Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works
American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice:<p>Force your legislature to start using version control.<p>* No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing.<p>* Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses down to individual lawmakers, then back to lobbyists.<p>* Simple diffing would prevent deliberate obfuscation tactics  like burying provisions deep inside piles of irrelevant stuff.<p>* You could build a sweet github-style outward facing interface allowing the public to track the progress of bills in real time, increasing democratic awareness and participation.<p>* Legally mandated commit messages accompanying each change justifying and explaining it; force them to write these in simple english. This alone would spin 'em around so hard they wouldn't know what day it is.<p>* Use your imagination. I'm sure you can think of 100 reasons why this would be awesome.<p>Build it, open source it, then start your own lobbying/PR machine to <i>demand</i> that they use it. Constantly ask for justifications as to why they are not willing to use it, given the massive, obvious benefits it would bring. Ask what they have to fear from the extra scrutiny and accountability it would bring. Surely the "social media generation" can out-lobby the lobbyists? That sounds like it should be the kind of thing we're good at.<p>Or just forget about that entirely and try to think of some way to decimate the lobbying industry in the same way that hackers are destroying the content distribution industries and all that other stuff.