The question isn't Farm Subsidies -- It just that this is historic as the first database made available in such convenient manner. Other departments do not allow such access, but must be forced to drop their avoidance of accountability.
The idea is to open government to the people, instead of the current situation of opening the people to the government, while keeping government secret, or impossible to get data on.
Fascism is when the state is all-powerful and keeps its secrets beyond any call from the citizens, while citizens are considered as servants of the state. For all practical purposes, with the FOIA overturned, that's where we are already.
One counter-attack is unfettered web-enabling of existing electronic data of all departments. This info belongs to the people, but for some weird reason the officials in charge treat this as if it "belonged" to their department or themselves.
Surprise -- if the information is allowed to be available, non-profit organizations spring up to make access available to the people ...
As you say, it's then up to skeptical or vicitimized citizens to make use of it.
The big change in democracy isn't that suddenly everyone will dive into trillions of bytes of data ... It's that the fact of the availability of data to the public will serve as a warning influence on deceptive officials throughout all departments who are monitored.
As it is, we have the foxes guarding the henhouse, without accountability to the public. |
