I reckon this was simply a first-pass readme -- hands-up, who likes writing those?

I submitted a pull request that tones down the hyperbole somewhat: https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/pull/5

I sense it's essential for them to keep the project focused on the software. Partly what makes this interesting is managing the partisan nature of discourse. That's a unique non-functional requirement here.

It's a good test for Github as a collaboration platform.

If it is possible to manage the partisan nature of discourse, it is also possible to exacerbate it and to frame it in a desired way. Since this project has no special protection and seems to be uniformly hated by citizens, we can expect it to be abolished in the next Presidency and possibly replaced with something more blatantly partisan.

Rather than piling another pull request on top... you've put

  [@WHWeb](tyyp://twitter.com/WHWeb)

I assume you meant http? Other than that extremely minor issue these look like some solid modifications to me - well done :)

(In case it's relevant: I'm from the UK.)

I'm consistently amazed at how agencies full of information security experts, who understand that security by obscurity is the bottom of the barrel of fake security, nonetheless believe that keeping information secret from citizens is the best way to keep the country safe.

If your objective is to keep information secret, then keeping information secret isn't "security through obscurity". And while governments certainly do stuff they shouldn't be doing, and take advantage of the significant security apparatus at their disposal to do so, I don't buy the idea that governments don't, like most other organizations, need a shield of privacy to conduct it's business, including the significant legitimate bits of it, effectively.

They don't care about keeping the country safe, they know _they_ won't be safe if everyone knew all the shit they've been up to.

> I'll believe that when his administration stops being one of the most secretive and most aggressive prosecutors of whistleblowers in recent history.

Is "recent history" the last four years? Because you're right. Out of 1 administration, they are one of the most secretive and most aggressive. How about that.

Seriously.. putting their petition software online is hardly creating an [open and participatory] government we can trust.

I think they mean participation in that you can choose the left or the right lane of the conveyor belt to the butcher house; it's not about addressing actual stuff. You just have to keep up with the newspeak and it all makes perfect sense.

"you can choose the left or the right lane of the conveyor belt to the butcher house."

I am going to use this phrase, thanks.

Feel free. I wish it wasn't true, you know.

I like yours.

I generally use the example of a slave given sudden democracy: now they can vote which of two slave owners they want to be a slave to.

Vote, no vote: they're still a slave.

Sometimes, "choice" doesn't matter at all.

Less so than bush and presumably less so than Romney would be*

*if anyone wants to contest this, please read "no apologies" authored by Willard mitt Romney or just look at his tax returns

I'll contest that he's more so than Bush. http://www.salon.com/2011/05/16/whistleblowers_6/

Let's not discuss politics here.