mySociety news

February 2020

Transparency

The police are accessing citizens' online activity

Help Privacy International discover whether your local force is using this technology

The police may have wider powers than you're aware of: a common piece of software allows them to access a citizen's social media, location and browser history, even after they've returned your mobile phone.

Privacy International have made it really simple for you to submit an FOI request and find out if your local police force is using this technology — see how to get involved.

Link FOI requests to the news stories they generate

A small but significant change to WhatDoTheyKnow will help show the world just what a Freedom of Information request can do.

Now you can add a link from your request's page to any related news stories, a move we hope will give support and bring more readers to FOI-based investigative journalism. Find out more here.

Democracy

The Climate Assembly has started

This Friday 110 citizens regroup for the second weekend of the UK's Climate Assembly. Participants are engaging in a process to agree the best path to net zero carbon for the country.

mySociety have played a small logistical part in the project, running the website for the Assembly.

mySociety's climate impact

Meanwhile, it seems like a good time to get our own house in order, environmentally speaking.

We're just at the beginning of the process, and planning to share everything we learn along the way.

Community

When do people take action?

Researcher Alex continues his series on different demographics and uses of our services, with a look at what time of day or night people make reports on FixMyStreet, or use WriteToThem to contact their representatives.

He summarises his findings here.

Save a tree with FixMyStreet

Is there a tree near you that you'd like to give some extra protection? Friends of the Earth have suggested that using FixMyStreet is one simple way to do so.

...and prevent fires, too

Fire services have been recommending FixMyStreet as a useful way to report issues that might lead to arson and other causes of conflagration.

It's not what we imagined when we built FixMyStreet, but we're glad it's being used in this way.

And also...

Don't miss out on your earlybird ticket for TICTeC — make sure to book before the 14th for the best price.
We're out of the EU, so you're no longer represented in the European Parliament. We've removed MEPs from WriteToThem.

What we're reading

Several local authorities have declared a climate emergency. But then what?
The BMJ discovers something that mySociety has always known: working remotely is entirely possible.
If you are coming to Iceland for TICTeC, you may wish to brush up on the language. For example, the word for “the time of day when there is just enough light to see your sheep”, or “fruit that bends”.
Decade-old reports of UFO sightings are due to be published online, as discovered via an FOI request.
A German town with no street names votes to keep it that way (as so often, link via Puntofisso's data newsletter).

Did you know that you can subscribe to our special interest newsletters too? Get an extra monthly bulletin on Democracy & Campaigning, Freedom of Information, Better Cities & Councils, or Research. Pick and choose your mySociety newsletters here.