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August 8, 2008
Some of the papers that form the Publius Project are very informative. Ellen Miller's Of, By, For and Open to the People is concerned with greater government transparency and accountability. Miller rightly says that information is the currency of democracy and that transparency in the work of government is an invaluable step towards establishing public trust. She observes:
Unfortunately, today we have the opposite. All too often, special interests influence the legislative and regulatory process, breeding public mistrust and cynicism. Much of the lobbying and influence peddling – whether in Congress or the Executive Branch — is carried out in secret, and the laws requiring disclosure are woefully inadequate.
This is similar in Australia where governments and the bureaucracy have devised a myriad of ways to circumvent freedom of information laws to ensure that a culture of secrecy and impunity remains. This secrecy is being reinforced by the ever increasing surveillance of the national security state.
Miller says that this situation of closed walls and doors will begin to change:
As a result of information technology, for the first time in history government has the ability to conduct its business with extensive openness and transparency. In this networked age, we are increasingly communicating, sharing and collaborating with each other in radically new and powerful ways. The information technology revolution will impact and transform our society as profoundly as the printing press did 500-years ago, and radio and TV did in the last century...The changes coming will be fundamental, radical, and profound. The constantly-evolving Internet is enabling a highly-networked world of Web sites, wikis, and blogs making thorough and accurate information dissemination and collection happen at lightning speed.
She quotes Lawrence Lessig's view that this picture points to the next great hope for the information revolution: that we might be able to learn as much about governments and business as they have learned about us. That this might be the end of their effective privacy, just as it has effectively been the end of ours.
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