As Chairman of eBay Inc., PayPal’s parent company, and as a philanthropist and soon-to-be deeply committed to government transparency, press freedoms and free expression, these issues hit close to home. (Since eBay is a public company, it’s important for me to stress that the views in this article are my own and don’t represent the views of the company.)

The story started in December, 2010, when PayPal suspended its relationship with WikiLeaks and the foundation accepting donations on their behalf for a period of several months. Today, PayPal can be found as one of several payment options available to WikiLeaks’ work.

When I learned of PayPal’s decision, I immediately expressed my concerns to company management. A few days later, I contributed to an editorial by the Civil Beat Editorial Board to draw attention to the important press freedom concerns raised by the actions of PayPal and other companies as a result of government pressure.

In the editorial, we affirmed that Julian Assange is a publisher and that the U.S. government used its power to attempt to silence him:

It used to be that a publisher owned his own presses and while even the angriest of politicians might want to stop him from running them, there was essentially nothing they could do.

With the Internet, many of us believed that the power of the publisher had spread to everyone, that we lived in a time of press freedom that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago.

But the WikiLeaks case exposes the vulnerability of any publisher on the Internet. What’s happened to Assange and his website has deeply troubling implications for our society. And, no, we’re not talking about the damage some believe he’s doing to our national security by publishing classified records.

We’re talking about how democracy can be diminished when government uses its power to silence a voice it disagrees with. Even more worrisome is how this case has exposed how foreign governments may be able to use their own criminal investigations to hurt and potentially silence journalists beyond their own borders.

We also noted that the commercial nature of the Internet posed new threats to press freedoms by virtue of the fact that these companies generally don’t have the First Amendment rights of its customers in mind when the government starts howling about one of them.

Today, it appears, notification of a criminal investigation is enough to force businesses whose cause is not the First Amendment to cut off a publisher the way Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard each have done WikiLeaks…

Unlike the press barons of old, the executives of these businesses cannot tell their shareholders that it will hurt their company more to cave on a matter of principle than to drop a customer.

In contrast, our will have the First Amendment at its core, and will make very different decisions if faced with government pressure not to publish or retaliation after the fact.

Three years later, the vulnerability of Internet publishers is not much different, though according to the Justice Department has realized it has a “New York Times problem” if it wants to criminalize WikiLeaks’ publication. It may have taken nearly three years for the Justice Department to realize something that seems evident to press freedom advocates, but it’s still progress.

There is, however, still about whether or not WikiLeaks or Assange will be charged. While it’s impossible to know what specific acts law enforcement officials are investigating, it’s a sad state of affairs that the legality of what, from the outside, appear to be legitimate news-gathering operations are being questioned.

Today it’s not just the process of news-gathering that’s being questioned, but the nature of online protest. Is a distributed denial of service attack a legitimate form of protest?

Back in 2010, members of Anonymous retaliated against PayPal by launching exactly this type of attack. We don’t know how many people participated in the attack but just 14 were arrested and charged by the government.

A denial of service attack is damaging and costly. Many of PayPal’s customers rely on PayPal for their livelihood. An interruption in service can have serious consequences: those customers may lose income that may cause them to become late on rent payments, medical expenses, etc. These are serious impacts that must not be ignored. An attack on PayPal’s servers hurts these vulnerable people far more than it hurts a multinational company.

People at PayPal 鈥� as in most companies 鈥� take their responsibility to protect their customers very seriously. They sleep with pagers next to them so they can be woken in the middle of the night when something goes wrong. They put in extra hours on short notice at the expense of spending time with their families. They put their customers ahead of their own interests time and time again.

But on the other side, I can understand that the protesters were upset by PayPal’s actions and felt that they were simply participating in an online demonstration of their frustration. That is their right, and I support freedom of expression, even when it’s my own company that is the target.

The problem in this case however is that the tools being distributed by Anonymous are extremely powerful. They turn over control of a protester’s computer to a central controller which can order it to make many hundreds of web page requests per second to a target website. The combined impact of just a few (say, one thousand) of these computers can overwhelm most websites. One thousand computers each initiating just 100 requests per second means that every minute, 6 million page requests are being made.

If we want to make parallels between real-world protests and online protests, that means that 1,000 people can have the effect of 6 million people demonstrating in front of your office. That seems like an excessive impact in the hands of each person. It’s as though each protester can bring along 6,000 phantom friends without going to the trouble of convincing each of them to take an afternoon off and join the protest in the street.

That’s why I’ve concluded that the use of these attack tools is vastly different than other forms of protest.

That said, from a justice point of view, I think prosecutors need to look at the actual damage caused by each defendant. First, it would be unjust to hold 14 people accountable for the actions of a thousand (or however many other people were part of the same attack). Each person should be accountable for the damage they personally caused.

Second, the law allows prosecutors to calculate damage in a way that seems overstated. An appropriate damage estimate includes the pay and overtime pay required for employees to respond to the attack. But the damage estimate apparently being used by prosecutors in this case includes the cost of upgrading equipment to better defend against similar future attacks.

To me, that doesn’t make sense. It’s akin to charging a protester who illegally and ill-advisedly throws a rock through a window with the cost of replacing the window with much more expensive rock-proof glass. Yes, it’s true the business wouldn’t have thought to protect itself against rocks if it hadn’t been for the protester’s actions, but to me it’s not fair to compel the protester to pay for the upgrade.

Prosecutors should also look at the circumstances of each defendant, and examine whether or not they were aware of the excessive impact their actions might have. They may have believed they were participating in a legitimate online protest and they were not aware of the multiplicative effect of the tools they were installing. Many people are not technically aware of the power of these tools and may have felt they were lending a single voice to the chorus of protest, rather than simulating thousands of voices. In those cases, I believe justice requires leniency. In my view, they should be facing misdemeanor charges and the possibility of a fine, rather than felony charges and jail time.

As a society, our notions of free speech and protest must evolve since much of the public sphere is now online. Online protest is a new form of expression and probably feels natural to people who have grown up participating in online communities. The principles of the First Amendment require that we create space for free speech and association, unencumbered by government intrusion, and that those spaces exist online as well as offline. But in creating those spaces, we must also be cognizant that a much smaller number of protesters can now significantly disrupt the activities of millions of their fellow citizens who have an equal right to go about their lives without undue disruption.

If the great civil rights can now be simulated online by a few dozen people using purpose-built tools, simple parallels with offline protests aren’t sufficient to give us guidance on the role of free expression online.

The government’s actions against WikiLeaks in 2010 and companies’ reactions to that pressure, as well as the prosecution of the PayPal 14 raise critical questions about the nature of the First Amendment in the digital age. The First Amendment is primarily a restraint on government intrusion and a bedrock principle of our society. How do commercial interests interact with those protections? How does government ensure space for free expression online when there are no public sidewalks or street corners? How can unpopular dissent resist government pressure when that dissent depends on commercial Internet providers to reach its audience?

These are vital questions in today’s society. The First Amendment is one of the most important rights we have. How will our understanding of the First Amendment adapt as society and technology changes? Time will tell, but our freedoms depend on a vigorous engagement on these questions by all of us.

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As many of you know, I鈥檝e had an interest in journalism for some time now. I鈥檝e been working on Civil Beat for three years and through my philanthropic work at Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, we鈥檝e supported many efforts around the world related to media, citizen engagement, and government transparency and accountability.

Separate from my work with Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, and as part of my growing interest to preserve and strengthen the role journalism plays in society, I explored purchasing The Washington Post over the summer. That process got me thinking about what kind of social impact could be created if a similar investment was made in something entirely new, built from the ground up. Something that I would be personally and directly involved in outside of my other efforts as a philanthropist.

I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest. And, I want to find ways to convert mainstream readers into engaged citizens. I think there鈥檚 more that can be done in this space, and I鈥檓 eager to explore the possibilities.

Right now, I鈥檓 in the very early stages of creating a new mass media organization. I don鈥檛 yet know how or when it will be rolled out, or what it will look like.

What I can tell you is that the endeavor will be independent of my other organizations, and that it will cover general interest news, with a core mission around supporting and empowering independent journalists across many sectors and beats. The team will build a media platform that elevates and supports these journalists and allows them to pursue the truth in their fields. This doesn鈥檛 just mean investigative reporting, but all news.

As part of my learning process, I recently reached out to Glenn Greenwald to find out what journalists like him need to do their jobs well. As it turns out, he and his colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, were already on a path to create an online space to support independent journalists. We had a lot of overlap in terms of our ideas, and decided to join forces.

I believe that independent journalists like Glenn, Laura, and Jeremy play an important role in our society. We鈥檒l be working with them and others, but we have a long way to go in terms of what the organization looks like, people鈥檚 roles and responsibilities 鈥� all of those things still need to be worked out.

I鈥檒l be sure to update you along the way as the new organization progresses.

See related stories:

• Pressthink:

• Poynter:

The post Pierre Omidyar: My Next Adventure in Journalism appeared first on 天美视频.

Thanks to the power of the interwebs, you can follow along with us this week as we celebrate the launch of HuffPost Hawaii. Our travels include stops on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island and we鈥檒l be showcasing several familiar (and maybe a few not-so-familiar) places and people along the way. You can join us on and using #AlohaHuffPost and by following our Twitter handles @HuffPostHawaii @CivilBeat @AriannaHuff and @Pierre.

HuffPost Hawaii is full of news 鈥� from international and national stories to blogs by local community members, and everything in between. We鈥檙e especially proud that HuffPost Hawaii will feature select content from Civil Beat, so that we can more broadly share the opportunities and challenges attached to life in paradise.

Patti Epler, editor of Civil Beat and now also editor-in-chief of HuffPost Hawaii, shares her thoughts about one of the many lessons Hawaii has to share with the world, namely patience and tolerance. You can read her column . In a related post, Arianna Huffington discusses the many . We鈥檙e proud to be counted amongst the Huffington Post鈥檚 prestigious community of partners, and look forward to sharing everything Hawaii has to offer the rest of the world.

As for Civil Beat, we鈥檙e more energized than ever before. With three years of experience reporting on the issues that matter most to the people of Hawaii, our vision is clearer on what remains to be done. We鈥檝e tried some new things, we鈥檝e eliminated some old things and we continue to push ourselves to produce results for the people of Hawaii that ultimately lead to a better quality of life.

Our team is inspired by the goal of bringing you investigative journalism that has local impact, and helps set a new standard in Hawaii about what it means for leaders to be responsive to their community. We also want to celebrate and share successes from Hawaii that might be models for others locally, and maybe even beyond our shores. We will continue to innovate and experiment with a variety of news, features, and tools that lead to impact on, and engagement with, all segments of our diverse population.

We鈥檙e fortunate to live in a place where communities are tightly-knit and interconnected. We may not have the large population of other locales, but as the famous quote attributed to cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead tells us, 鈥淣ever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.鈥�

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Simply put, CivilBeat.com will continue doing what it鈥檚 been doing for three years: public affairs and investigative journalism. And this fall, we will launch the new site featuring a broad array of content curated for Hawaii and those interested in our state.

When we started Civil Beat three years ago, we wanted to create a news organization that would help Hawaii ask and begin to answer the most important questions facing our community. We were concerned about the decline in the number of reporters and editors focused on covering the public’s business, and we were convinced that there were many untold stories about how Hawaii operates.

Since then we have created the largest newsroom dedicated to Hawaii public affairs and published thousands of stories. In the process we have uncovered many aspects of our public life that could be improved. Most recently our four-part series exposed the little-known challenges caused by poor planning in the development and maintenance of the Ala Wai Canal, and the risks they pose to one of the most important engines of the state’s economy, Waikiki. Through our investigative series on the lack of public oversight over police misconduct we found serious gaps in legislators’ and the public’s knowledge of criminal offenders within police ranks. We brought to light contracting problems with state school bus services that caused costs to skyrocket to more than $70 million, made worse by a lack of proper oversight.

We pursue these investigations not because we want to make our leaders look bad. We do them because we want to challenge our leaders to do better. The role of a properly functioning news enterprise in a democracy is just that: to keep an eye on those who have the public’s trust, to ensure they are not abusing that trust, and to ensure they are proper stewards of that trust and the public’s resources.

We also believe that the broader public has a critical role to play in moving our society forward. It’s not enough for just a few people to be aware of the problems, or to rely on public officials to address the challenges we face without community engagement. We need a vibrant civic square, where representatives of all parts of our community are engaging, debating and discovering the best solutions.

Through Civil Beat’s Community Voices and our integrated Facebook comments, we have brought many respected and diverse voices into the conversation, in a way that reflects the growth of social media and the changing news habits of our community.

But we think we can do more.

That鈥檚 one reason why we are partnering with Huffington Post. No one has done a better job than they have to bring highly respected and diverse voices into the civic conversation through their blogger’s network. And depending on which Internet traffic measures you look at, no dedicated media organization garners as much worldwide visitor traffic as they do. Not CNN, not New York Times, not Fox, not anyone. And unlike high-traffic news aggregators like Google and Yahoo News, they pursue their own original reporting, for which they were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.

Being the world鈥檚 most visited dedicated media organization with the most diverse and respected commentary brings an unprecedented audience to the important civic conversations of our time.

It is conversations like these that will enrich Hawaii’s understanding of our own challenges, and it is this unprecedented audience that will be exposed to all that Hawaii has to offer.

Naturally, any partnership has to make financial sense for both parties. We are dedicated to the proposition that public interest news can be financially self-sustaining. Through this partnership and a new dedicated staff, we will be able to bring a new focus to Hawaii’s culture, well-being and lifestyle, leisure and hospitality, as well as the arts and entertainment. These new content areas will allow us to showcase Hawaii’s brands to a highly engaged global audience.

In the time I’ve spent with Arianna Huffington, I’ve found her to be an inspiring and visionary voice on how the media can transform people’s lives, combining entertainment, enrichment and reporting on important national and international news. It is this unique combination of content and community that has propelled Huffington Post to its award-winning and leading position among global news brands. And it is this that Civil Beat is bringing to Hawaii.

The post Aloha, World! Huffington Post Partnership Takes Hawaii Global appeared first on 天美视频.

At the time, a number of people told us it wouldn鈥檛 work. That either we wouldn鈥檛 get access to newsmakers, or that no one would read our reporting. They told us that we just didn鈥檛 know how things were done in Hawaii.

Well, two years in, we hope you see that we鈥檝e proven them wrong. Our stories have broken news that others weren鈥檛 reporting, and they鈥檝e affected legislation and policy makers across the state. Our coverage has helped usher in a new era of transparency and accountability in Hawaii government.

It hasn’t been without its bumps and bruises, but we knew we’d be traveling the same tough road that has always awaited the trailblazers 鈥� the great investigative journalists, the whistleblowers and the people of conscience who have aways challenged the status quo.

We think discussion about the people鈥檚 business in Hawaii is in much better shape today than it was two years ago, and we hope you agree.

We are trying to help change Hawaii for the better, but we can鈥檛 do it alone. We need your help. When you support Civil Beat, you鈥檙e making an investment in your community.

We hope you will join the Civil Beat Ohana.

Pierre Omidyar, Publisher
Patti Epler, Editor
Sara Lin, Assistant Editor

The post A Letter From Civil Beat appeared first on 天美视频.

John helped Randy Ching and me launch Civil Beat in 2010 as its editor and over the past two years contributed to its growth into a news source that’s part of the daily conversation in Honolulu. Civil Beat was recognized as Hawaii’s Best Overall News Site by the state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists after just eight months.

Civil Beat partners with Hawaii Public Radio, KITV, Clear Channel/KHVH, the Maui News, the Garden Island and others to share its investigative reporting across the islands. It also has developed subscription partnerships with Farmers Insurance, the Hawaii State Bar Association and Kanu Hawaii.

John’s selection by the Post, in my view, is a sign of the way the national journalism community is watching Civil Beat and embraces its innovative approach. We’re appreciative of John’s leadership and very happy for him. It’s rewarding to see that good work by people here is recognized nationally.

“Civil Beat’s pioneering approach to digital journalism shows how powerful new media can be in serving communities,” Washington Post Editor Marcus Brauchli says. “As we look for ways to engage our readers in Washington and around the world, it’s clear we can learn and benefit from John’s experience in Honolulu.”

John wasn’t looking for a job. He and Judith, his wife, were very happy here and had become part of the community. But it’s hard to say no when one of the nation’s most prestigious news organizations comes calling.

“It was a difficult decision for me to make. I love Hawaii and appreciate how open people here have been to me,” John told me. “I believe in Civil Beat and look forward to seeing it continue to grow in coming years. But ultimately I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help such a storied news organization in a leadership role.”

Taking over at the helm of Civil Beat in the interim will be Deputy Editor Patti Epler and Operations Director Heidi Pliszka.

Patti is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who joined Civil Beat last fall as deputy editor. The California native lived in Hawaii on a sailboat many years ago and has worked in Alaska, Washington state, Arizona and Oregon. She led the team at the East Valley Tribune in Arizona that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. At Civil Beat, Patti has been running the day-to-day operations of the newsroom for months and recently directed the series, “Taken For a Ride,” which exposed the reason for skyrocketing school bus costs in Hawaii.

Heidi has worked for decades in technology management and operations roles, including at Anthology Marketing Group, where she was vice president and director of account management for the Digital Marketing Group. Heidi was born and raised in Hawaii and has a personal passion for making a difference in the place she calls home. She has been overseeing business operations at Civil Beat since summer 2011.

John will be one of two managing editors at the Post. He will oversee the departments that predominantly serve the Washington, D.C., area such as Local, Sports, local business and many features/entertainment sections. He will also serve as the newsroom’s senior digital editor.

Before joining Civil Beat, John was editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. That paper closed in February 2009 after almost 150 years of publishing. He also served as vice president/news for the newspaper division of the E.W. Scripps Co., which owned the Rocky.

The duties of general manager were added to John’s plate last summer, and in that capacity he’s reached out and deepened our ties in the community.

I know the people at The Washington Post will enjoy working with John, and I’m sure he can help the paper achieve new highs. I’m proud that the next managing editor of such an important national news organization comes from Honolulu.

As for what鈥檚 next here at Civil Beat, we鈥檙e excited for all the stories and conversations yet to come. We will continue our work on top of the incredible foundation that John helped us create.

The post Civil Beat Editor to Join Washington Post as Managing Editor appeared first on 天美视频.

When VisiCalc came out, one of the original spreadsheet programs, I taught myself how to use it and demonstrated its features and usefulness to the occasional customer. Frankly, most seemed more curious about what the heck a boy was doing with a computer that was supposed to be an office tool than what the Apple could actually do.

Four years later, now in high school in Washington, D.C., I attended an Apple Users鈥� Group meeting featuring members of the original Macintosh team, demonstrating an entirely new home computer. I remember being in awe of the ease with which a mouse click changed the margins on a word-processing document which then reflowed instantly. The designers talked about having built a computer that they themselves wanted to use, rather than what customers were telling them they wanted. I didn鈥檛 understand it then, but what they were talking about was how you create a new market, rather than limit yourself to the definition of an existing market. It requires a leap of faith, thinking differently. The Mac鈥檚 screen was white, not black, so it would look and feel more natural, like paper. It was 鈥渦ser-friendly,鈥� and it had a unique 鈥渓ook and feel.鈥� Even the vocabulary used to describe this tool was new.

With Steve Jobs at the helm, Apple always went its own way. He built products that he thought 鈥渢he rest of us鈥� would want to use, and he built them with utter confidence that we would. Steve was comfortable with leaps of faith. He urged us to 鈥�,鈥� and in the process he fundamentally changed the way we thought about technology.

Before Steve, computer technology was considered by most people to be an office tool: nothing more than the next generation of adding machines. Or maybe a hobbyists鈥� plaything, something to tinker around with in the garage. With his historic George Orwell 鈥�1984鈥� Super Bowl ad, he challenged us to reject the status quo, and embrace a new vision. With the design of the Macintosh, he understood that the aesthetics of a tool were as important as 鈥� or more than 鈥� its functionality.

A decade or so later, Steve made a crucial breakthrough with the iPod and the beginning of the digital revolution in media. The iPod and the iTunes Store began to change the computer from a tool into something personal, something that we became attached to because it reflected who we were, or wanted to be.

And then, he changed the world again with the iPhone. Instead of simply being a phone, he envisioned a tool with no buttons, and a natural user interface that we would interact with using our fingers on smooth glass, as if we were directly touching whatever was displayed on the screen. A phone with no buttons 鈥� another leap of faith. He taught us to stretch and rotate photos with our fingers. He also taught us the Zen of touch-screen auto-correction typing, something which admittedly some of us do better than others.

In hindsight, the iPad seems a natural evolution from the iPhone, but at the time it was another leap. There is a sense of contact and physicalness that its apps provide, and in the process the iPad has become much more than a simple tool.

From the very beginning of Apple, Steve had a vision of the positive impact technology could have on people鈥檚 lives. He was unique among most technologists, because he constantly innovated on both the hardware and the software, humanizing technology more and more with each new product. And in the process, the technology he created went from being just an occasional tool to being a constant companion.

With Steve鈥檚 passing, we鈥檝e lost someone who had a historic impact not only on how we use technology, but on how we think about it. Losing him at such a young age makes me wonder what other breakthroughs and leaps of faith he would have made in the coming decades.

For me, Steve鈥檚 legacy won鈥檛 be limited to these breakthrough products, however. More important than the products themselves, he changed the way we think 鈥� and how we think about something is often the hardest thing to change. This makes Steve鈥檚 successes all that much more remarkable.

Steve challenged the world to 鈥渢hink different,鈥� and he didn鈥檛 limit that to his company鈥檚 products. In a very real sense, thinking differently has the effect of expanding our world and our reach 鈥� our view of what we can accomplish.

Steve expanded our world with technology, but he also showed us that thinking differently is indeed how we can change the world. And for that, I am truly thankful for his passion, his example and his inspiration.

The post Steve Jobs鈥� Legacy: Think Different appeared first on 天美视频.

The way we planned to do that was by writing stories of the type we weren’t seeing enough of elsewhere, stories that broke new ground, stories that went further, stories that had impact.

Perhaps the Civil Beat articles that had the most impact in the past year were the ones about the salaries of state and Honolulu workers. We were the first news organization in Hawaii to report what is public record, how the state and Honolulu pay their workers. We published the complete list of salaries and were told by state workers that it helped them because they could raise questions about why one person was paid more than another when the person didn’t do more or better work. The articles also pointed out the troubling fact that we have government employees earning so little that they’re eligible for food stamps.

As you can see from our coverage of salaries, Civil Beat is passionate about transparency. But we’re also passionate about other issues, such as injustice, accountability and government waste. Our goal was to have an impact on the community through our coverage of each of these areas. Here are some examples of that impact from our first year:

Transparency

Week 29: Three Deputies Give New Meaning to the Term Shield Law

Summary: Civil Beat exposed that the state court system had been charging just to review court records, a clear violation of constitutional guarantees of the openness of the courts.

Impact: The new court administrator immediately changed the policy the day after he took office.

Wide Gap Between Illegal Rentals, City Enforcement

Summary: Civil Beat showed that while neighborhood groups complain about property owners violating short-term rental laws and turning residential neighborhoods into tourist hubs, the city of Honolulu barely enforces the law, citing only 18 property owners in all of 2010.

Impact: The city administration says it wants new legislation to fix the issue and city councilors say they’re going to revisit it.

Election Office Breaches Confidentiality of Voters

Summary: Civil Beat revealed privacy flaws in the state voting system.

Impact: State election officials said they would rectify the problem.

Government Waste

Road to Riches: Overtime at City Road Division

Summary: Civil Beat revealed that five workers in one year made more in overtime than in salary and that some were double-billing for the same time they claimed to have worked.

Impact: Overtime abuse in the Honolulu Road Maintenance Division is under investigation by the city administration and the prosecutor’s office.

Government Waste Watch: State Paying Staff to Retype Every Food Stamp Application

Summary: Civil Beat reported that the state, at a time when it was cutting expenses and claiming it didn’t have any money, was paying staff to re-enter food stamp applications that had already been typed into a computer by the applicants.

Impact: Administration said it would implement online filing.

Road to Riches: City Workers Claimed 5,525 Overtime Hours for Illegal Stream Dumping

Summary: Honolulu already owes $1.7 million in fines for illegally dumping concrete rubble into a Waianae stream. Removing the debris will cost another $1.13 million. But Civil Beat showed that the true cost of the incident is much higher: City workers were paid more than 5,500 hours of overtime to do the work in the first place.

Impact: Taxpayers learned true cost of illegal dumping.

Injustice

Selling Sex In Honolulu: In Nine Months, Police Dept. Arrests Just One Pimp

Summary: Authorities have said for years that the state didn’t need any more laws to help fight modern-day slavery. Then Civil Beat revealed that Honolulu Police had charged just one pimp in nine months.

Impact: The Hawaii Legislature this year passed a law making prostitutes eligible for the witness protection program, a key step in helping fight human trafficking.

During Tsunami, Hawaii Homeless Left Behind

Summary: During the tsunami, Civil Beat reported that many Hawaii homeless had been left behind in the flood zone.

Impact: After our report, the city announced it would revise its tsunami response plan 鈥� and improve access to free transportation for homeless.

Lack of Hot Water For Public Housing Residents a Test for Abercrombie

Summary: Civil Beat drew attention to the plight of the residents of Mayor Wright Homes, who haven’t had hot water for years. We went so far as to call for the governor to move into the complex until the residents had hot water.

Impact: When the governor issued the second draft of his budget, suddenly money for Mayor Wright had been found.

Accountability

Civil Beat Conclusion: Honolulu Rail Report ‘Shoddy,’ ‘Biased’ 鈥� and Right?

Summary: Whom to believe? That’s a tough question when you’re talking about cost estimates in the billions. A Civil Beat analysis compared the city’s financial projections for its $5.3 billion rail project and the state’s cost projections.

Impact: The City Council held an extraordinary hearing to get to the bottom of the matter, citing Civil Beat research as the basis for its questions.

Mandatory Solar Hot Water for New Homes: Don’t Believe It

Summary: Civil Beat revealed that Hawaii lawmakers’ claim that the state is the first to require solar water heaters is not true.

Impact: Legislators took up the issue.

Six Years Later, Principals Still Don’t Have Performance Contracts

Summary: Civil Beat showed that the Department of Education had made promises six years ago to evaluate principals annually and had never done it, even as it was promising to begin evaluating teachers annually.

Impact: Consistent with Civil Beat’s promise, readers had the information by which to measure government promises.

The post Civil Beat’s Year In Review appeared first on 天美视频.

Read an article about the beach and view a slideshow by Civil Beat Publisher Pierre Omidyar.

The post Hawaii’s Dirtiest Beach appeared first on 天美视频.