How Congress reads your e-mails

Earlier this week, we posted this wonderful Vice Magazine piece called ”Dear Congress: It Is No Longer OK To Not Know How the Internet Works,” which took Congress to task for not understanding the ramifications of SOPA and bending too quickly to lobbyists. But a funny thing happened on the way to ripping Congress a new one: Clay Johnson wrote a brilliant response titled “Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works,” in which he points out the structural problems that might cause Congress to focus more on lobbyists than actual constituents. “Lobbyists can manage the attention of our Representatives because they have the time and the resources,” Johnson writes. “But I’ve never met a member of Congress who liked constantly begging for money so that they could get re-elected. Nobody wants that.” He points out that this horrifically-designed software above, a Lockheed Martin product called Intranet Quorum, is how Congress reads constituent letters, and that contracts prevent them from going with something else. Not nearly as sexy as Gmail, is it? No wonder lobbyists get more mindshare than voters, right? There is a huge lesson here to take from BOTH articles. Read them both, if you haven’t. (EDIT: We got a good response to this, which we wrote back to.)