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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

Excellent. It used to be that you had to wait a generation or two to find out what actually transpired behind closed doors (example, Margaret McMillan's excellent book "Nixon in China"), but thanks to Wikileaks we can know merely years after the fact.

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Here's to hoping that that time will decrease to 'near realtime' and that all governments will live in a glass cage.

Hopelessly naive ? Maybe, but I think that it would take something like that to get some honesty in politics.

Hopelessly naive, yes.

What you're more likely to find is a situation where the less evil governments of the world (Canada, Britain, the US) have to live in glass cages while the more evil governments of the world (China, Russia, North Korea) can continue in secrecy. This I can only see being bad for the citizens of Canada, Britain and the US. All cynicism aside, changing the balance of power in the world away from the US Government and towards the Chinese Government is unlikely to be a positive move for the citizens of the US.

> less evil governments of the world (Canada, Britain, the US) have to live in glass cages while the more evil governments of the world (China, Russia, North Korea) can continue in secrecy

A main reason those governments are less evil is because they already live in glass cages.

That's right; they live in glass cages to a precise extent defined by democratically-formed law. If I wanted the government of my country to stop keeping secrets, I could form a party and run for parliament on a platform of radical transparency (all government data to be made public, from sensitive diplomatic communiques and military research to your next door neighbour's tax returns) and if people actually wanted that they could have it.

But you would never, ever win.

People care about their local school. Their rubbish being collected. Their job being secure.

Abstract stuff like radical transparency is too complicated a platform to run on and not only that it's a single issue that can't win votes.

That's why democracy's pretty weak compared to an altruistic dictatorship. But better than any other form of realistic government out there.

Leaving aside the problem of single-issue parties, the point remains that if radical transparency were a vote-winner it would get implemented. But it's not a vote-winner because people don't want it; not only does no political party advocate it, but there's no grassroots movement calling for diplomatic communiques and tax returns to be made public. It's just not an idea which anyone takes seriously or wants.

So, you answer is to let all the governments be more evil? Following the same logic, sweatshops should be made legal, so US can compete with China's cheep labor.

Do you really think that less secrecy equals less power? It is not the power I would want my government to have.

After Tony Blair had the Freedom of Information Act passed in the UK (2000), more discussions took place off the record and ministers began to avoid writing down minutes for meetings.

No it would just mean that more decisions are taken in bathrooms.

The reason things like cabinet meeting minutes are secret is that it does allow people to discuss issues honestly without just considering how it will play on the 6 Oclock news.

Imagine negotiating a sale at work if everything about it was published? All that would happen is that all emails and documents would become sanitized public statements and the real talking would be done off the record

Part of how things play on the 6 o'clock news is that things are not transparent enough, and there's a lot of opportunity to re/misinterpret things that the populace doesn't have any documentation for.

Somehow, I don't think politicians are being more honest when it comes to what's good for their constituents when they have conversations behind closed doors. I'm sure closed door discussions do allow the capability to be "more honest" about backscratching and payola with the other people in the room.

A generation or two = amateurs

The British response if Napoleon had invaded the UK is still classified !

Intriguing, source?

I went looking and couldn't find one, instead I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_anti-invasion_preparati...

which seems to have an awful lot of sensitive information for something that's supposedly still secret: "... the King would go to Chelmsford if the French landed in Essex, or to Dartford if they landed in Kent, along with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary."

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