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Scout: get notified every time Congress proposes legislation with keywords you care about

Cory Doctorow at 7:06 pm Wed, Jun 20, 2012

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Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez,

It is nearly impossible to follow all the activity in state and federal laws, regulations and speeches in Congress without a significant policy team or an army of lobbyists. Now you can. For free. The Sunlight Foundation's new tool called Scout allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions.

Start by entering a keyword or phrase you would like to get updates about, such as the vaguely defined "cyber threat" included in CISPA or any references to the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Scout then saves your subscriptions and sends notifications via email or text message whenever the subscribed issue or bill is talked about on the floor of Congress, mentioned in new regulations, appears in state and federal legislation or when Congress is moving forward for a vote. Through your profile you can create as many alerts as you'd like and group them by tags with the additional option to make them public for others to follow your issues. You can also complement a Scout subscription by adding optional external RSS feeds, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog.

Scout (Thanks, Nicko!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  activism • politics • transparency

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  • Jake0748

    Wow.  This looks to be an excellent tool.  Just bookmarked the page and will be checking it out all night.   Thanks Cory.  :)

  • MB44

    Holy….. This seems, awesome.

  • austinhamman

    hmm an RSS feed of rage…

  • lettersandnumbersonly

    For the UK House of Commons:  http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

    • zarray

      Huh, why doesn’t it end in .co.uk ?