Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs

[Ian David]

Tread carefully, politicians -- concerned citizens are watching your every move on the web. Their tools? Custom data mashups that use public databases to draw correlations between every vote cast and every dollar spent in Washington.

Take this report about the widely debated and bitterly fought California SB217, which would have banned clear-cutting in ancient forests.

Generated by the nonpartisan MapLight.org website, the report clearly shows that the logging industry, which opposed the bill, gave nearly twice as much money to politicians as environmental groups did. The bill was defeated.

Sites like Maplight.org, Opensecrets.org and Follow the Money, along with wiki-based political reporting resources like Congresspedia, are increasingly giving ordinary citizens the ability to easily document the flow of special-interest money and how it influences the legislature.

These new tools are providing an unprecedented level of transparency, exposing patterns of influence that otherwise would have remained invisible to ordinary citizens.

More:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/04/maplight