Important stuff. No simple answers. Any way you come down on it, if you are after truth, the Edward Snowden interviews by the Guardian are worth watching.
Clay Shirky always inspires me, and summarizes well…
It seems crazy to have to spell this out, but it should be hard for a government to keep secrets from its own people. National secrets are a necessary evil, of course, but the necessary part should not blind us to the evil part. Deciding to try to keep any given piece of information secret should be difficult, and expensive, and prone to occasional failure.
I will never forget that when George Bush declared war on Iraq, my initial reaction was to trust him because he had access to those “National secrets” that must… MUST justify his actions. That naive trust will never ever be restored. In the information age, we must seek truth, even – especially – in the dark corners of our government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we must remain diligent citizens to sustain our freedom-based democracy.
As a final thought, I’m not so sure all these folks should be in such comfortable collusion…
