The Price of Secrecy
Secrecy takes many disguises and like relationships all Democracies are ultimately best served by honesty and openness. By laying their cards on the table at the outset Democratic governments can govern more effectively.
The Freedom of Information Act passed in 2000, is considered to be a triumph as it enables public access to information held by public authorities in Britain thereby minimizing secrecy. The Labour Government enforced this act when they required parties to disclose the sources of their funding which has led to the recent spate of resignations by Members of Parliament and the dismissal of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, the first no-confidence motion in over 300 years. Thus freedom of information is the most effective way of fighting corruption in high places.
In South Africa, Civil Society Organizations successfully linked freedom of Information to socio-economic rights and the development agenda. By arming people with information the Civil Society Organizations helped to achieve the delivery of clean water, schools, roads and health. This illustrates that freedom of information is critical to fundamental human rights.
Clive Stafford Smith, the human rights lawyer spent 25 years trying to remove the death penalty in America and supported detainees legal rights at Guantanamo Bay. He widely publicized the second hunger strikes held by the detainees in 2005 in protest of the imprisonment of children at Guantanamo Bay and his book Bad Men (2007), shortlisted for the 2008 Orwell Prize for political writing reveals what happened at Guantanamo Bay. According to Stafford Smith greater openness would have made it harder for British spies to have conspired in America's morally repugnant and counterproductive policy of torture following the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11. Stafford-Smith concluded that in seeking to keep the torture allegations secret, the US authorities were ‘confusing national authority with national embarrassment.’
With freedom of information global citizens can acquire knowledge and develop the wisdom to communicate with each other. Let’s look at the current climate in Iran. Were the elections rigged? Will the ongoing bloody riots and unrest in Tehran eventually lead to the collapse of the Khameini-Ahmadinejad regime? There is no doubt that worldwide access to the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook has allowed the spread of information and opinion throughout Iran. And that this openness has created the most dangerous moment to the regime since the revolution in Iran in 1979.
The situation in Iran exposes an ambiguity in the principle of transparency: the power of the Twitter revolution lies as much in the anonymity that the internet affords its users as in the freedom of communication. The pictures of police and paramilitaries beating demonstrators may have changed people’s views on Iran being an imperfect but genuine democracy as tensions fuel a violent dispute reminiscent of the revolutionary war. And today the worldwide publicized picture of Neda Soltan’s dying moments touches the heart of people throughout the world. A beautiful 26 years old philosophy student, Neda had her whole life ahead of her and that was taken away in one fleeting moment. Neda had driven to the centre of Tehran with her philosophy professor and moments after stepping out her car she was shot in the chest dying a martyr and a symbol of Iran’s political regime. In Barack Obama’s own words ‘The World is Watching.’
Paradoxically, democracy sometimes requires secrecy on the part of the ruled, not the rulers. Many of you would have voted secretly in the last local and European elections. The principle of the secret ballot is at the heart of liberal democracy. It is essential to safeguard people against intimidation and the abuse of power. The need for secrecy to protect people is seen only too well in African nations such as in Zimbabwe in the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2008. No candidate received an overall majority in the first round of elections so there was a second election between incumbent Robert Mugabe and opposition Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. Owing to violence and death threats to his party supporters Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the second election a week before it was scheduled to take place and Robert Mugabe succeeded to power yet again.
Other examples highlight the controversy of secrecy. Last week The Times took court action over the right to publish the identity of NightJack, the police blogger, who won an Orwell prize for blogging in April. NightJack was discovered to be a serving detective whose anonymous blog carried criticisms of government ministers and police bureaucracy. He was unmasked after the High Court rejected his plea that his anonymity be preserved "in the public interest".
Should journalists be able to withhold their identity so that the powerful can be brought to account? Mr. Justice Eady clearly did not accept this in the NightJack case. The judge said blogging was "essentially a public rather than a private activity". The blogger's lawyer however had argued that preserving his anonymity was in the public interest. According to Hugh Tomlinson QC thousands of people who communicate via the internet under a cloak of anonymity would be "horrified" to think the law would do nothing to protect their identities if someone unmasked them.
As with transparency there are problems with anonymity and the internet. Despite this transparency and not secrecy is the very essence of wisdom and the best way forward for politics and society throughout the world. What are your thoughts? Have your say. We welcome your thoughts and proposals. Add your comment below. Have your say. We welcome your thoughts and proposals. Add your comment below. Not a Citizen? Sign up
