Government

• Early release for Congressional financial disclosure: Instead of the usual June 15th release date, the financial disclosures for congressmen and staffers will be released a day earlier. This is one of the last times these forms were not filed online. (LegiStorm Blog)

• Congressman announces initiative for open government: Rep. Darrell Issa announced a new initiative, the Open Gov Foundation, at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference. The Open Gov Foundation’s release includes, among other things, the creation of a Digital Bill of Rights. (techPresident)

• The unprecedented modernity of the Obama campaign: The use of data–almost all of it gained through the Internet–by the President’s reelection campaign is much more sophisticated than both that of Mitt Romney’s and that of any other campaign before it. (Politico)

Campaign Spending

• Senators blast super PAC influence at conference: At the Netroots Nation conference, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, and Sherrod Brown each had harsh words for the current, super PAC-influenced election cycle. Despite this, all depend on these committees (although they describe their own as more grassroots than their oppositions’) for their own elections. (Washington Post)

• Campaign expenditures underreported: The true amount of money spend on elections is apparently more than is reported. This is in part due to nonprofits and “education charities” who do not have to report their spending due to their status but nevertheless contribute time and money to issues pertinent to elections–and the candidates that support their opinions on these issues. (Republic Report)

International

• Who really owns corporations? Europe wants to know: Complaints by European civil society groups about laws that seemingly enable corruption in corporations by hiding the identities of their owners have begat a coalition of these groups that has began to urge legislators to open up these corporations. (TrustLaw)