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Comment by Nasrudith | Hacker News Reader

While the hackers are clearly malevolent in their intentions I can't help but think of the one only surefire way to prevent this sort of meddling is radical transparency requirements among political canidates. They will wield immense power so asking them to be openly monitored would be justifiable at levels above even the judicial system so long as it was applied uniformly.

It would indeed be awkward and something politicians everywhere would be reluctant to implement but it would work and respect human rights which is more than can be said about many measures in intelligence.

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A lot of this data seems like it's only interesting as a means of identity theft and not journalistically interesting. I don't think there's a meaningful transparency argument, and I think the downside of filtering for politicians able to deal with identity theft is a problem. (Think US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose immediate prior job was in food service and didn't have enough salary history to rent an apartment in DC. The ability to ruin her personal credit would quite likely ruin her ability to serve her constituents, whereas richer politicians could survive it.)

It also filters against politicians with unrelated personal problems beyond their control. Maybe they have an abusive ex-spouse they divorced years ago. Do the details of the divorce need to be public? Maybe they have a family member in prison that they visit (San Francisco mayor London Breed's brother is in prison for murder, for instance). Given the state of our political discourse it will be very easy to attack politicians on the grounds that they have, or previously had, relationships with imperfect people, and those usually don't mean they'll use their office to help those people, or that their character is actually doubtful. And again it seems like it would unduly hurt those who come from backgrounds that aren't already the powerful class/group/ethnicity/whatever in the country.

I also think that as a person of political interest, you should be as transparent as possible. There are some aspects of the whole story that this approach doesn't answer or fit into this narrative:

1) It seems, that these documents or a majoritiy of them are tied to the personal lifes of these people, not to the political institutions they are affiliated with.

2) There are non-political targets: journalists, show hosts, singer / rapper -- people affiliated with media in general.

3) Some of these published materials were photos and docs of family members, children etc. When they are made targets of this form of intelligence gathering, something seems horribly wrong. They become victims because their spouse / mother / whatever is pursuing a political career -- this is just wrong on so many levels.

Radical transparency of what? Financial transparency is one thing, but rummaging in people's personal lives and consensual relationships is something we need to leave behind.

(On the other hand, exposing nonconsensual or coercive personal relationships is a benefit)

Let me preface this comment that in principle I find outing other people utterly abhorrent behaviour.

There's one exception

When one of those holier-than-though gay bashers (George Alan Rekers[1] being a great example) is caught with a rent-a-boy in an airport bathroom in a compromising situation (why always airport bathrooms?) is outed I think it's great and fitting justice.

For the hipocrisy and the immense damage those people do to society at large and to individuals specifically.

Else than that I totally agree with you. Consensual relationships and sexual orientation is nobody's business.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers

If they have nothing to hide then they have nothing to worry about. Right?

Twitter* suggests there are at least evidence of nepotism amongst the leaked documents, so one would assume there will be some kind of fallout because of this. If this is common practice then I'd assume that demands for future transparency will be met with heavy resistance.

* https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/108108941972...

That’s not the answer either. You’ll not get the most able or most willing politicians but only the cleanest or anodyne candidates who may not be the ablest candidates. It’s a terrible filter.

We already don’t get the most able politicians. We get corrupt and self-interested ones en masse.

This argument is strong in theory, but not so much in practice.

But we're making steps towards not doing so. Why give up?

This is like arguing for monarchy because democracy is a huge amount of time/effort and is imperfect anyway so why not save time. I've heard many bad arguments for monarchism as it happens, but none are quite so bad as "Why bother even trying to have good government?"

Accountability is precisely how we are making progress.

In the UK there are people who would seriously argue for just that, because the image of the monarchy is one of prestige, superiority and good public relation. In other words good PR that politicians dream of, having a (apparently) off hands approach to politics also helps.

I believe that shows the popularity and image contest of democratic politics.

These days when someone talks about a "capable" politician, I can (and probably most others with little hope left) only think of how they have perfected the skill and art of lying and deception, rather than the judicial, diplomatic, and relational skills that they are intended to strive for.

It's very difficult to keep your digital record clean your entire life. Anyone who manages it is either very able and motivated or Amish.

> Greens leader Robert Habeck, who had private chats with family members and credit card details posted online

Do you really expect that politicians should publish the kind of data that was stolen in this case?

This would just increase the levels of strawmen in between the politician and its industrial handler.

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