NPR Crowdsources ID of lobbyists at congressional health care hearing

[pg]

This is a great idea. I bet more stuff like this would have a significant impact-- like the amateur tail-number watchers at airports who helped uncover the secret "rendition" flights.

[sp332]

That sounds pretty cool. Got a link?

[yan]

I heard about that on NPR this morning, I'm all for it. My only concern, do they have any privacy rights against this? Or does the gov't building imply same protections as being in public?

[evgen]

They are at a public meeting, in a government building, exercising their 1st amendment rights to petition their government. They have absolutely no privacy rights here. They are not compelled to identify themselves but they have no protection against others identifying them nor are they likely to receive such protection given the legitimate concerns the public has over corruption (the Lobbying Disclosure Act [2 USC 1605] does permit lobbyists to perform routine information discovery, such as attending this event, without requiring disclosure but the fact that they are not required to report their attendance would probably not be enough for a court to find any expectation of privacy for anyone attending such an event.)

[tptacek]

I think NPR has just captured a moment in time where they can pull something like this off. If the idea of catching lobbyists in the crowds has any impact, lobbyists will just stop attending hearings.

[pj]

They should have an image map over the faces and you can click on the face and then it goes to a form where you can add details about the person.

[colins_pride]

I love this idea; how does the sponsoring site ensure the quality of the user supplied data?

[mlLK]

Could someone put into proper context why this is crowdsourcing? It's an interesting application but I don't think it has anything to do with crowdsourcing.

[stjohn]

They ask people to email them if they know anyone in the pictures.