The End of Secrecy?

“In one direction we can reach out and touch the time when the leaders of the Soviet Union thought that the explosion at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl could be kept secret from the rest of the world. In the other direction we can see a time—already upon us—when fourteen-year-old hackers in Australia or Newfoundland can make their way into the most sensitive areas of national security or international finance. The central concern of government in the future will not be information, but analysis. We need government agencies staffed with argumentative people who can live with ambiguity and look upon secrecy as a sign of insecurity.” 

         — Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, 1997 (source)

Democracy works because of its openness.  Capitalism too.  These two systems are today thriving more than ever - because of more open information available via the internet and because of our ubiquitous cell phones, cameras and other monitoring and open communications systems.

Does this mean the last big bastions of secrecy - corporations, and government agencies with covert operations such as the CIA, the pentagon and the NSA - will change their ways?  Well, almost certainly not willingly.  But I'm betting they will soon lose their ability to keep many of their secrets.  And, in my opinion, this will be a good thing.

There are three big problems with secrecy. The first is that it too often gets used for evildoing.  Evildoing such as misleading people into believing something good is being done when in fact it's not (such as is the practice by the many "charitable organizations" for which < 10% of the money donated ever makes it to the needy).

And, how often have you heard news stories of secrecy in the name of "protecting national security", "protecting police investigations", "protecting corporate internal information" only to learn later that the secrecy was instead used to conceal misdoings, corruption and nefarious activities?

The second big problem with concealment of information is that it provides a means for an individual (or a corporation, or a government, or a church) to have undeserved/unjust power over others. If I know your deep dark secret I can blackmail you.   My country can use its secret military operations and its secret weapons to sucker-punch your country and win, and do such at a much reduced cost.

The third big problem is that secrecy often promotes perpetuation of criminal activities. Two sad examples of this - the sexual molestation crimes by priests in the Catholic Church, and the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.

There is maybe only one type of secret we (you, me, our governments, our corporations) can be trusted to hold and to not misuse - that is our secret access codes and passwords to our own accounts. With this being the situation, I am pleased to see all the other secrets move toward extinction.  A more open world is a better world.

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How is it that our secrets are diminishing and that we are moving into a more open world?  Consider the technological advances in these areas:

• the internet (which among other things, makes possible organizations such as Wiki-Leaks); 
• almost instantaneous and for the most part uncensored communications via devices such a cell phones and internet linked personal computers;
• Facebook, Twitter,  Google+ and other social networks;
• ubiquitous cameras (cell phone cameras, traffic cameras, store monitoring cameras, cameras monitoring parks and sidewalks, drone mounted cameras; cameras pointed downward from satellites);
• new devices, such as the soon to be out Google Glass.

With these technologies it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide our lawbreaking, hide our weapons, hide our behind-closed-doors political shenanigans (remember the candid video of Mitt Romney at a campaign fundraiser?), or hide the massacres and killings in remote villages in the undeveloped world.

Of late we are seeing significant reductions in secrecy.  And we are experiencing benefits from this.  Have you seen what's happened to the US crime rates in the last 20 years? 

source

Many argue that this 30% drop in crime is a direct result of the amplification of our ears and eyes by personal devices like cell phones and cameras, and by the ever watching fixed cameras in our cities, along our roadways and in our stores.  We no longer have to rely just on the parables of religious texts to believe that we are being watched in everything we do and that we will in the end pay for our misdeeds - with today's communications and information technologies this is rapidly becoming the unavoidable reality.

http://www.thenation.com/article/158988/age-wikileaks-end-secrecy#axzz2WXSAGMlI