The law ought to be free and easily accessible.  With reasonable, limited exceptions (such as for privacy and national security), so should all other information that belongs to the government and either bears on our individual or collective rights and obligations or could possibly help us figure out what the government is doing and how well it’s doing it.

No one understands this better—and probably no one has done more to free publicly owned information from the confines of privately published books, government files, and poorly accessible databases—than Carl Malamud, who is now engaged in a slightly nutty campaign to become Public Printer of the United States.  Nick and I met Carl at the Independent Government Observers Task Force, a “non-conference” he put together in Chicago last year.  If you haven’t followed his work, this NY Times article is good background, and his campaign page, Yes We Scan!, has a statement from him and some links to other articles about him (as well as a list of supporters that includes most of the other people who could possibly rival him in the done-the-most-to-free-the-law-in-the-last-20-years category).  To me, the short version is, when you look at what he’s accomplished practically by himself, it’s hard to envision anything short of a transformation in the accessibility of government information if he were actually put in charge.

President Obama, if you’re listening, Nick, Joel, and I join the growing chorus of free-law types who endorse Carl Malamud for the position of Public Printer.

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