forums.e-democracy.org correspondences on the issue
BAD news for opening up broad access to crime data - the number one everyday citizen demanded government information based my direct experience with online community forums. Note some useful links: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Minneapolis_and_St._Paul_crime_data "CrimeReports is contending in a current federal case that public crime data becomes CrimeReports' own proprietary product in the form provided on CrimeReports.com." The bill should be amended to fund an effort modeled on the standardization of transit scheduling/routing data - http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com - so that all police departments can put out real-time feeds of various crime data (heck, Seattle even does 911 calls now - http://schrier.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/citywatch/ ) for broad reuse. Like weather data provided by the federal government, it gets to the people through many, often competing providers.
Thanks to the OpenPlans Twitter feed
