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Washington's IT Guy

Posted by kdawson on from the seal-of-approval dept.

Timothy found a profile of Carl Malamud up at The American Prospect, characterizing it thus: "Carl Malamud — underrated work shedding sunshine on the sort of things that 'sunshine laws' may make legally accessible, but that often are not practically accessible. The man should be up there on the list with Wikipedia, Wikileaks, the big Free Software projects, and the Creative Commons."

20 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. What by Peach+Rings · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a bewildering summary. I await with great anticipation the comments that slashdot is able to generate without reading the article.

    1. Re:What by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What a bewildering summary.

      It's only bewildering if you don't understand how public administrators work. Being that I deal with these people, on a much lower level than the Fed as I am extremely interested in hyperlocal politics and news, on a daily basis I have to say that, "shedding sunshine on the sort of things that 'sunshine laws' may make legally accessible, but that often are not practically accessible," puts it perfectly.

      I regularly have to make repeated requests for information that should be publicly accessible. Unfortunately for the general public the politicos do not want this information to be made available, even if it has to be, so they put up every last roadblock they can invent to keep people like me from releasing it to the public.

      Let's take for example local transit boarding data for 2007 to 2009. I wanted the number of people who ride the buses in our local transit co-op broken down at the lowest level. A simple task one would assume right? It was clear, based on their reporting, that they had the data at some sort of granular level as they can easily roll it up to yymon, quarter, etc. I also watched as bus drivers hand recorded the number of boardings and wrote them on sheets, by departure time, every single day for more than 2.5 years.

      Well when I requested this information here was the exchange which occurred over 7 months:

      1. We don't have that data.

      2. We don't have that data in an easily accessible format (which would be in violation of Minnesota Statute).

      3. We have the data but it would take a very long time to procure. Hundreds of man hours (again in violation of Statute). It will cost at least $250. Pay first, we'll provide it later.

      4. We have the data and it will take considerably less time than we first thought. $50 for the data. Pay first.

      5. Here's the data you paid $50 to receive. If you want more explanation you need to pay more (in violation of Statute).

      ---

      Now, I turned around and did exactly what they didn't want. I released it to the public and thus to the other state agencies who were originally told this data didn't exist in the way they wanted it. You can see the archive here (don't download the 7MB CSV unless you are really interested in the raw data as I host my site myself and I don't need my cable modem smoking all day long).

      So why did they go through so much trouble, wasted man hours of their staff (including their counsel) just to keep this data out of my hands? Because they want to be the ones in control, even though they are mandated by law to provide it to the public, and they certainly want to make compliance with sunshine laws as difficult as possible to keep people from doing this time and time again.

      So, unless you deal with that particular instance day in and day out for years, like I do on any variety of topics from any variety of local government entities, then you wouldn't have the faintest idea what that blurb meant. But to me it made perfect sense. I just hope that bringing this data to light and placing it out there for the public to interpret themselves isn't limited to skewed infographics and a couple of PDFs on Deep Water Horizon documents.

    2. Re:What by corbettw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's only bewildering if you don't understand how public administrators work.

      So only for 99% of the populace then?

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
    3. Re:What by Lando · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You might want to create a torrent of the data and stick it on a public tracker somewhere so that others could help you with the hosting costs. Maybe just post the torrent link in addition to the file.

      Just a suggestion.

      --
      /* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
    4. Re:What by corbettw · · Score: 2

      First, you assume I'm in the 99%, not the 1%.

      Second, my snipe was more about the crap summary than what you posted. Actually, it was only about the crap summary and not what you posted. Since this guy's job is fairly esoteric and out of the normal range of experience for most people, some detail as to who the hell he is should've been included.

      Just to be clear, your post was useful and well written. The summary, not so much.

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  2. I have a story by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back in 1993 (pre WWW), I had an internet account. My college girlfriend was doing a paper on Nafta, and I was trying to help research. Some congressional staffer gave me the FTP address to his private hard drive where I picked up a copy in .ps format or something. All 9000 pages of it. I could see all his files.

    Good times. In those days, there was a rule: never meet anyone from the internet IRL. That used to be condsidered a good way to end up in a bodybag. Nowadays everyone meets everyone that way (me + my wife for example.)

    1. Re:I have a story by davidgay · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Good times. In those days, there was a rule: never meet anyone from the internet IRL. That used to be condsidered a good way to end up in a bodybag.

      One of the sillier comments I've seen on slashdot... (weird yes, but bodybags is ridiculous)

      David Gay, who did use the internet in 1993, and met people IRL in 1994...

    2. Re:I have a story by CODiNE · · Score: 2, Funny

      That just means we have the chance to get in on the latest internet craze: illputyouinabodybag.com!

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    3. Re:I have a story by dave562 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If I had never met people from the internet IRL I would have missed the first half dozen Defcons.

    4. Re:I have a story by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Funny

      and met people IRL

      *Citation Needed

      Considering your pretending that wasn't that standard thought at that point in time pretty much means you're a liar or you're still in the same basement at you were then and missed the entire 90s and 00s.

      I too was on the Internet then, and BBSes, and met people from them, and it was considered sketchy by just about everyone, including those of us doing it.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    5. Re:I have a story by tsm_sf · · Score: 2, Funny

      That the new ReiserFS host?

      --
      Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
    6. Re:I have a story by MoeDrippins · · Score: 2

      > Considering your pretending that wasn't that standard thought at that point in time...

      I can't even parse this. What the hell are you trying to say?

      --
      Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
    7. Re:I have a story by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 2

      pre WWW

      World War W? When the hell was that?

  3. Yes the summary sucks ... by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Informative

    But there's a few of us who know who he is (by reputation ... I actually know Roberta Shaffer, also mentioned in the article, and I think I'm on a mailing list or two w/ Aaron Swartz)

    But I hadn't heard anything since the election and his trying to be appointed to the head of the printing office ... it's a shame he didn't get it. He's been a big force in getting government documents from behind paywalls.

    Read the article if you don't know who he is -- he's done a lot of public good.

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    1. Re:Yes the summary sucks ... by AaronSw · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think he's on Slashdot too.

  4. Viral Advertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I only glanced through the article. Isn't this just a shout-out that this guy is available for a government job? Don't we have job boards that take resumes that do the same thing without wasting my front page "NEWS for Nerds. Stuff that matters" websites?

  5. Re:It's about time someone starts thinking clearly by macshit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I got a $200 fine for walking ACROSS a railroad track behind my house, there were no trains within sight I should add. I didn't have to climb or open anything to walk across the tracks to the main road, there are no signs either. These cocksuckers have the nerve to run trains by my house at all hours, horns and all, and expect me not to cut across the tracks to save 30 minutes of my trip to work.

    Note that a large part of the reason they impose such fines and over-use train horns is because of the insane over-litigatiousness of American society.

    People do really stupid things, and get themselves (and in many cases their friends/family) squashed/crushed/roasted by trains. Then their surviving family turns around and sues the railroad. "How could my honey-buns have known there might might trains on the railroad track! He was sleeping! The train clearly should have sounded its horn just in case there was somebody sleeping on the track!" And wins. So the railroad adopts whatever practices it can to defend itself against such societal stupidity, and yeah unfortunately there's a negative impact on that small portion of society which isn't stupid.

    Of course then the people that just recently bought a new house near the railroad tracks (which have been there for 150 years) turns around and sues the railroad because it's sounding horns too often...

    --
    We live, as we dream -- alone....
  6. Mirror of MVTA by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 2, Informative

    Make you a deal sir.

    You have the info but maybe not the distribution, which given your post is a tiny tragedy right? I've meanwhile spent 6 months building a mirror system (not yet coral-cached, still manual).

    Slashdotters, here's a fast & dirty mirror of Garcia's data - except I WANT you to download it! If nothing else, "fight the man". But also it's a very early bandwidth test at the "25% readers are finished" comment level, which I guage as some 10 times below full RTA effect.

    http://taophoenix.babblehost.com/MVTA%20Rider%20Data.html

    Everyone get a copy! Makes great Father's day gifts! Hehe.

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  7. Carl has been on Slashdot before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You might not remember it, but Carl has been on Slashdot quite a few times. Basically, he's trying to gather up all that government data that's supposed to be publicly accessible (but isn't) and make it conveniently accessible on the web. Problem? There are a lot of people who profit from this and they're not so happy. Also, you have to deal with tons of red tape.

    Here are some past appearances on Slashdot:
    Getting us free access to copyrighted CA laws
    Putting 1.8M court records online

    I think he also has a Slashdot account, though it seems little-used.

    Also the top comment on this old story is interesting:
    http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08/14/1158247/Firefox-Plugin-Liberates-Paywalled-Court-Records

  8. Re:"Liberal" is now a verb? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    1. Slashdot is 97% {L|l}ibertarian which is a shallow façade over conservatism.
    2. Conservatism in modern American politics means "anti-Liberal at all costs!!"
    3. A conservative read that post, immediately got an erection and couldn't keep his mod points in his pants.
    4. You now know why it was modded insightful.