Sydney Brownstone

[Commentary] Google does it. So does Intel. But a significant number of major tech companies--including Apple, Twitter, and IBM--still haven't published information about how many women or minorities they hire. A new project from feminist coders aims to put pressure on them until they do.

The Open Diversity Data project, launched this past June by the feminist hacker space Double Union, keeps tabs on companies that do and don’t make their workforce demographics available to the public. Anyone can submit a request for ODD to add a company to the list. Once a company’s listed on the site, viewers can click to tweet thanks at the organization for being transparent, remind it to update its information, or ask that it publish employment diversity data for the first time.

Diversity data is much more difficult to come by than you might think. Organizations collect it regardless of external requests; those with more than 100 employees are required to report that information (in something called an EEO-1 form) to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission every year. But those reports stay guarded in filing systems far away from the public eye. If companies don’t make diversity data open, curious souls have to go through the arduous process of filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Labor.

The aim of ODD is two-fold: Double Union hopes that ODD will not only put pressure on companies to become more transparent, but also encourage legislators to free up EEOC reports to the public.

Network neutrality is one of business and government's biggest ongoing debates. But even though our lives are increasingly influenced and determined by online interactions, many people have no idea what the phrase means.

A recent Pew Research Center report put a point on how little the debate seems to be engaging the public. Out of the 203 articles that even mentioned net neutrality in 2014, 139 were in the same six papers. Twenty-five out of nearly 3,000 TV news programs discussed the issue. That's 0.8%.

The story's very different on Twitter, where nearly all the 650,000 tweets on the topic expressed support for an open Internet. Then again, Twitter's not even close to a representative sample of the US population.

A separate VentureBeat poll revealed similar findings. Of 714 people surveyed through Google, nearly 60% reported that they didn't even know enough about what net neutrality was. (And these are people already savvy enough to spend enough time on the Internet to take Google surveys.)

So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves journalists with more of a responsibility to report on tech stuff that isn't the sexiest app or most titillating group selfie.

But it's also a strong reminder: Some of the most important fights for public resources aren't made in front of the public. They're made in fluorescent-lit corporate conference rooms, on the least engaging parts of C-SPAN, or in tiny, esoteric debates that only circulate among a handful of people. And sometimes there's only mainstream news about them when it's too late.

According to late-night HBO comedian Bill Maher, there are only two ways a nincompoop in the House of Representatives could lose a seat. "You literally have to die or tweet a picture of your penis," he said.

In 2012, when congressional approval ratings dropped to what was then a record low of 10%, Americans somehow reelected 90% of their representatives that same year. But going into the 2014 midterm elections, Maher's strategy has changed. He isn't only using political angst for bits; he's using a segment of the show to try and directly influence a midterm race.

Maher's "Flip a District" project has already begun taking video and social media nominations of representatives his 4.2 million weekly viewers would like to see ousted. The left-leaning Maher has vowed to narrow down a 16-person bracket to one contender and do his best to drive a stake through his or her incumbency.

[Commentary] The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology just released a report analyzing future "big data" scenarios we all may face, alongside a 90-day review of the big data practices led by White House advisor John Podesta.

Health care, crime, smart homes, education, law enforcement, employment -- these are all areas in which big data has promised to deliver miracles. But are the tradeoffs of privacy for convenience (like Rodriguez's) something we really want? If they are, how do we make sure that individuals maintain control over how our information is being used?

You might not be worried about it, but here are three ways in which big data practices might one day affect you. Job Discrimination. Criminal Discrimination. Consumer Discrimination.