Another kind of domestic surveillance

Given the size, reach, and power of the federal government, the necessity of monitoring our elected leaders, the laws they are passing, and the resulting bureacracy is more clear than ever. When bills are hundreds of pages long, the average citizen--already caught up in his or her own daily race--has no hope of keeping up with what's going on in Washington. Meanwhile the mainstream news media, particularly on television, continue to transform themselves into entertainers and provide little in-depth analysis.

In The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, author David Brin argues that the coming ubiquity of surveillance in our society doesn't necessarily result in a loss of freedom. As long as we are all watching each other--and watching the government--technology may actually safeguard our liberties.

While I've only read reviews of the book and not the book itself, I remain skeptical that the citizenry is much of a match for the government, especially post-9/11 (Brin's book was published in 1998). Having said that, the only sane course of action for the citizens in a democratic nation is to remain alert, to question, and to share information with our fellows. And given our government's scope, ten million pairs of eyes are better than ten thousand. (The blogosphere has a real role here.)

This morning I ran across an interesting site run by the Center for Media and Democracy. They have two projects which drew my interest:

• SourceWatch, a collaborative wiki which aims to produce a directory of the people and organizations involved in shaping public debate
• Congresspedia, a component of SourceWatch that bills itself as "the citizen's encyclopedia on Congress"

Both sites allow anyone to contribute information but have a paid editor and a strict policy of requiring authoritative references.

For an example, see their page on "network neutrality" to get a sense of the debate on whether internet providers, like the telcos, should be required to treat all data the same regardless of who sent it. The site also details how much money from those companies various members of Congress have received and how they have been voting.