What the shit happened to freedom of information act? Now we not only have to sacrifice our privacy to some 3rd party contractor but I must also create a fucking account in order to access information our government provides? Fuck that shit. I’m just guna make a throwaway account. Scrape the fucking site dry and upload the shit to my own website. Fuck them.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      I was also thinking this could also be contesting the legislation for the freedom of information act by requiring a citizen of the US to own or possess a computer, smart phone or email address. The dept that runs FOIL offers the ability to request information by phone or email whereas this site does not. But I haven’t looked into any of this so I’m prolly 100% wrong. I don’t even remember if FOIL is federal or NY state ran program.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        It is really frustrating to me that data which is supposedly public cannot be simply downloaded all together as a large dataset, instead you have to go through a convoluted process to access only a narrow subset of it