I disagree, I think you can strike a balance between privacy and transparency. Sometimes they strengthen each other. I am from Norway, and I've lived in the US,

I disagree, I think you can strike a balance between privacy and transparency. Sometimes they strengthen each other. I am from Norway, and I've lived in the US, and I would say that in many cases both privacy and transparency is stronger in Norway. E.g. in the US my credit history is inaccessible to me. I don't know who is accessing it. Yet this information is shared willy nilly with other businesses. So there is neither transparency on its usage nor privacy for me. In contrasts in Norway, by law, it is far more restricted what the credit card companies can record about me. Whenever somebody requests information about me, by law I have to be sent exactly the same information. This provides both increased privacy and transparency. I get to know who is trying to find out stuff about me, and I got control over what sort of information is shared about me. If what is being sent out looks wrong I can contact the credit card companies and inform them about that. Likewise you can look up anybody's tax returns in Norway. You can't look at the details however. But it is a great tool for transparency in that it allows you to check if e.g. government officials or others have way more income than they should be having. However whenever you request this information, people having those tax returns will be informed that you requested that information. This helps protect your privacy as you can't look at the neighbors tax returns without looking rather stupid and nosy.