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I really, really hope the culture of leaking information becomes so strong that governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret. That would give
by AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
I really, really hope the culture of leaking information becomes so strong that governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret. That would give me some hope for the future.
Anyone that leaks information is a fucking hero.
Edit: Stop attacking me personally. I'm talking about the government's privacy here, not mine (nor anyone else's). I actually think my privacy will improve if this becomes a reality.
- retube 13y agoThat 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.
- zxcdw 13y agoApart from "obvious" national security in the name of TERRORISM[1], what are such reasons? [1]: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror
- scarmig 13y agoNegotiations. When you go to a new job and they tell you "How much do you make at your current position? Tell us, you have nothing to hide." what do you do?
- erre 13y agoGoing on a tangent here, if they also assume this stance - meaning, they'll tell you everyone else's salaries - it can be quite interesting. 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 http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency
- sgustard 13y agoYou say, tell me how much all your current employees make. Don't negotiate with someone who holds all the cards.
- hackula1 13y agoIf you are playing to win, you tell them you currently make whatever salary you are seeking. When they ask you what sort of salary you need, say something along the lines of "Obviously, I want to take a step forward, but I am pretty flexible, so if you can at least match my current pay, then I would be open to accepting". While this tactic does fall into the grey area of morality, it is quite effective.
- eruditely 13y agoDont companies pay equifax and such for employee salary data? I'd be careful on this one.
- patmcc 13y agoThis is where you say "my total compensation is around $x". To me, "total compensation" includes pay, benefits, bonuses, the dollar value I put on how short my commute is, rough cost of free food in the office, how nice my chair is, etc. etc. 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.
- hackula1 13y ago"Well, I guess Eqifax is not that accurate" and "Oops. Thanks for letting me know I don't want to work here" would both be reasonable responses. Most companies are not doing this.
- bzmwillemsen 13y agoWith respect to government contracts: 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. 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...
- cbr 13y agoIt 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 If every company's pricing were public, wouldn't we just have healthy competition?
- chc 13y agoWe would have competition. How healthy it would be is less certain.
- danielweber 13y agoGovernment contracts are usually public information already. More than once I've been at a company that sold something to a government agency, and the agency first had to publish what exactly they were buying and give someone else the ability to put in a better bid.
- mpyne 13y agoContracts are usually public. Each companies bid for the contract is not, and in fact there are laws against government contracting officers letting such information become public, at least while the contract negotiation phase is still ongoing.
- davidw 13y agoObvious one comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Witness_Protection_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Witness_P... It's not hard to think of others.
- derekp7 13y agoI REALLY hope they keep my personal login credentials for various gov web sites secret. Along with any other personal information they have on file.
- ssmoot 13y agoHe/She is clearly referring to Whistle Blowers. All the ridiculous, obtuse comments just to feel superior. If you can't attack the actual message, then impeach the character? Grow up.
- danielweber 13y ago"governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret" I assume he meant what he said.
- dabernathy89 13y agoTheir language clearly indicates that they mean any information.
- Eye_of_Mordor 13y agoUnfortunately governments are obliged to reveal their 'secrets' despite any misgivings, since they are acting on our behalf. They know this, they don't like this and they have utterly failed us.
- ninkendo 13y ago> Unfortunately governments are obliged to reveal their 'secrets' despite any misgivings 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.
- g8oz 13y agoThe electorate has done no such thing. The expansion of institutionalized secrecy in government by our representatives is an example the principal-agent problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem
- hackula1 13y agoFine, don't shut down the programs, but is it too much for the people paying for these programs to ask about their nature and to be informed of the accountability breaches? 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.
- fragsworth 13y agoThe right to know what we're paying for. Probably the best way of putting it. 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.
- mikevm 13y agoDon't you think that there are legitimate reasons for governments to keep certain things secret?
- tokenadult 13y agoI really . . . hope . . . that governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret. Does that include personal information about you, for example your personal medical information that is part of the treatment records of a government-administered medical insurance plan? Some countries (not many) make personal income tax filings public information. Do you live in such a country?
- swombat 13y agoI've made my company fully transparent, including, for example, all salary information. Most of those steps seemed very scary at first. In hindsight, there was nothing to be scared about, really. This is not to say that extreme transparency applied to all things is right - just that it often looks a lot more scary than it is. When you act transparently you relinquish some control, and some people hate the very idea of giving up any control.
- balabaster 13y agoThe salaries of all your employees? Doesn't that violate their own rights to privacy? Or does this only extend to the board of directors?
- unreal37 13y agoIs there such a thing as a right to privacy at work? The employer can install cameras, monitor computer usage, monitor entry and exit... there's no privacy at work, including what your salary is.
- swombat 13y agoWhy would it violate any rights to privacy? What rights are you talking about, anyway? The only thing we don't share openly in this manner is personal health problems.
- balabaster 13y agoTo clarify: It's my right, if I so choose, to keep my salary and any other personal financial information private from the rest of the world (minus of course, my employer and the IRS). So your releasing that information is a violation of my privacy.
- windexh8er 13y agoThe good thing here is that containment is the hard part and honor and integrity seems to be more on everyone's mind in today's world of egregious corruption within our 'democratic' governments. I share your hope and support the leaks. It is an awkward position to be in for the next US administration, I'll be curious to see how it plays out during the all annoying campaign season. Information wants to be free...
- mpyne 13y ago> Information wants to be free... Just remember that for the next NSA-related story.
- kevando 13y agoWhat if I told you your government knows what you masterbate to?
- freehunter 13y agoThe end game is, if they couldn't keep things like this secret, people would demand they stop storing this information in the first place.
- saraid216 13y agoOh no! I'm so ashamed of my sexuality that someone else knowing my porn habits is going to make me sing a tragic operatic solo!
- lttlrck 13y agoSecrets have existed since the dawn of man, your hopes of eradicating them are naive. How would you propose that "culture" be contained within the sphere of government? It clearly could not, it would spread to corporate and private spheres of life (if it didn't start here). It sounds dangerously close to a 100% surveillance society. How lovely.
- nikcub 13y ago> governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret. That isn't the goal, not for privacy advocates nor for Wikileaks or Julian Assange, who said: "The goal is justice, the method is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method." Advocates of individual privacy rely on the government, as a service provider, to keep secrets in order to protect the rights of individuals.
- jewbacca 13y agoI find it amazing how often supposedly substantive discussions about Wikileaks and Julian Assange go on without any explicit mention or acknowledgment of what I've always considered his central thesis: ---- "The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance [...] The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption." http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936id_/http://iq.org#Thenonlineareffectsofleaksonunjustsystemsofgovernance http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936id_/http://iq.org#T... http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
- tokenizer 13y agoYeah, I had always hoped this was the goal. It's not the leak that has the most effect, but the reaction to the leak.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mpyne 13y agoThat may have been Assange (and WikiLeaks) goal when it was founded. It's hard to claim that's currently their goal, given that their push for "transparency" is limited to the USA (and occasionally the UK) ever since their site switchover back 5-6 years ago.
- mcphilip 13y agoIt's not quite so simple as considering all leaks of government information heroic. For instance, would it have been heroic to leak news that U.S. code breakers had cracked enemy codes in WW2?
- jellicle 13y agoEven better, what if the government was closing in a child pornographer with chemical weapons and a nuke, and the leak allowed him to rape more children while nuking a nunnery and poisoning an orphanage?
- jafaku 13y agoThink of the children!
- stelonix 13y agoIs this some kind of humor? The odds of such a thing happening are close to nil.
- swombat 13y agoIt could happen. Even worse, it could happen on the anniversary of 9/11. (disclaimer: that's a joke)
- iand 13y agoYes, it parodies the usual scaremongering responses given in response to leaking/whistleblowing: pedophilia, terrorists, dirty bombs etc.
- Moral_ 13y agoI can't tell if you're really dense, or being sarcastic...
- timje1 13y agoYou forgot ...thus lowering house prices in a wide area. Now the electorate are on your side!
- Shivetya 13y agoit will only work in governments where fear of terminal retribution is minimal. Put another way, some governments have no qualms about keeping secrets through fear. There are numerous examples where they round up whole families and disappear them
- _mulder_ 13y ago>"governments will become incapable of keeping anything a secret." The fundamental problem with this is that a government isn't a single entity. It's comprised of thousands of people all working on their own specific piece. So by it's very nature, only a very few people will know the bigger picture. If "governments" start leaking information left, right and centre, what that means in reality is hundreds of workers start exposing all of their work without understanding the larger picture. What if a worker reveals details of a program to track "innocent people". Only to find out after the leak they were actually all in witness protection and they're now in great danger. When you're part of a huge machine like a government (particularly in Policing or security), most workers will not know the full extent of their work, and therefore cannot understand (or be answerable for) the wider impacts of their actions.
- BetterLateThan 13y ago>> so strong that governments will become incapable... Sounds like you expect governments to be ashamed of what they do once the plans become public. It's not about shame. It's about the power to persist until the goal is reached. The plebes have neither the goals nor the persistence - this is what makes them plebes, and they will stay this way with or without Wikileaks. As long as there is quasifood in the supermarkets and quasientertainment on the TV, the masses will not give a damn about what or how the government is doing. Human nature has not changed for thousands of years. Here's a simple manual for running a country that has been working like a charm ever since the emperor Septimius Severus: "Enrich the soldiers and damn the rest".