This is technically what members of the House are supposed to be, right? Advocates for the interests and people of... View Article
Continue readingPoligrafting the News: Tech CEOs and the Obama Administration
Politico has an excellent round-up of the many Silicon Valley executives who orbit around the White House giving advice on... View Article
Continue readingUsing Technology To Assist Declassification
by Sunlight Foundation policy intern Melanie Buck The role technology can play in streamlining the declassification process was the topic... View Article
Continue readingDaily disclosures
A round up of what we’re seeing in online disclosures: Tops: National Republican Congressional Committee ($13,979,025) and the Democratic Senatorial... View Article
Continue readingKnowing Who Your Rep. Is Working For
This morning The Hill newspaper reports that K street is “scouring the ranks of lawmakers facing tough reelection races or... View Article
Continue readingFacing tough election, House Democrats contribute to build firewall
House Democrats have contributed nearly $40 million to the congressional campaign committee tasked with protecting the party’s majority in the... View Article
Continue readingOutside groups spend $13 million in the last six days
In the past six days--Wednesday through today--outside groups have spent more than $13 million to influence the mid-term congressional elections, including broadcast ads, robo-calls, get out the vote campaigns and mailings.
Data in the Reporting Group's tool -- Follow the Unlimited Money -- shows that groups not aligned to any specific candidate have spent more than $122 million in this cycle with committees registering to receive unlimited contributions -- the Super PACs -- totaling $12 million.
The National Association of Realtors spent more than $2.4 million over the last four days, supporting both Democratic and Republican candidates across the country; Americans for ...
NRCC spends big, flexes power
The National Republican Congressional Committee reported spending more than $800,000 on one day, Friday Oct. 1, in opposition to 30 Democrats. The NRCC has spent almost $13.7 million in independent expenditures to oppose Democrats so far this election cycle, tops among all groups as of this writing.
Though Super PACs or independent expenditure-only committees--groups set up to take unlimited funds from any source in order to influence elections--have garnered a great deal of media attention of late, it's worth noting that the traditional players like the NRCC are still very powerful when it comes to influencing elections ...
Continue readingRepublicans Ask Watchdogs to Review FOIA Request Process
Inspectors general at the Energy Department and Social Security Administration say their review of FOIA procedures at the request of senior Republican lawmakers showed no signs of meddling by political appointees.
Two dozen other agency and department watchdogs have yet to respond to a letter from Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Grassley of Iowa asking for a quick check of FOIA procedures. The two Republicans sent the letters about a month ago after media reports that the Homeland Security Department subjected FOIA requests from lawmakers, journalists and activist groups to a new “political review” process. Such requests were ...
To Know the Name of a Thing is to Have Power Over It
A flowery title for a blog post, I'll admit, but I hope that at least the Le Guin fans out there will forgive me. The problem of knowing something's true name is in the news, most particularly in this story from Wired's Spencer Ackerman:
Through a "joint venture," the notorious private security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 billion, Danger Room has learned.
Apparently, there is no misdeed so big that it can keep guns-for-hire from working for the government. And this is despite a campaign pledge from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ban the company from federal contracts.
Eight private security firms have won State's giant Worldwide Protective Services contract, the big Foggy Bottom partnership to keep embassies and their inhabitants safe. Two of those firms are longtime State contract holders DynCorp and Triple Canopy. The others are newcomers to the big security contract: EOD Technology, SOC, Aegis Defense Services, Global Strategies Group, Torres International Services and International Development Solutions LLC.
Don't see any of Blackwater's myriad business names on there? That's apparently by design. Blackwater and the State Department tried their best to obscure their renewed relationship. As Danger Room reported on Wednesday, Blackwater did not appear on the vendors' list for Worldwide Protective Services. And the State Department confirms that the company, renamed Xe Services, didn't actually submit its own independent bid. Instead, they used a blandly-named cut out, "International Development Solutions," to retain a toehold into State's lucrative security business. No one who looks at the official announcement of the contract award would have any idea that firm is connected to Blackwater.
This is a troubling story. But for those of us who work with government data, it's an all-too-familiar one. Navigating the link between an entity's name and its identity is very, very difficult. Sunlight Reporting Group wrote about a similar problem back in January: a blacklist of contractors called the Excluded Party List System has been failing to do its job, partly because of difficulties in positively identifying the companies entered into it. People and even companies can have similar names, or the names entered into the system can contain typos. It's not uncommon to wind up with a fuzzy sort of match, and then to have to use whatever additional data is on hand -- an address, or a date, whatever -- to add confidence to the guess.
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