Comment by gleenn
1 month ago
Providing public APIs to such information sounds great and I think it should be done but is also probably realistically expensive and peone to security problems. The government seems to have a very difficult time in general running all sorts of web services, it's a nightmare in some jurisdictions to even pay the government money for e.g. tickets... I had a hell of a time paying a ticket in San Diego and had to visit the the courthouse multiple times and file a paper form because my paymentment became "late" when it never showed up in their online database weeks later. I was TRYING to pay them and even going to suffer through the "convenience" fees because they outsourced the website to some crappy company and they still couldn't get it right.
Expensive compared to what? Paying a bunch of lawyers and dragging a lawsuit for five years? Don’t lawyers, judges, court personnel’s time cost money?
They even refused to provide the database schema - how is providing just the schema expensive? Or hard to do?
As I understand it, the trial was about whether or not providing the database schema is a security risk.
> Your request seeks a copy of tables or columns within each table of CANVAS. The dissemination of these pieces of network information could jeopardize the security of the systems of the City of Chicago.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175628
Nobody said anything about providing a public API.
Just provide a DB dump to this one guy.