Last month, we spoke to government transparency activist Carl Malamud about his plan to publish safety standards that are incorporated into law. These standards regulate things like water treatment, building design, even bike helmets, but since they are copyrighted by the industry organizations that write them, if you want to read them, you have to pay upwards of hundreds of dollars. Yesterday, Malamud published the first batch of these standards on his website, public.resource.org.

In February, I sent out numerous Freedom of Information Act requests to different government agencies to see if they had any information on me in their files.  I received my response letters from most of the agencies, and they're on the one hand fairly anticlimactic, and on the other hand illuminating of how potentially weak FOIA can be.

Carl Malamud, government transparency advocate and president of public.resource.org believes safety standards should be easily accessible to all citizens for free. Yet many of these standards  --  from the design of bicycle helmets to water treatment components to hazmat suits – are the copyrighted creation of the industry organizations that have promulgated them. So Malamud has ponied up the dough to purchase exactly 73 of these standards, which he will publish online, copyright or no copyright.

The Spinanes - Lure and Cast

This week on the show, we're talking with Carl Malamud, open government advocate and director of public.resource.org. Malamud's interested in what are called "incorporation by reference." The phrase describes laws that have references to safety standards embedded in them. For instance, a law that says your car has to have turning signals will also include standards about how bright or how large the turn signals have to be. Malamud's gripe is that frequently, those standards are written by private companies, and those companies hold the copyright to the standards. That means that even though the standards are part of a law everyone has to follow, citizens have to pay -- sometimes several hundreds of dollars -- for the privilege of looking at them.

In an attempt to make the government more transparent with the information it has collected about her, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman is sending out personal Freedom of Information Act Requests to numerous government agencies.  Bob speaks to Sarah about what it takes to FOIA yourself.

Errors - Tusk

On this week’s show, we have a few stories exploring the subject of transparency. Inspired by the story of a woman who discovered the FBI had a 436-page report on her after sending in a bunch of personal FOIA requests, I decided to make the government get transparent with me as well.

Government transparency is a recognized good, but can it go too far? Will allowing more reporters in Los Angeles' Dependency Courts put already vulnerable children at risk? Brooke speaks with Chantel Johnson, a legislative and policy coordinator at California Youth Connection. Johnson says her organization would like to see children decide whether media are allowed in the courtroom.

Adele - Someone Like You

As part of the Obama administration’s healthcare reform, patients will, for the first time, be able to see what money pharmaceutical companies are paying to physicians and how – every notepad, free trial and conference junket. Reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber have, over the last 18 months, have been engaged in a kind of dry run, following a money trail that 13 pharma companies were legally required to disclose.  They speak to Bob about their work.

India instituted a Right to Information law a few years ago that's very similar to the Freedom of Information Act in the US. The law has worked well as an anti-corruption tool but there's only problem. Some of the people who've used it have been killed afterwards. Bloomberg reporter Mejul Srivasta talks to Bob about how India is trying to protect its whistleblowers.

Tortoise - Gigantes (Mark Ernestus Version)

In the mainstream media, objectivity and care to avoid the appearance of bias are the ideal. But Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU and blogger at pressthink believes that accuracy and transparency are far more important than the appearance of objectivity. Brooke talks to Rosen about how public radio should handle the public political opinions of its employees.

Phillip Roebuck - "Rattleback Blues"

The "super committee" on deficit reduction is meeting in advance of their Thanksgiving deadline, and critics claim they have not been transparent enough about the progress of their negotiations.  Bob spoke with Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress and Donny Shaw of the Participatory Politics Foundation about the pros and cons of meeting behind closed doors.