“These files are already public,” said Fiona Morgan, a media researcher who studies public files at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. “We're just trying to make them more accessible – it's as simple as that.

Merrill is currently working to raise funds to launch his services, and has formed an advisory board that includes Sascha Meinrath from the New America Foundation, former NSA technical director Brian Snow and Jacob Appelbaum from the Tor Project, ...

Researcher Fiona Morgan spent months documenting the information ecosystem in just one part of the state in 2010 and 2011. Some interesting new sites, like the Raleigh Public Record, focus primarily on local civic news, while other news organizations are shifting to focus more on politics in preparation for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and the 2012 election. Parts of North Carolina also have a rich political blogging history, from Pam’s House Blend on the left to Pundit House on the right.

One roof at a time, Preston Rhea is casting an invisible net across Mount Pleasant. The 26-year-old field researcher for the Washington-based think tank New America Foundation has spent the past nine months nudging his neighborhood into a community wireless network. Routers, installed on six rooftops so far, open up people’s wireless connections to the public and allow any neighbor within a nine-block radius free access to the Internet.