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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I've said it many times, but we are not truly a nation of the people if the people don't know everything the government is doing.

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That's an attractive sentiment but the reality is more of a spectrum. Should every government official be required to wear a body cam and record every conversation they have? Should we be able to track the position of every soldier in real time? What are the implications of every negotiation being public?

> Should we be able to track the position of every soldier in real time?

No, but that's not what the article is about. There's an important difference between laws and orders/realtime tactical information.

The article concludes that secrecy is necessary but requires a process with more checks and balances.

excellent catch, the conflation of laws and policies with tactical information is a standard trick in the disinformation/propaganda/useful idiot tact of minimizing when our government goes hog wild without our permission.

Everything is a spectrum. Such comments obviously refer to the fact that the U.S. gov is far from having the necessary level of transparency, despite Obama's promises to make his administration "the most transparent in history" (everyone remember that one? I'm sure he's still having a good laugh about it every now and then.)

There's a huge difference between keeping some amount of critical information (like the specifics of current military deployments) secret versus keeping laws and court proceedings secret. There is no reasonable justification for the latter.

No, not all needs to be public. Particularly negotiations while they happen need some privacy otherwise there is a risk they degenerate to a series of individual win-loose battles when a bundle of compromises would yield a win-win.

But one needs to take a look at the impact the IT industry had on concentration of knowledge and power. A lot of things used to take more people and was so subject to more checks and less privacy. Today these things can be kept perfectly private.

Right now due to less than perfectly implemented systems once in a while a door to a cache of "private" information is opened. These caches contain a mixture of stuff that should have been private and stuff that really should have been published a long time ago even if somewhat embarrassing.

These leaks are destructive in the sense that they undermine the sense of privacy in areas where this is vital and also undermine the trust as it becomes clear too much is kept under the rug. It also opens the door to all sort of conspiracy pushers. It is highly problematic that the society seems to be reliant on the leaks to stay informed.

Sharing information makes one vulnerable. It is also vital to connect. Governments need to decide on how they relate to their people. Actually the people need to tell the governments what is acceptable and what not...

Should every government official be required to wear a body cam and record every conversation they have?

Yes, and we have the technology now to stream it live. If someone feels entitled to spend my money and tell me how to live, it's the least they can do.

But who? Librarians? Public university employees? How much transparency do you want?

Elected politicians and their direct reports.

A public servant is beholden to the public. So yeah, there should be no problem with their official representational capacities being 100% recorded, in-office discussions and all.

Soldiers, as far as I understand, are not technically public servants. But correct me if I'm wrong.

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