I have no doubt that a government could not function without the ability to keep some data private, hence my assertion that Anarchy existed as the consequence o

I have no doubt that a government could not function without the ability to keep some data private, hence my assertion that Anarchy existed as the consequence of absolute transparency. > But what about more routine things? A lot of times we trust the government to keep our personal secrets. Consider health care. Most governments provide health care to some people in some capacity, be it the local public hospital or through a single payer system like Canada or even the NHS. How do you run one of these systems without protecting the privacy of your patients--i.e. keeping secrets? > > Or perhaps we should consider the criminal justice system. No state secrets means no Witness Protection Program. Sealed juvenile criminal records are generally considered a good thing, as is (in some cases) jury sequestration and the identities of rape victims. I think that the conflation of individual privacy and the privacy of a government as an entity is erroneous. I can elaborate further, if you disagree or do not see why I assert such a thing. > * Perhaps we should consider diplomacy, given the recent leak. Sometimes diplomatic negotiations are very sensitive, and the smallest leak can catastrophically queer the deal. Consider the Cuban Missile Crisis--a well-placed leak there could have led to war.* I hope to address this below. Please do let me know if you feel that I have not. > Finally, a government that can't keep secrets can't use cryptographic authentication or cryptographic channels for anything, from running an HTTPS service to transferring funds. Hell, they can't even secure their computer networks. There is a distinct difference between degrees of openness with regard to citizens and with regard to external peoples. If we posit a totally transparent government, secure networks and the like could exist if every citizen were granted, on request and without possibility of denial, the appropriate credentials. > We would all have the constitutional right to root access on every government computer. I don't believe that this deduction necessarily follows. If we posit a completely transparent governmental apparatus, a distinction may still be drawn between a citizen's right to agency and a right to knowledge. Concerns and further objections may be raised, of course. However, I do not believe that total transparency is a feasible model for a government--hence the Anarchy--and do not believe that elaboration on this hypothetical is profitable path. I am not--and I had hoped to make this more plain earlier-- advocating a state with no ability to keep data private. I do not wish to live in a society so ordered. Rather, inspired by the rhetoric of my State officials in response to WikiLeaks' actions, I have begun to wonder at the ideal compromise point between total openness and total secrecy of data. The current and former US administrations have certainly abused the privileged of classifying documents as State Secrets. Though I am a US citizen of voting age, I have no way to determine why a document is given a Secret classification, nor can I make an informed vote on sitting candidates if part of their actions remain hidden.