May 28, 2015 – Civicist

A NEW TOOL FOR FINDING CAMPAIGN FINANCE SCOOPS

JESSICA MCKENZIE
May 28, 2015
1:37 pm

“There are thousands of potential front page of reddit stories hidden in 25 years of campaign finance data,” and Solomon Kahn wants to help unearth them.

In the hours he’s not working at Paperless Post or spending time with his wife and baby, Solomon Kahn is a crusader for campaign finance transparency. Earlier today, Kahn stopped by Civic Hall for a brown bag lunch to share the a visualization tool he built using OpenSecrets data that lets users dive into politicians’ campaign finance records, all the way down to individual-level donors, if necessary. Kahn is currently raising money on Kickstarter to help pay for hosting and to support outreach and training for journalists who can best make use of the tool.
Using his own local congressperson, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY), as an example, Kahn demonstrated how the visualization made it easy to see that Crowley went from getting 27 percent of his campaign funds from labor groups and 14 percent from finance/insurance/real estate in 2000, to getting 6 percent of funds from labor and 38 percent from finance/insurance/real estate in 2014. Digging a bit deeper, Kahn found that one of Crowley’s largest contributors is the Blackstone Group, and that in 2007, 14 people affiliated with Blackstone, who had never contributed to Crowley before, all gave $2,300 on the exact same day.
Kahn says that users will be able to submit “scoops” like this which, once vetted for accuracy, will be displayed at the top of a politician’s page so that journalists and other interested folks will see notable facts like the above right off the bat. (An audience member asks if he’s thought about annotation, to which Kahn replies: “That’s complicated,” and reiterates the limits of his time and money.)
Helping journalists make the most of the tool is one of Kahn’s priorities. “For a reporter in Sunnyside [Queens, New York] at the Tribune to get a story like this would just be impossible without this kind of tool,” Kahn tells those gathered at Civic Hall.
“There are thousands of potential front page of reddit stories hidden in 25 years of campaign finance data,” Kahn writes to potential Kickstarter backers. He wants to make sure those stories see the light of day.
Speaking of reddit, Kahn says he’ll be promoting the tool in a reddit I Am A—, Ask Me Anything session soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
For more information, see Kahn’s Kickstarter video here:

CATHY O’NEIL ON WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION

JESSICA MCKENZIE
May 28, 2015
9:24 am

Weapons of math destruction are characterized by their opacity, their power, their widespread use, their poor definitions of success, and their engendering of pernicious feedback loops.

Personal Democracy Forum is next week, and we’re reaching out to some of the speakers for a quick preview of their respective talks and panels. What follows are a few words from Cathy O’Neil, who writes at the blog mathbabe.org and is working on a book about the dark side of big data. O’Neil will deliver a talk on “Weapons of Math Destruction.”
You’ll be speaking at the conference on the subject of weapons of math destruction. Give us a preview: what the heck are weapons of math destruction?!
They are mathematical algorithms that are being deployed to make important life decisions for certain people at certain moments. They are characterized by their opacity, their power, their widespread use, their poor definitions of success, and their engendering of pernicious feedback loops. I will give a bunch of examples of WMD’s from education (the Value-Added Model for Teachers), the criminal justice system (evidence-based sentencing models), and politics (micro-targeting).
The theme of the conference this year is the future of civic tech. As briefly as you like: Where do you think civic tech is going, what do we have to look forward to, and what pitfalls should people working in this sector be aware of?
I’d say that my example with micro-targeting in politics is more or less an intersection of WMD’s with civic tech. I am, in other words, a civic tech skeptic.
I’m focusing on the pitfalls. Civic tech has a lot of positive vibes but successful data work, which is usually done in the quest of power, money, or both, should teach us a few lessons. If we want data or technology to work for the public good, we have to make it so in a deliberate and thoughtful fashion. It’s not good enough for us to “open up the data” and wait for the tide that lifts all boats.

Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

A NEW TOOL FOR FINDING CAMPAIGN FINANCE SCOOPS

CATHY O’NEIL ON WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION