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No. The idea here is that the workings of the public authorities should be open to scrutiny. Hence, all documents (correspondence, working documents, the lot!)
by Pinus 3y ago
No.
The idea here is that the workings of the public authorities should be open to scrutiny. Hence, all documents (correspondence, working documents, the lot!) are public, except those that are explicitly made secret, and it takes national-security level issues to do that. The authorities are not even allowed to ask who’s asking.
The first problem is that even material on individuals, collected by the authorities, becomes public.
This generally went unnoticed for a couple of hundred years, as you still had to know which documents there were, go around and ask whichever authority held the documents, and probably pay at cost for copies. Now we have the Internet, which has led to the second problem. Several data brokers have started to request all data there is, and then index, repackage, and sell it on the Internet, drastically lowering the threshold to request all the juicy stuff on anyone. Now, that is obviously against the GDPR, but the law allows anyone to become a journalist, who play by different rules, by saying "I am a journalist!" and paying a token fee.
So, to summarize: Openness, intended to keep tabs on those in power, and which has historically been somewhat tamed by practical barriers has, those barriers torn down by the Internet, become uncomfortably open.
- eecc 3y agoOh right, I get it. As an Italian we always spoke with admiration about this transparency regarding tax, but I always thought the request and the requesting party was also annotated and made available. What you describe is fairly blunt and alarming.