Sorry, I do not thing it is possible for a government to work with full openness, no secrets on anything. It's like playing a card game where you have shown all of your cards and every other country has hidden theirs. We will never reach a state where every country is playing with a "visible hand" of cards.

I think that if you expect things to be so open, then you're naive and unrealistic about the way the world works.

My company competes with other companies to win contracts. Of course we don't publish all of our plans on our website and give away all of our information so that others can profit from our ideas. If something small like a company of a couple hundred people won't give away its proprietary information, why should a big organization like a government tell everyone about every thing it does, every private letter it sends and receives, every backup plan for the future? That's insane.

We don't need to be showing all our cards right away. But it's nice for the option to be there for all the cards to be shown if something comes up. Of course secrets and crap like that are needed, if anyone should know what I know it since I hardly like to open up to others. However, if I know there's gonna be a problem with me not opening up and telling the whole truth, I'll act on that.

For governments though, they've outgrown what humans original had in mind. Essentially, the basic idea of a human "government" is the family unit. Then, as that family unit gets bigger, it becomes a tribe and so forth. But with things as big as they are now, we're still maintaining a family-like structure with no family like relationships, which means we miss out on things like the individual, community and government having decent relationships with each other. One Australian politician said (and this guy's from labor, the "progressives"), in a nutshell, "the public can say what they like, but in the end we're the government and we do what we want" (I've missed some small words here and there, but I kid you not he said essentially that - and he wasn't even backed into a corner either!).

So, my wish is not so naïve as to have everyone playing with a forced open hand, but for the option to become more available. Not all information is truly necessary, but the public need to have the ability to get what information they do need to make a decision. Anyway, the current system is extremely naïve, and unnecessary too. The governments of today aren't really organisms that have to exist, we just keep them alive because we've become accustomed to them as a society. That said, it's foolishness to delete them altogether, and rather impossible too. They need to be relegated to being pure tools for humanity though. (perhaps those silly doomsday movies about robots running the government aren't so bad. At least we don't need to worry about treading on the feet of people if we wanted to manipulate them )

Anyway, it's a pity. The current human population is simply too concentrated in various places to really be governed in a way that is right for the growth and security of the individual and their rights, with the current system of government. Or maybe I'm just too busy looking at the world through the eyes of those who get it badly to really feel the benefits that others enjoy. I dunno anymore whether I'm being cold-hearted or not cold-hearted enough.

Maybe the big question behind that all is: Who has to serves whom? And aside this, of course the Internet plays a role at this constellation. At least at areas which are best covered with broadband Internet network connections.

Directdemocracy vs. Representative democracy

qwertz:

Directdemocracy vs. Representative democracy

do you know direkter parlamentarismus (direct parlamentarism) I m sorry i could not find an english link, because its a new movement. In this system cou can say: i vote party 1 for home policy, party 2 for financial policy and party 3 for ecological policy (a light form of Liquid Democracy

but back to the disscussion:

We will never reach a state where every country is playing with a "visible hand" of cards.

We will maybe never reach a state where every country is a democracy. Is that a reason for not being one?

whether you like it or not, leaking will become normal. Worldwide! The goverments will have to change their behavior.

This can be good or bad, we will see.

rano:

qwertz:

Directdemocracy vs. Representative democracy

do you know direkter parlamentarismus (direct parlamentarism) I m sorry i could not find an english link, because its a new movement. In this system cou can say: i vote party 1 for home policy, party 2 for financial policy and party 3 for ecological policy (a light form of Liquid Democracy

Should be topic of an TED talk. There is some little information in English at the webpage you mentioned.

We want to establish a permeable democratic structure in the political and social domain. Our objective is the promotion of social collaboration and co-determination.

The basic elements of our concept are:

(@ Direkter Parlamentarismus) - the realisation of the democratic idea
(@ Politikfeldparlamente) - one parliament for each political field
alliances - one for each political idea
discourse - a prerequisite for legitimate decisions
scaling - division of the parliaments
dynamic voting - one vote in each political area
chooso.org - the tool (not active yet)
areas of application - democratic discourse and decisions in every area of life

Sounds like some New world order attempt.

No, it will never happen that every country is a democracy. There will always be some government that does bad things.

This is exactly why we need to keep our secrets. If you tell everyone all of your private information, someone will take advantage of it, to your detriment.

There will be no secrets on the day when everyone is happy and speaking Esperanto together, and everything is sunshine and light and people all over working together for the common good, singing songs of friendship all day long.

Sorry. That won't ever happen. So, no. Let's not leak our private information all over the internet.

Or, if you are really so big on openness, how about you post your credit card information, your bank account number, all of your private passwords, and your home address to the internet. No? You don't want someone to misuse this information to steal your money or cause you harm? Then why should a government be any different, with information that can be used to its detriment?

I believe the topic is about transparent interactive decision making processes and not publishing all private data at the Internet.

So I take it that you would not mind if someone opened your private messages to your friends and posted them to the internet?

And posted the details of your home security system, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, to the internet?

Or if you went to a different country to negotiate a business deal on behalf of your company, would you want the e-mails you sent back to your company to be posted to the internet for everyone to read, including the company you met with, including your competitors? Including information about your strategy for winning the business deal at the best possible price for you? How could you possibly publish this confidential company information to the internet for everyone to read? And if you wouldn't do it for your company, then why on earth should you expect your government to do it?

Personally, if a person is in support of governments divulging all of their secrets, and of leaking government secrets, I would never ever hire this person to work in my company. How could you tell if their idea of "divulging secrets" also extended to putting our company's proprietary information online, and giving an advantage to our company's competitors?

erinja: So, no. Let's not leak our private information all over the internet.

Persons have privacy
States, cooperations and goverments have no privacy, they sometimes have the right to keep things secret, but thats a weaker standpoint, because privacy is a Human Right (Article 8), secrecy is just a law.
Leaking private information should be illegal (in most of the cases)and it is already illegal in most western states (i think only the US has no internet privacy law, but other laws also prectect you in the US).
But if leaking state information would become illegal we would be close to diktatorship. Becaus free press is the most important part of a democracy.

Let´s make a list!

Things that should be kept secret by a state and the press:

-Police documents about victims
-Police documents about offenders wich had serve their sentence and wich are no danger anymore
-the private live of Politicians (for example Bill Clintons blowjob)
-medical data of anyone
-ongoing investigations
-war tactics but only in the moment of the attack.

Sorry. That won't ever happen.

I am a young guy and i view it as a duty to be a optimist in a world of pessimists. The main sentiment in our world is: "it´s geting worse" But that is not the total truth.
especially in china a jung generation of dissidents grows, in afrika and iran as well.

The Media likes to scare us,because that grows the TV ratings. but the Terrorists, the Rassists and the Fundamentalists are a minority in every country. Most of the people just want to live in peace and feed their families. I have never seen a headline like "74.196.999 iranians haven´t killed anyone today"

dictatorships can only exist by manipulation of information. By propaganda. So if we can not controll, that what our goverment tells us is the truth, we can be manipulated as well.

rano:So if we can not controll, that what our goverment tells us is the truth, we can be manipulated as well.

In my opinion there exicist no truth but different views at matters. Everytime someones starts telling me truth all bells will ring the way "hey, why they wanna make enforce me to see/hear something being the truth, why they interested to enforce me to accept some fact to be true". Forget that stategy, folks. I prefer to build up my own opinion.

Btw. I agree that everything can change. Just remember, even the Iron Curtain droped.

rano:
The Media likes to scare us,because that grows the TV ratings. but the Terrorists, the Rassists and the Fundamentalists are a minority in every country. Most of the people just want to live in peace and feed their families. I have never seen a headline like "74.196.999 iranians haven´t killed anyone today"

I believe that a lot of people can distinct between opinion making of "trade publications of outrage" like i.e. Bildzeitung and The Sun and newspaper agencies who ban drugs at workplace for their employees in employment i.e. Der Spiegel, The Guardian and the New York Times etc.