I think one aspect that the article misses, is the fact that the public can't make an informed decision with their votes if the government has secrets.
A country can still have secrets while maintaining transparency, the government like any other entity has confidential information that has to be kept secret, as no one can operate on any meaningful level if everything they do is public.
Anything from actual national security information (e.g. from list of covert agents to nuclear launch codes) to day to day diplomatic and policy related information needs secrecy. You can't build a case when the criminals know you coming after them, you can't negotiate a treaty when every discussion is public, you can't always say what you spending money one because it can cause and arms race etc.
The article doesn't misses that aspect the notion that a government can operate without any type of secrecy is just absurd.
Case in point would be Stallman - whether you agree or not with his ideals or the GPG you can't deny that his impact on software as a whole has been tremendous and positive. It's reasonable to argue that github would not exist were it not for RMS and his fundamental position that all software should be Open Source
But the problem is it's not a position anyone can actually honestly take, I don't agree with RMS and I also think you over-estimate his impact on the software industry but at least he practices what he's preaching while WikiLeaks is a closed and secretive organization which about a step away from becoming a personality cult.
>Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing.
I don't believe this is necessarily true (for all cases, and all countries the US included), you need to understand that allot of the "secrets" that the government is keeping aren't actually intended to protect itself or even it's population but to protect other people and organizations in other countries.
This is why whilst I can understand the release of say the after action reports from Iraq I think that anyone who was involved with the diplomatic cable's leak should end up in prison for good, that was a spit in the face of diplomacy and every western value that people claim to hold and probably have actually caused more damage (as far as human lives go) than all other leaks including the Snowden one combined.
People and government need secrets, sure, but do they really need gag orders? (this is not rhetorical, I really don't know what the answer should be)