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Title: The Government Just Made it Harder to See What Spy Tech it Buys

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/17222...

An anonymous reader shares a report: It might look like something from the
early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and
rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most
important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S.
government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking
technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations. Or
rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own
investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down.
Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly
sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies,
including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers
dollars on. "FPDS may have been a little clunky, but its simple, old-school
interface made it extremely functional and robust. Every facet of government
operations touches on contracting at one point, and this was the first tool
that many investigative journalists and researchers would reach for to
quickly find out what the government is buying and who is selling it, and how
these contracts all fit together," Dave Maass, director of investigations at
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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