I believe this is just the next step in the “open government” movement in the U.S. In recent years, the government has finally come to realize that the data they generate belongs to its citizens and have been making more of it freely available. Making the software code available is just a logical next step. Most likely the consumers of this would be the state governments if anyone. Of course, foreign governments with fewer resources may be able to take advantage of this, also.
You own me a new coke, screen, keyboard, chair and I think I broke my collar bone when I hit the floor laughing.
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I don’t believe that most governments are that bad (including the US government), or want to restrict access to most reasonable data, its more a matter that the overwhelming vast majority of their citizens really couldn’t care less about this data and cough up far more information to Facebook etc then they do to any government, so I think its really more a national risk management program concerning those couple of folks who would use the data for all the wrong reasons.
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