Erstellt am: 4. 12. 2010 - 10:51 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Transparency
One of the biggest information leaks around the whole Cablegate thingie has not coem from the cables themselves. It has been a result of the reactions of various politicians and journalists in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Outright calls for assassination aren't usually a sign of a healthy understanding of democracy. As a matter of fact, as good young patriot growing up, I was led to believe that things like that were the sign of a regime that needed to be taken down for the good of humanity.
I guess I didn't get the memo.
Last I heard, willingly succumbing to extreme transparency was one of the requirements of a good citizen. After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide.
Right?
That, at least, has been the classic argument killer when discussing things like illegal wiretapping, data mining, and extra judicial information gathering by government agencies. A habit that the U.S. government hasn't been able to kick, despite the repeated promises it was going to change. Like any good codependent, the willing victims of this information addiction continued to hope that THIS time, something really would be different.
Well, the US seems to have fallen of the wagon again. A recent post on Techdirt provides links about legally released documents that expose the latest lapse in the rule of law, in which federal agencies can basically skirt the whole tricky judicial review process and just get down to the dirt.