What if Government had a Google Buzz moment?

Um, no, we should not give the government room to screw up. The government does not exist to innovate. Nor does it exist to create "products". It exists, to quote the U.S. Constitution, to:

"establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"

Frankly, I'm surprised to see this coming from Sunlight Labs. The point of open government data is not to innovate or develop products, it's to:

a) Give back to the people property which is rightfully theirs. Datasets developed by the U.S. government belong to the people of the United States, excepting in the cases where it doesn't (national security, personal privacy, or otherwise legally restricted). Even then, there's usually a sunset provision at which point the data should be made publicly available upon request.

b) Provide transparency and promote the smooth functioning of participatory democracy.

c) Support accountability in government.

This makes me think: what should Google do to recover from this? People are angry, they feel violated and betrayed. It's a public relations disaster.

My opinion is that Google needs to draw a line under this whole issue. They need to hold up their hands say "you know what, we didn't realize what we were doing here but we get it now, this was wrong, we're sorry." And within hours of making that statement, pull the whole product off the Internet, and send massive bunches of flowers to the people worst and most publicly affected by the fiasco. In the end, Google is a company with a huge amount of our personal data who's success depends on us trusting them with that data. The precariousness of Google's possession of personal data is debated routinely. And so far a lot of those discussions conclude with someone citing their motto and impeccable past records (the China thing was awesome too). What now? Now, that record has been tarnished. At what cost should that record be maintained? I think killing off Buzz is a small price.

Google really needs to show everyone how seriously it takes people's privacy. I hope they don't miss this opportunity to demonstrate that.

I thought this article was going to be about what would happen if Google suddenly exposed all the hidden connections among the people who run the government.

Different levels of government "innovate" all the time and very much dislike any oversight or otherwise being open. Nor do many officials - especially at higher levels - face any real consequences for "screw ups".

Somehow give them more latitude? Really?

I am almost never this negative on a linked item, but this one is horrifyingly naive. Hopefully, Clay Johnson isn't in a position at Sunlight Labs where he needs to make judgments about the honesty of government officials.

Sort of makes me wonder - is it possible to build a social graph from public records? Does something like this exist already?