"We the People" API To Be Released

Kwyj1b0 writes "The Whitehouse plans to open up the APIs to its 'We the People' initiative. The first set of Read APIs (allowing anyone to read data on petitions) will be released in March 2013. In addition, selected people will be invited to attend the White House Open Data Day Hackathon on February 22nd. Write APIs will follow, allowing people to extend petition capabilities to their own sites. Privacy, of course, should be an important concern that needs to be addressed."

CODE LEAKED

[GameboyRMH]

function process_petition($num_votes)
{
if ($num_votes>=30000)
    {
    $response=make_polite("Fuck You");
    return $response;
    }
else
    {
    return NULL;
    }
}

//this is actually all of the code except the make_polite function and some HTTP request handling

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop hard coding values that should be determined at run time.

Re:

[vikingpower]

Does this API propose a "disunion" feature ?

Re:

[geekoid]

If you weren't so damn stupid and selfish, you might be able to take the time to find out this has to do with accessing the petition information at the white house. If you can be bothered to take the time away from you cheesy poof eating, rote response life and create a petition to disunion.
I know, creating and doing something is all scary and new to you.

Re:

[vikingpower]

Now this is funny and remarkable, Sir. You appear, here in my Slashdot GUI, with the green-red sign of "foe of a friend". Now, whose foe you may be, I do not care. Yet, you are in danger of becoming my enemy for playing an argument ad hominem , which is absolutely not done in a discussion between polite adults.

Re:

[Bigby]

What about the "Right to Abolish Government" API? It paraphrases legalese...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

None of you could handle such an API, so don't worry about it.

Self-refernetial use ?

[vikingpower]

So one could theoretically, through this very API, gather signatures for this API to be discontinued ?

Who knows....

[3seas]

...maybe we can get more signers for another death star petition...or similiar silliness.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

With any new communications technology, the first few messages are usually trivial crap.

The first phonorecord was a nursery rhyme. The first telephone call was "Dude, come check this out". The first telegraph was "How epic is this shit?". The first email was "This is an email"

It doesn't take long for the novelty to wear off. Don't be dismayed by the Death Star petition...it was perfectly normal.

Privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the editors are confusing petitions with voting. Petition and their signatures are supposed to be public. Non-repudiation is crucial to how they work.

Nevermind APIs for silly things..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see all bills source controlled... GIT being the obvious best choice. I want every line.. every change to be documented as to who wrote it and when with the full repo being publicly readable.

Re:Nevermind APIs for silly things..

[Githaron]

I really like this idea. All commits would be digitally signed and anyone can clone the repository.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see all bills source controlled...

This idea is worth a petition...

How about

[sunking2]

Releasing a budget instead. I'm not taking sides, but it is at least their job to present something.

Re:How about

[geekoid]

How about you realize thier is more then one agency, and they do more then one thing at a time?

The people doing this have nothing to do with the budget; which won't happen until everything is broken and the republicans can blame their hindering everything on the dems.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Virtucon]

Or that the mere publication of this API and the support for the websites costs the taxpayer over $20M/year for a social website that essentially they could get for free on Facebook? Let's face it "We the People" is a lip service brought to you by the great "Do Nothing, Spend us into a hole" leadership. I find it funny that when one party says "Let's party likes it's 1999" and the other says "Who's going to pay for all of this?" that the rest of us who voted for them wonder why nothing ever gets done in D

Re:

[Githaron]

Which party is the "Who's going to pay for all of this?" party? From what I have seen. both major parties want to keep on spending us in a hole. The only difference is at what rate, who benefits in the mean time, and whose money do we take first.

Re:

[Virtucon]

At the present time that would be the Republicans but yes it flip flops because when the opposition is in the White House the fiscal conservancy reigns from the opposing party.

Re:

[vikingpower]

You, Sir, must be either high on THC or drunk, or both.

Re:

[jones_supa]

These spams are still here? Pseudo-randomly generated text with references often to BSD or GNAA. Link is to goat.cx. In topic there is usually something like "you fail it" or "mod down". Who maintains the system that sends these? Spooky!

3... 2... 1...

[Virtucon]

News of the future:

Today a 21 year old computer science student was arrested by the FBI for violations of the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act for accessing unpublished areas of the website. The student's attorney has flatly denied the allegations and has said that the student merely reported that the API was vulnerable to buffer overruns and he could obtain private information about other users of the API merely by accessing the website in a certain way.

The University has said that they are forwarding this onto their academic standards review committee for further disciplinary action, which means that the student may be expelled for these actions as well.

We the people

[superwiz]

demand China trade free. People speak. We do. China not hackers. China high quality everything. Thank you!