Secrecy is beguiling

Secrecy is beguiling (US)

When government says to the people, "It's none of your business," both the government and the people are in trouble.

 
 

Throughout the American experiment of democracy, we have explored the appropriateness and the proper limits of concealment in our governance.

 
 

Just recently, judges sealed documents and imposed gag orders - the NCAA versus the University of North Dakota and the Moe Gibbs murder trial.

 
 

The National Transportation Safety Board was allowed by a judge to keep secret the details of its investigation into the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minnesota until the federal government is good and ready to release the information to waiting families of those who perished.

 
 

The Central Intelligence Agency had to admit that it destroyed videotapes of interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

 
 

The Bush administration filed in federal court in an effort to withhold Secret Service records that might show how often lobbyist Jack Abramoff visited the White House before his felony conviction in an influence peddling scandal.

 
 

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson wrote, "Government ought to be all outside and no inside ... Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places and avoids public places, and we believe it is a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety."

 
 

A current buzz word that's well on its way to being worn out is transparency. But for the time being, it's useful.

 
 

It's a key value in a democracy for us to be able to see what's going on. The governing process should take place behind open windows, not closed doors.

 
 

We never know how much is going on behind the scenes, how many decisions are prepared before an open meeting is convened.

 
 

The Mandan city commissioners ran afoul of the open meetings law by e-mailing among themselves without giving notice of a meeting, in the opinion of Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. Maybe it wasn't intended as doing city business. But Mayor Ken LaMont said a lesson has been learned.

 
 

It's probably much like what happened when the telephone became widely used. What can be a tool for exchanging information can be a means of doing the public's business privately. It's not quite the same as city aldermen getting together in a back room and running municipal government away from public scrutiny. The Internet is more sophisticated - and seductive - than the old-fashioned back room.

 
 

An ideal of America is the town meeting. Representative government is more efficient, but there's great value in the notion that if everyone can take part in a discussion at the town hall, then all have an equal share of responsibility for decisions that are made.

 
 

We shouldn't give up that ideal lightly, especially not giving government more power to keep secrets from the public.

 
 

Inserted from <http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/12/13/news/opinion/editorials/144359.prt>