How about this as a starting point... Terminals with access to the DB and analysis tools in every city hall. Accounts and access for all citizens of good stan

How about this as a starting point... Terminals with access to the DB and analysis tools in every city hall. Accounts and access for all citizens of good standing (make a new security clearance level for this to codify the notion - revoked for stalking, felonies, publishing DB information outside the terminals etc). Access is logged and also in the DB. A set of forums reachable through the terminals that allow discussion of findings and policies (some with real names attached some with pseudonyms). The implication being, that you could read someone's email, but it is a matter of record that you did. Or perhaps the new citizens' security clearance would be stratified so that one needs to earn one's way up the scale of accessing info about other people, perhaps quorum's to grant higher clearance levels or temporary opening of some records. Yeah, rather unrealistic techno-utopian in thinking, I admit. But this is an entry-level idea of equal access taken straight-forwardly. Born a bit from me trying to keep myself wondering, how would this work in Banks' Culture?