LittleSis is a free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations.  The name is a play on ‘big brother’ which stands for the monitoring of common people by the powerful.  Little Sis does the opposite by monitoring those in positions of power.

This is a project of Public Accountability Initiative and it tracks key relationships among politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions. It helps answer questions such as:

“Who do the wealthiest Americans donate their money to?

Where did White House officials work before they were appointed?

Which lobbyists are married to politicians, and who do they lobby for?”

The LittleSis API could be used to build external applications.  My favourite being a social graph visualisation – TheyRule.Net


About Vivek Srinivasan

I work with the Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford University. Before this, I worked with the Right to Food Campaign and other rights based campaigns in India. To learn more, click here.