Big Brother better watch what he says—Little Sis is watching him. 

Little Sis, a branch of the 501(c)(3)non-profit organization Public Accountability Initiative, is a self-described “involuntary Facebook.”  It aims to “bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists, financers and their affiliated organizations.” 

The resulting database keeps track of everything from campaign donations for politicians to shared places of employment for talking heads like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
The database is available online, and, although it is less than a year old, it already contains entries for more than 29,000 people and roughly 140,000 “relationships.” 

Recording these relationships is what Little Sis is all about. 

 It seeks to gather that information and put it in a single place, with the ultimate goal of assembling it in a manner that “meaningfully exposes the social networks that wield disproportionate influence over this country's public policy.”

Little Sis strives to document these networks as comprehensively and accurately as possible.  Much of the information on the web site originates from reports of official sources: the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), Federal Elections Commission (FEC), and the United States Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act database are all heavily mined for relevant data. 

Other information is gathered from various reputable, public sources, such as Forbes BusinessWeek.  This stringency in selecting sources, in conjunction with the modifications and additions to current entries, should result in high levels of accuracy that further the organization’s goal of increasing the availability of politically-relevant information. 

 “It sounds pretty cool, honestly,” senior international management major Robert Newman, said. 

“It’s like one of those [idiotic] celebrity web sites, but useful; I mean, company execs need somebody to watch them, and so do politicians.”

And “watch them” is exactly what a student can do using Little Sis’s database.  For example, if a student at UTSA wants to find out who donated money to President Obama’s presidential campaign, Little Sis would yield over 900 individual names of significant donors, as well as various fundraising committees—plus the citations of where that information came from.   Although the lists are undoubtedly incomplete, the idea seems to be catching on, which opens the door for a great deal of future growth.  

The Little Sis database allows for Wiki-style enhancement, which allows any individual who registers with the site to submit changes.    And the more people adding information, the more the project will grow. 

Senior general business major Virginia Portz stated, “I think it is a great concept that allows for people to become more knowledgeable about what is going on.” 

Senior political science major Andrew Dossman agreed “I think it’s good.  It lets people see where politicians’ loyalties are.”

 He added one caveat, though, raising one issue always central to college students: privacy rights.  “I’m not so sure on [using it for private citizens], because it gets into privacy rights, he said. “ It’s like Where do you draw the line? I could see where it would be good, but it has the power to go too far very quickly.”  

“I see no problem in tracking money that comes from CEO’s to politicians.  That should be public knowledge" Dossman said.

Despite this caution, Little Sis seems to enjoy virtually unanimous support among UTSA students because it addresses one aspect of modern life that nobody can ignore.  That aspect is the common thread in students’ responses, which highlights this one fact: these days, everybody is in favor of a little public accountability. 

Little Sis is developing into a meaningful tool in the search for that accountability.