go way to search where the money is being spent.

Another welcome development from the report is that 22% of internet users downloaded or read text of legislation online. One of Sunlight's more popular efforts has been to get Congress to post legislation online for at least 72 hours before debating and voting on it. It was pretty obvious to us last year that people wanted to find legislation and read it last year as thousands of people visited our Read the Bill site.

Other statistics that relate to searches for government information include:

• 16% visited a site that provides access to government data, such as data.gov, recovery.gov or usaspending.gov
• 14% looked for information on who contributes to the campaigns of their elected officials

Americans who use interact with the government online through social media or by searching for data are more likely to find online government presence useful than those who do not:

• 78% of internet users agree that social media engagement by government makes government more accessible (this is compared to 63% for non-users)
• 82% of internet users agree that social media engagement by government helps people be more informed about what government does (compared to 68% for non-users)
• 43% of those who sought government data (stimulus money, legislation, campaign contributions, data.gov) stated that government is more open and accountable than it was two years ago (compared to 33% of all internet users and 27% of non-internet users)

I was out of town earlier this week when the Open Government was released and so I am just now weighing in with a few thoughts. Without being too over the top (OK maybe I am) I think this Directive potentially represents a watershed moment for democracy, the likes of which can forever change the relationship between the government and the public it serves.

This Directive acknowledges that the Internet is the right, proper and primary medium for communicating information to the public, and that "the public" is key in helping determine the policies, directions and priorities for government's work. In doing this, the Directive requires each executive agency to create an online portal designed to promote important agency data and provide a place for citizens and agency officials to work together.

Every citizen --  from web developers to journalists to a real estate agent in Kentucky or mother in Colorado -- has something to gain from this new initiative. If you care about the health of your children, the safety of your workplace, the crime in your streets, or corporate accountability you will have new information to inform yourself and discuss with those who represent you.

Business will have a lot of new data to base their decisions on. Real estate agents and developers will be able to see migration patterns by income when the Internal Revenue Service releases their database of tax-filer migration from county-to-county or state-to-state. This will aid in decisions on where to build, what kind of market to expect and what type of people live where. Similarly, data released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development on public housing will not only help reveal slum lords, but also help renters or buyers locate Section 8 density when deciding on a neighborhood to move into.

Here are some more examples:

•    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to release a real-time online database providing up to date information on flight delays and cancellations. This database will take existing FAA data and combine it with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to allow the public to be able to easily access online the status and causes of airport delays and cancellations. •    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating Virtual USA, an information-sharing system that will reduce lag time in responses to emergency situations. This system will likely save lives and empower local authorities with better information to reduce the costs of emergencies and disasters. •    The Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) will release raw data and “report cards” on Veteran's Administration hospitals empowering current and former military service members and their families to know the quality of care that they are getting when they go to a given VA hospital.

The Directive will also help citizens hold their government accountable through new avenues of government disclosure and citizen engagement. For example, the Department of Justice is collecting and publishing agency reports on their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compliance. Each agency report will include information on how long it takes to process FOIA requests and which agencies are most successful at fulfilling FOIA requests from the public (and consequently which agencies are not as well).

The Directive also requires each agency to allow citizens to request data to be released by agencies and placed online. This process will enable citizens to continue to press officials to make their data as open as possible, and that call for more information will have an affect far beyond the executive branch.

The General Services Administration (GSA) will be releasing a full database of all federal advisory committee members that can be mashed up with lobbying records and contribution databases to show the influence that resides on these important bodies - and we can similarly expect Congress, states and municipal governments nationwide to feel pressure to release information. That is, if the public demands it.

It will be our responsibility as citizens to monitor the data quality reported by agencies and the timeliness of the reporting requirements. Just like all previous open government moments, this one will require constant public engagement to ensure that will be all that it can be. Sunlight is bullish on this Directive because we believe it will make permanent the idea that open government means an online government. In the digital age how can it mean anything else?

Even if you don't realize it yet, the plan laid out in the Directive will impact you, so we hope you'll join us during this exciting to begin a this new dialogue with government. What we have now is a plan. And it is a plan that will require public engagement to ensure that the policies it lays out are enacted and undertaken to make our dream of an open government a reality.

Sad news that Sen. Ted Kennedy has passed away from brain cancer. Kennedy was not just a prolific legislator and consummate deal maker, but also willing to experiment with technology. In fact, Kennedy was the first member of Congress to connect to the Internet and pioneered online discussions in usenet forums. I'm going to re-post something I wrote here last year when it was announced that Kennedy had brain cancer:

...fifteen years ago, Ted Kennedy became the first Senator to communicate with constituents over the Internet. Back in 1993, this was no small feat. At the time there were no congressional offices connected to the Internet. (The House launched a pilot program on June 2, 1993, hooking up seven members to an Internet network.) One dedicated staffer and the technology hubs of MIT and other top-level educational institutions made Kennedy into the first digital Senator. Here’s the story (which you can read about in more detail Chris Casey’s book, The Hill on the Net):

One day while working as a systems administrator in the office of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, Chris Casey dialed online to read the bulletin boards at Massachusetts universities. While finding answers to computer questions and downloading software to help in the office, Casey found himself reading threads about a variety of topics, including politics. The discovery of this online constituency led Casey to suggest that Kennedy reach out by creating his own online community and posting his press releases for public comment. Casey worked with Jonathan Gourd of North Shore Mac to set Kennedy up with a “conference” to connect with online constituents. Casey then went to sell the Senator’s office on the idea, eventually winning approval from Senator Kennedy himself, who, understanding the importance of constituent relations, told Casey, “If you can find a way for me to reach constituents using computer networks, do it.”

While Kennedy’s office initially set ground rules to not respond to written questions and comments, that barrier quickly fell aside as Casey cautiously entered the fray to give information on bills the Senator sponsored or votes the Senator took. Kennedy’s office also used the bulletin board to post the text of legislation for review, most notably the release of health care legislation prepared by Kennedy’s committee on the eve of President Bill Clinton’s big health care speech to Congress. Casey later worked with MIT to get the Kennedy bulletin board groups posted into usenet groups (ne.politics and talk.politics.misc). A year later ... Kennedy launched the first official Web site for a Senate office.

(update: h/t to Matt Yglesias for finding the screencap and Chris Casey for posting it to his Flickr account)

Five ideas for better electronic government from MySociety.org

Tom Steinberg, Sunlight friend and director of the UK's MySociety.org, has some advice for anyone thinking of running any reasonably technologically savvy country. He lists the top five actions any country's government should take in relation to use of the Internet. 1. Hire people who understand the Internet and the potential it has for government. And then fund a university to teach more people to understand the potential. 2. Open up non-personal government data and introduce a "presumption of innovation." 3. Give external parties the right to interface electronically with any government or mainly public system unless it can be shown to create substantial, irrevocable harm. 4. Set up a system capable of a nationwide deliberation process on policy issues where decisions are pending, and legislate it into the democratic process like elections and referendums. 5. Give people using the state's electronic systems on any task the option to collaborate with other citizens going through the same process.

Thought-provoking ideas as usual. More details in his post.

Boston's Web Portal has been receiving more traffic and it is mainly due to the site managers allowing city employees to contribute personally to the site.  Using software that allows every employee the ability to update the Web site and add content as they see fit allows the site to become more interesting and diverse.

Instead of relying on IT staff to update the site city employees can update information that they see relevant to citizens of the city.  This is a great example of why employees should be given more control over content on government websites.  They are the ones that know what people are looking for and  are knowledgable about what is happening in the city.  This makes the site more valuable to citizens.  I hope more cities allow their employees to create content on city portals.  I also hope they expand this and maybe even create a wiki so citizens can add their knowledge to the pot.

Texas' Comptroller Susan Combs has started a new initiative to bring the state's budget out in the open by launching Open Book Texas.  Combs has been dedicated to more transparency in the budget process, earlier this year she launched a searchable database of state spending called Where the Money Goes.  The creation of this site taught the agency a lot about making government more efficient.

"Where the Money Goes provides transparency to taxpayers, and we discovered that our emphasis on transparency made our own operations more transparent to us," Combs said. "We were able to better analyze where and how we were spending money within our agency and where and how we could save."

Combs' agency says it has saved $4.8 million and identified an additional $3.8 million in expected cost savings. Some examples of the cost savings at the Comptroller's office include saving $73,000 by consolidating multiple contracts for toner cartridges and establishing separate post office boxes to receive different types of tax payments, thereby avoiding having to spend $328,000 to buy and maintain a new mail sorter. These savings allow the agency to strengthen core functions without requesting additional funding from the Legislature.

"Now we are moving forward to apply some of those same transparency and ‘buying smart' strategies that have been successful at our office to take an unprecedented look at Texas government spending," Combs said. "Our Smart Buy initiative has already begun digging through what state agencies spend annually for goods and services."

Another part of the site, Texas Transparency Check-up, is dedicated to making local governments more transparent.  With this site you can see which local governments have their budgets online, get a step by step guide to make your city more transparent, and share your story on advocating for more information.

The final part of the new site, Single Set of Books, is a planning site for state agencies to standardize the way they report financial information.  The goal is to make all the state's financial books uniform so it will be easier to see what Texas' financial situation really looks like.

Everything about this project is fantastic.  Of course, the next step is to make these sites more interactive and more supportive of citizen input.  Financial transparency is one of the easiest and more popular steps that can be made to make citizens feel their money is valued.  Budgetary processes should be transparent, everybody pays taxes and that means they are invested in what the state does.  So good job Texas for not only making their process more transparent but advocating for more transparency across the state.