Internet - QuébecLeaks attend les révélations. Les internautes peuvent soumettre leurs premiers documents sensibles sur le site de dénonciation QuébecLeaks depuis hier, même s'ils ignorent toujours exactement à qui ils ont affaire. L'organisation prie ses potentiels collaborateurs de lui soumettre des documents «non disponibles» qui ne sont pas encore passés entre les mains des journalistes d'enquête. Québec-Leaks demande également de ne pas fournir d'opinions ou d'allégations sans preuve formelle à l'appui. QuébecLeaks est un site inspiré de WikiLeaks, «fait par des Québécois pour des Québécois», qui se veut une plateforme plus locale où les individus disposant d'un accès privilégié à des documents sensibles pourront les rendre publics anonymement. Un processus simple QuébecLeaks propose deux mécanismes de soumission. Ainsi, il est possible de soumettre les documents via une connexion sécurisée HTTPS ou encore par l'entremise du logiciel libre Tor.
Des questions Noam Chomsky. Churnalism | Search. Sourcemap - Open Supply Chains & Carbon Footprint. Building a Greener World through Marketplace Economics and Radical Transparency. Consumers now have little information about the true ecological impacts of what they buy. But that may be about to change, as new technologies that track supply chains are emerging and companies as diverse as Unilever and Google look to make their products more sustainable. by Daniel Goleman With climate legislation dead in Congress and the fizzled hopes for a breakthrough in Copenhagen fading into distant memory, the time seems ripe for fresh strategies — especially ones that do not depend on government action. Here’s a modest proposal: radical transparency, the laying bare of a product’s ecological impacts for all to see. Economic theory applied to ecological metrics offers a novel way to ameliorate our collective assault on the global systems that sustain life.
First transparency. This seems about to change. WalMart is by no means the only player in taking steps to become more ecologically transparent. That’s where the action is: making crucial data easy to get. Code for America. Celebrating Transparency Heroes on Ada Lovelace Day — Sunlight Foundation Blog. What better celebration of Ada Lovelace Day – celebrating the achievements of women in technology – could we have than to honor the women who are key to the government transparency movement to which technology is so key? These women are using technology to pry open the doors of government, and are creating a new style of transparency powered by the Internet. By either making more political and spending data available online, facilitating others to do the same, addressing questions that arise in the age of technology or by creating new tools and context to help all of us connect the dots and understand what the data has to tell us, these women are empowering all of us to hold our government accountable in ways we never could before.
As I look around to my colleagues, I see a remarkable number of us – too many to really mention in one column. Sheila Krumholz has been the Executive Director of the Center of Responsive Politics since 2007. Global Voices in English » Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating Women in Technology and Transparency Worldwide. Inspired by Ellen Miller's post on the Sunlight Foundation blog, which profiles the work of women who use technology to promote transparency in the United States, we decided to add to the list by profiling several women from around the world involved in the use of technology to make government more transparent and accountable.
The following profiles were written and researched by Renata Avila, the lead of Creative Commons Guatemala, the Director of Primer Palabra, and our researcher for Spanish-language Latin America on the Technology for Transparency Network. In Mexico, Irma Eréndida Sandoval heads up a laboratory to document corruption and research the best transparency policies. “Laboratorio de Documentación y Análisis de la Corrupción y la Transparencia” at UNAM, the Autonomous National Mexican University, is one of the most prestigious institutions in Latin America. Sopheap Chak is a graduate student of peace studies at the International University of Japan. Technology for Transparency Network | Press freedom in Canada now: we’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news : This Magazine Blog // Canadian progressive politics, environment, art, culture // Subscribe today.
Today, which is, appropriately, World Press Freedom Day, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression released their first in what will be an annual series of reports on the state of free expression in Canada. As the authors note in the introduction, 2009 was a notable year in Canadian press freedom: The Supreme Court of Canada established the new “responsible communications” defence to claims of defamation, providing greater latitude in reporting on issues of public interest and beating back libel chill;Federal government transparency took a decisive turn for the worse, so much so that the access to information commissioner pronounced it being at risk of being “totally obliterated”;There were two attacks on members of the “ethnic press” in Canada—a physical assault of the editor of the Canadian Punjabi Press in Brampton, Ont., and the vandalization of the offices of the Uthayan newspaper in Scarborough, Ont.
Let’s be friends! Obama admin declassifies major cybersecurity plans. Bowing to pressure from activist groups and to the dictates of common sense, the Obama administration has done what the Bush administration wouldn't and declassified some general information [PDF] about the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), a sweeping program that the Bush White House launched in early 2008 to protect the government and critical civilian networks from cyberattacks. It turns out that, like at least one other effort launched by the Bush administration in the name of national security, the program was too secret for its own good. In May of 2008, some members of congress became frustrated with the CNCI's combination of extreme secrecy and hefty pricetag, and asked in vain for someone from the Bush administration to give a bit more information on it than a former DHS official's brief description of it as a "Manhattan Project to defend cyber networks.
" This past Tuesday, the the Obama administration lifted a bit of the veil on the program. New: Mashup Probes White House Visitors « ResourceShelf. Lessig’s “Against Transparency”: A walkthrough. I’ve been in a small round of email among friends, arguing over exactly what Larry Lessig means in his article in The New Republic titled “Against Transparency.” It is a challenging article for those of us who support government transparency, and Larry is obviously both influential and brilliant. So, I wanted to be sure that I was following his argument, since it is somewhat discursive. Here’s what I think is a guide to the flow of the article, with links to the eleven Web pages across which the article is spread.
(I’ve made judgment calls about where to divide topics that span a page.) The following is all my gloss and paraphrasing; let me know if you think I’ve gotten it wrong. Note that I intend this only as a guide to reading the article, not as a substitute. I’ve purposefully filed off the nuances, grace notes, and subtleties that make this a Larry Lessig article. Section I: Transparency is not necessarily good [link] Sometimes, transparency that seems good is bad. The Three Laws of Open Government Data. Transparency, Accountability and the "dot eco" Debate. It's All in the Name: A New Tool Will Provide Assurance for Green Claims By Peter ter Weeme. Despite the troubled economic times, recent research shows that consumers are continuing to purchase “green” products. According to a survey conducted in March of this year by BBMG, an American branding and marketing agency aligned with “forward-thinking brands and conscious consumers,” nearly seven in ten Americans (67%) agree that "even in tough economic times, it is important to purchase products with social and environmental benefits.”
Half say they are still willing to pay more for them. BBMG also found that interest in green products is holding steady. In a separate study this past spring by the Shelton Group of Knoxville, Tennesee, 22% of survey respondents said they have no way of knowing whether a product is green or not. The point here is that consumers are confused and skeptical about the green claims companies are making. To date, two groups are applying to run “.eco.”
Canada: Sustainability Observations From The Road. I just recently spent a month away—both for work and for pleasure. My work travels included time in Switzerland at the Global Environmental Governance Forum and connection with some colleagues who were running a session in London that explored the use of art to explore issues around climate change. Reflections on that part of my trip can be found here. I captured some other, more informal sustainability observations while I was on the road during some vacation time with my wife. Getting outside of your own day-to-day environment opens up your eyes to new things—and sustainability is no different. London: Small box, big information. While sitting at Heathrow waiting to get on my flight to Berlin, I picked up a carrot cake from Prêt a Manger, a UK-based food outlet. Their self-proclaimed goal is to provide “handmade natural food avoiding the obscure chemical, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today.”
Language. Photos: John Lewis.