Sunshine Week is upon us. Perhaps you've never heard of it. It celebrates the public's right to know what the government does in its name. In honor of the week, The Center for Responsive Politics, which runs OpenSecrets.org, has posted a new database online: Foreign Lobby Watch.
Back in 1938, the U.S. Congress passed a law that required people and organizations who received foreign governmental funds to report the particulars of what they were doing for their clients. to the U.S. Justice Department. That means that, if Russia hired a DC lobbying firm, the firm would have to tell the Justice Department exactly what it was doing for the Russians. The law, called FARA, was supposedly a response to Nazi propaganda in the U.S.
Good use of this database could reveal some meaty stories hidden in plain sight. Open Secrets has published some interesting tidbits already, for instance, An Egyptian intelligence agency hired public relations firms Weber Shandwick and Cassidy & Associates to improve its image.
The Center for Responsive Politics is now working on a second phase of the project, that will add functionality and allow users to connect the data to other datasets.