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TOP STORIES: Sunlight’s executive director, John Wonderlich, returned to the blog with this response to Tom Steinberg’s critiques of the open data movement.
“Advocates and activists often started on a path to request, scrape or sue for data because they saw an opportunity to use it to illuminate corruption, reveal shady corporate entities, track human rights abuses or defend speech rights,” he writes. “The desire to achieve greater of social justice, reduce inequality and drive social change fuel the spreadsheets, policy papers and visualizations that characterize the open data movement. The people strengthening systems using encryption, contributing to massive open source projects, experimenting with collaborative approaches to politics and designing new ways to analyze power are generally not satisfied by tepid incremental improvements, and we need not be too concerned that they will.” [Read the whole thing there.]
KEEP THE SUNSHINE IN! The Sunlight Foundation joined an effort led by Democracy 21 to oppose legislation by Rep. Peter Roskam, R- Ill., that would remove the non-public disclosure of donors requirement for 501(c) categorized nonprofit groups. The bill would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to fully ensure that politically active dark money groups, such as a 501(c)(4), do not accept money from a foreign entity or foreign individual.
“This bill is a step backward for transparency and disclosure of politically active nonprofits, and would throw the IRS’s ability to enforce the law into serious doubt,” said Wonderlich. “The IRS is an important line of defense against a potential foreign company, foreign individual or foreign government donating to a nonprofit group that can then pour unlimited, undisclosed money into our elections. Let’s keep it that way.” [Read the letter here.]
WHO’S ATTACKING THE CFPB? A dark money group called “Protect America’s Consumers” is running ads against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but no one knows who is behind it. We delve into what we do know about the group here. [Sunlight]
In our companion piece, Sunlight Staff Writer Libby Watson tried to track down the dark money behind the ads. She spent hours searching, with little to show for it. [Sunlight]
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The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.