Complete transparency is a bitter pill that has been sugarcoated for its supporters to swallow. Many of its proponents have no idea about the implications that come with absolute transparency. The message is presented in a way that boasts about how transparency will magically lead to a utopian system of governmental Puritanism, but its goals go much deeper than simply changing corruption to honesty.
Like many other topics, the impact the idea of transparency has on society is often dulled by ignoring its implicit assumptions. A good example of this can be found in the school of economics. While a student may learn the conditions in which a market becomes efficient, he or she is ultimately taught to ignore the hardest questions. That is, whether a decision is right or wrong. The dulling down of its societal effect is the same problem that exists within the transparency movement. Many of its supporters assume because transparency leads to honesty it must be good, but it is not until you find what it could become that draws transparency into question.
As government transparency increases, by definition it increases the surveillance of its citizens. That means elected officials and citizens would be obligated to work under observation. The basis of this begins with an international agency primarily in charge of overseeing each country's efforts for transparency.
In enforcing transparency it would be the duty of an international agency to assure the transparency of the rest of the world. The incentives it provides, both negative and positive, will spur all other countries to monitor the actions of their domestic agencies. Because of the incentives domestic agencies face, they begin to manage their managers in order to comply with overseeing agencies' transparency efforts. When transparency is the goal, surveillance will happen. The only difference that might set one country apart from another is the time it takes to implement that surveillance.
Nothing of what has been said here is new except maybe for the possibility of adopting such an idea. Although proponents of the transparency movement may think they know what they support, it is hard to believe they would still have the same outlook when they find that a transparent government will ultimately lead to their surveillance. This is especially so with government employees. The assumption may be that surveillance will only be used for transparency purposes, but like the hiring process, there are legalities that justify illegalities.
Take, for example, someone applying for a job. To have a chance at getting an interview, a person must submit an application. The application asks applicants to provide information about the jobs they have had in the past 10 years. It also asks the year applicants graduated from high school. It asks for their name. All of this information opens the door for illegal discrimination to be practiced legally. This is not counting discrimination that might happen at the interview, which could be based on physical traits. This allows what is illegal to become legal because of overlapping interests. This is the same for surveillance. If someone is seen doing something inefficient, it may be illegal to confront because it has nothing to do with the openness of information, but that does not mean it could not be used against him or her in the future because it can and probably will.
Absolute transparency means absolute freedom of information. It is just another way of justifying the legal observation of any one person or entity's actions without their consent. Yes, folks, welcome to the movement for an open society in which no one view of history stands greater than another, except, of course, the view that no one history stands greater than another. A society that boasts not of a special set of rights, morals or values should be placed higher than another except, of course, for the view that all rights, morals and values are equally meaningless and should not be placed higher than any of the others. Most importantly, welcome to the movement that advocates honesty by failing to mention the trade-off between government transparency and your privacy as a citizen.
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