Code Swaraj/Appendix: Aaron Swartz, on Transparency > 자유게시판

Appendix: When Is Transparency Helpful? Transparency is a slippery phrase; the kind of word that, like reform, sounds good and so ends up getting connected to any random political thing that someone desires to advertise. But just as it's foolish to discuss whether or not "reform" is beneficial (it depends on the reform), talking about transparency in general will not get us very far. Everything from holding public hearings to requiring police to videotape interrogations might be referred to as "transparency"-there's not a lot that's useful to say about such a big category. Generally, you have to be skeptical every time somebody tries to promote you on something like "reform" or "transparency." Generally, try to be skeptical. However specifically, reactionary political movements have long had a history of cloaking themselves in nice words. Take the nice Government (goo-goo) movement early within the twentieth century. Funded by prominent major foundations, it claimed that it was going to clean up the corruption and political machines that have been hindering city democracy.

Instead, the reforms ended up choking democracy itself, a response to the left-wing candidates who were starting to get elected. The goo-goo reformers moved elections to off-years. They claimed this was to maintain city politics distinct from national politics, however the real impact was just to scale back turnout. They stopped paying politicians a wage. This was supposed to cut back corruption, but it surely just made certain that only the wealthy could run for workplace. They made the elections nonpartisan. Supposedly this was because city elections have been about native points, not national politics, however the effect was to extend the power of identify recognition and make it harder for voters to inform which candidate was on their aspect. And so they replaced mayors with unelected metropolis managers, so profitable elections was no longer sufficient to impact change. Of course, the trendy transparency movement could be very different from the good Authorities movement of old. But the story illustrates that we should be cautious of sort nonprofits promising to assist.

I wish to focus on one explicit pressure of transparency pondering and show how it may well go awry. It starts with one thing that's laborious to disagree with. Fashionable society is product of bureaucracies and fashionable bureaucracies run on paper: memos, stories, forms, filings. Sharing these inside documents with the public appears clearly good, and certainly, a lot good has come out of publishing these documents, whether or not it's the National Safety Archive, 5 Step Formula Review whose Freedom of knowledge Act (FOIA) requests have revealed many years of authorities wrongdoing around the globe, or the indefatigable Carl Malamud and his scanning, which has put terabytes of useful authorities documents, from laws to motion pictures, online for everybody to access freely. I think few people would put "publishing government documents on the net" excessive on their listing of political priorities, but it's a fairly low cost venture (simply throw piles of stuff into scanners) and doesn't seem to have much draw back. The largest concern-privacy -appears largely taken care of.

In the United States, FOIA and the Privacy Act (PA) provide pretty clear tips for the way to ensure disclosure whereas defending people's privacy. Perhaps even more useful than putting government documents online can be offering access to company and nonprofit data. A number of political action takes place outside the formal authorities, and thus outside the scope of the present FOIA laws. However such things appear totally off the radar of most transparency activists; instead, giant firms that receive billions of dollars from the government are saved impenetrably secret. Many policy questions are a battle of competing interests-drivers don't need vehicles that roll over and kill them after they make a turn, but automotive companies want to maintain selling such vehicles. If you are a member of Congress, selecting between them is tough. On the one hand are your constituents, who vote for you. But however are big companies, which fund your reelection campaigns.