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Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

I've always believed that it should be legal to audio and/or video record any government employee/contractor during the performance of their official duties (and I say that as a govt contractor). If we can't be accountable to the public, how can we expect to serve the public?

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The Houston city government could probably save 30 or 40% on construction costs if someone could videotape the building sites and analyse the amount of work done.

OK, please send me your address so I can set up a camera in your office.

Most of my government work is field work (sound & vibration measurements). My next definitive government project will be sometime in winter/spring 2011: http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TPE16 . You'll probably have to check with NTI, but I'm fine if you want to record it (although NTI won't probably won't let you put it up on YouTube since they charge admission to the course).

In the cases of some public servants, like police officers, that is not a direct parallel as they are not spending a lot of time in the office. Public servants performing their duty in public should be subject to the scrutiny of the public. Even if you are a government employee working at a desk in a public building you should be subject to the same. I admit it is just not feasible to allow any and all private citizens access to buildings, or to mount cameras as they desire, but there is a perhaps a better solution? Surveillance tapes available upon request?

Public servants performing their duty in public should be subject to the scrutiny of the public.

That's usually the caveat I put when I make that statement, but I forgot to that time (and again, most of my govt work is in public and I would fall under that).

There are times when privacy is essential for govt workers but those times rarely during public interaction, and when they are, it's usually because the tasks are sensitive (an interview with a rape victim for example).

In the interview case it's the victim's privacy that prevents monitoring, not the interviewer's.

Schneier's argument is that openness shouldn't work both ways:

Privacy has to be viewed in the context of relative power. For example, the government has a lot more power than the people. So privacy for the government increases their power and increases the power imbalance between government and the people; it decreases liberty ... Privacy for the people increases their power. It also increases liberty, because it reduces the power imbalance between government and the people

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