That is a very naive and idealistic position. Governments often and rightly have genuine reasons for keeping things secret - as do other institutions, businesses and indeed individual people.
All the ridiculous, obtuse comments just to feel superior. If you can't attack the actual message, then impeach the character?
Grow up.
I assume he meant what he said.
Every citizen has a right to know the nature of what we are doing (how else can we decide whether or not we want to live with the trade offs or not?), and to be informed when something goes off the rails on the ethics side of things. This is a pretty low bar to set.
How can we call ourselves a democracy when money is taken from us and we don't know where it goes? It seems like we're voting for people, but there's no discourse about the secret stuff.
[1]: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror
I can't quite find where I first saw this, but googling a bit brings up a few interesting example. For instance, http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency
While this tactic does fall into the grey area of morality, it is quite effective.
I also don't think they'll be able to do an equifax/transunion lookup without your permission. And it's perfectly reasonable to say no to that, as credit checks are bad for your credit.
With respect to court documents: It could result is someone getting hurt or a mis-trial due to outside influences (ie. Rob Ford video)
There are obviously many reasons...
It would really hurt a company if their detail pricing
scheme was released, as a competitor could easily
undercut if they had access to that information
It's not hard to think of others.
What if the electorate decides that a government should keep certain things secret from them? Directly at the ballot box or through their representatives?
I think in the US we have done so when we allow or congressmen to continue to renew the patriot act. For good or ill, the government keeping things secret for national security purposes is something we (through our votes, and through our congress) have asked them to do. Maybe we should stop doing so.