Do you want to live in a world without secrets?

I think there are different types of secrets:
1. Everyone has the right to privacy, each individual will have secrets.

2. Every employer has the right to know what their employees are working on and how they are going about their job. The employee doesn't have the right to withhold or hide information from the company. The government is the employee of the people, so it has no rights to secrecy from its people.

3. Every nation has the right to keep its own secrets from other nations. Someone in the UK doesn't have the right to know what American diplomats are saying amongst themselves.

I think the reason that we still have national secrets is because mankind is still divided into teams of "us and them", where each team is trying to gain a competitive advantage over the other team. When mankind starts seeing everyone as belonging to the same team (or as different limbs on the same body), then competition gives way to cooperation.

In the 60's the Hippie movement was all about openness, peace, love and of course dope.
The center of this new universe was The Haight district in San Francisco.
What did this movement in was human nature as predators moved in and took advantage of the open society where there were no secrets and innocence prevailed.
The Hippie movement came to an abrupt end, catastrophic for many.
The world is a dangerous place and secrets are necessary for Governments to operate.

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We cannot live in the world without having secrets.Even married couples do keep certain things secret from each other.
But we must be very circumspect on which kinds of information we keep secret and which ones we disclose to the people.
Particularly with nations,i think no diplomatic information should be regarded as secret and kept so.All diplomatic issues in the first place have lost their rights to secrecy in the sense that they involve other parties or nations who have other allies.therefore if you try to keep such dealings secret,then you must have certain bad motives.

I don't want to live in a world without secrets, neither does Assange (I'm assuming he wants privacy for himself). Both Assange and I want more openness, but we probably differ in our opinions of how far that openness should go. I don't care governments negotiate in confidentiality, but I don't want them to openly lie about things to get policy through, it's a shame only the United States are being exposed.

What are they whinging about? They storm nations completely annihilate countries killing innocent people in the name of spreading democracy but when it's in their own back yards they go 'No thank you'. Talk about blatant unashamed HYPOCRISY.

Whether Wikileaks has "blown a hole" in keeping secrets secret won't be answered until we see if the model of Wikileaks evolves or is strangled. As a cynic from the '60s, I'd put money on the secret-keepers finding a way to feed Wikileaks manufactured "facts" to obfuscate what is truth and what is self-serving. Today's American politics are a good example of how this would play out - a fact exists (Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother, making him a citizen on two counts,) and then a new "fact" is espoused through multi-media fire and brimstone harrangues (Obama's Kenyan connection trumps Hawaii and American mother, therefore he isn't legally President, or even more inventive, Kenyan Obama wanted to be President so much that he planted a fake birth certificate in Hawaii... we'll just ignore the American mother.) (To my embarrassment) the new "fact" is believed by millions of Americans, and no matter the documentation, belief is what gives "facts" credence. Julian Assange said his goal in leaking facts was to expose government dishonesty, which would fuel citizens to rise up and demand transparency from the establishment. The citizens, however, seem to have little interest in windows of truth unless the view fits their personal/political agendas. The only facts that count are the ones that don't rock their particular boat.

Live in a transparent world? Excellent concept, but I doubt even the Internet has the capacity to accomplish what religion, altruistic movements, and millions of years of human history has not, i.e. perfecting human beings to do as they would have done to themselves. As Wikileaks itself demonstrates, exposing the truth cannot be done equally, and if only one side's truth is made public, the chance for real transparency is compromised. All it takes is for one player in the world to close the curtains on his window, and the rest must follow suit - not to do so would be stupid.

A world with FEWER secrets would be better. Governments should strive to avoid an atmosphere of secrecy by continually reviewing what is automatically stamped secret.
A transparent world is utopian fantasy. We're human beings, after all - we tend to kill each other over details.

No secrets? My mother had a secret that I discovered and I never felt the same love for her ever again, and now she’s dead. I don’t want ever to know again what I’ll need to forget. More to the point, the world still could function if all truths were known and universally acknowledged. At the current time, this is a demonstrated impossibility. We might become wise enough to do this; but I don’t think it will happen within the lifetimes of people born today. Not to be trite; but humans can’t handle the truth. This applies to everyone some of the time and to many all of the time. It applies to nations as well. I do not know Mr. Assange. Perhaps he imagines the world will be better if everyone specifically sees the US as uniquely hypocritical. Perhaps he imagines we (US citizens) will be better off knowing we are imperfect. No matter. His actions are as futile as were those of Machiavelli. He has disclosed nothing diplomats didn’t already know and he did it in such a way so as to hinder productive conversations between very powerful neighbors. Does this sound helpful?
g

No-one doubts that dictatorial, violence-prone regimes (N. Korea, Iran, Venezuela et al.) to say nothing of terrorist organizations (al-Qaeda, Hizbollah etc.) will tenaciously hold on to their secrets. If democratic governments are to be "outed" by self-appointed guardians of openness, such as Julian Assange, how will this make for a better, safer world? Why exactly should the Western public have to live in a more dangerous world because of a tiny minority of Internet nihilists?

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Secrets imply guilt, they suggest dishonesty or why else would they be secret?
Secrets in the personal sphere masquerade as “privacy”, something that is vastly overrated. To the blogger who suggested husbands and wives have secrets from one another, I ask again why? Unless they are actually doing something the partner wouldn’t like, like being unfaithful, how can you possibly have a real, open (not in the sense of different sexual partners) relationship in which you love that person for who they really are – warts and all, indeed sometimes the warts are the most interesting bit. Why should anyone care if the world knows what they earn? Unless of course they are a) feeling guilty about earnings that are disproportionate to the value their job brings to society, or b) they are on the run from the tax man.
If like most normal human beings you got up to a few naughty things in your past, disowning these vital components of the person you are today (a.k.a. life experience) is denying your very essence and again smacks of dishonesty, in that the object would seem to present a historically air-brushed image, and we all know how unreal and therefore uninteresting such images are. The only bona fide reason for concealing personal details is if you are likely to be discriminated against for no good reason, e.g. if you work/live in an environment that is prejudiced against gay people and you would be denied a job/social acceptance job purely on those grounds. This however, says much more about the discriminators, intolerance breeds secrets and hence dishonesty, that is a society a really wouldn’t want to live in.

I do believe we should always strive to be open and honest. But that does not mean our every thought should be made public. Comments/thoughts made in the 'heat of the moment' are reactionary and rarely reflect what we truly believe, they are often best kept private. The other problem is that many comments were not meant to stand 'on their own', they are part of a larger conversation/message and if not kept in context can become severely distorted.

I do not think it is right to say the sole fault lies with the individuals who leaked the information. I see this as similar to buying stolen property, if you know the property is stolen and you chose to buy it you are as guilty as the thief!

Secrets kept from the public by governments sow the seeds of distrust and so do much to fuel conspiracy theories, and the fact that secrets exist is all grist to the self-perpetuating rumour mill.
Leaving aside dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes, in a democracy such secrets are nothing short of an insult to the people who are entrusted with the job of electing those who will govern on their half, but who are then adjudged too simple-minded to be told the truth by the very people they have elected.

This is such an open ended question. Too complicated for my little brain to comprehend. Maybe, I just wanted to keep my opinion a secret? ;-) HA!!

It's impossible to live in a world without secrets but the issue is about the content and intent of the secrecy.Information that we provide on the telephone via internet should always be treated with care because when some confidential messages or information is exploded, I dont know how some information will be handled.

On one of the recent interview program,the guest said people were too concerned about voting.I agree.Should diplomats call for a vote before writing down what they think?.We would be overladen with info.

Secrets are not the problem. What the world is better off without is "hypocrisy". IF these "secrets" were in line with the face the keepers put on to the world as representatives of its voting public, then there would be no problem. "sure, we said that" or "Sure we did that" because it is in line with our values and beliefs. What the problem is, is when on one side a government says, "everybody should have the freedom to live the way they want" but released secrets show they influenced elections. OR if a government says, "We do not believe in torture or human rights violations and we would go to war to free people from such an environment". A statement such as that being countered by a government that says, "if we don't torture and commit human rights violations our security will be at risk." THEN, The government that opposed said violations gets caught violating the same rights (or ones they signed they were opposed to) and then claim that "if we don't do it our security will be at risk". THAT IS HYPOCRISY.

The US leadership isn't upset secrets got released showing that they were conducting themselves in a free and diplomatic matter. They are upset because they got exposed for being hypocrites. OR they fear that in the future this kind of behavior might do just that.

How about if they're going to break all sorts of laws, steal things, why not release secrets that are cool, not just embarrassing ones that hurt foreign policy and are embrassing? How about stuff on Area 51 or whatever it's called?

I want to live in a world with governmental transparency. Transparency is an absolute.. either you have it or you don´t.
I used to work for several governmental agencies ... it is oustanding the number of stuff that was covered from the public. That is wrong! The people should know what the government is doing on behalf of them, with their taxes (and you should guess why I don´t work there anymore).

Privacy is reserved to the individual, not the government. If policians and governmental officials don´t like it, they shouldn´t run for office or work there. It is not their money, it is the people´s money.

I hope that this wikileaks scandal make the people more aware that there is not need to let the government have secrets. If they need to maintain certain secrets is because there is something wrong about that action.

One would like to live in a world free from terrorists. For that we need govenments which are free to provide the necessary security without being impeded by organisations or individuals determined to take the law into their own hands. Julian Assange's whistle-blowing antics would have placed governments on a dangerous collision course. It is clear his motives were to embarass the government of the United States more than anything else. By exposing leaks on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, state intelligence classified secrets on the net, terrorists would have had a field day exposing the vulnerability of key security organisations. In the name of transparency, terrorist organisations would have been able to dictate their terms and put governments on the defensive. A hidden agenda obviously drove Wikileaks and Julian Assange to disclose classified material. Their actions endanger national and international security.

I don't want to know your secrets. But I want to know what my government is doing these days. The Americans are licky that they got to find this stuff out (even if much or all of it is, perhaps thankfully, old news or otherwise unsurprising to them).

But what are New Zealand diplomats doing in my name? I have no clue. I can't vote responsibly without the full picture.

I don't care what you, the diplomats the Ministers or anyone else does in their own name, in their own time, but I certainly need to know what is being done in my name.

So a world without secrets? No. Just a democratic government, thanks.

Just to show the criminal mentality of the wikileaks supporters, credit card companies have been getting hacked by wikileaks supports for pulling the plug on donations

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/mastercard-down-hacked-wikileaks-ddos_n_793625.html

Assange did the US a favor. The information was out there, barely guarded, and could have been used for a hundred-thousand little and big extortions. Of all the entities who might have hacked and exposed the diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks is by far the most benign and least sinister. The cables express words and actions undertaken in our name by public servants pledged to act in our best interests, but I'm not hopeful that their disclosure will lead to more transparency in government; the career bureaucrats and spooks are holding a thousand meetings this week to devise and impose more secrecy, not less. They don't learn lessons that result in less conflict, greater rights, fewer wars or more transparency; the only lessons they learn reinforce what they already know and that is a devotion to conflict and secrecy. Criticism from other governments is focussed on how poorly the secrets were kept, nobody really even cares about their content.

As to the all-or-nothing argument, there is a vast and obvious difference between the privacy rights of individuals - our medical records, for instance - and the secrets that politicians and public servants wish to maintain. I do have a right to much of the lame communications embodied in the WikiLeaks, but that emphatically does not mean that I should accept less personal privacy.

So a world without secrets, guess every woman should tell every person how many abortions she has had, both sexes should have to tell how many sex partners they have had, etc....

Here here #16 "Leaving aside dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes, in a democracy such secrets are nothing short of an insult to the people who are entrusted with the job of electing those who will govern on their half, but who are then adjudged too simple-minded to be told the truth by the very people they have elected."

Exactly I think as a public we have been long conditioned to say yes yes to whatever the politicians,who supposedly have our best interests at heart, throw at us. Like goats being led by rope. Isn't it time we knew what goes on behind decisions made, how and why they came by those decisions on 'our' behalfs? And who are these real people behind the carefully constructed public masks? These people who are elected to lead us.

governments will always hide behind "protecting the populace" when they want to keep secrets, to a very good extent they are right and many times they are sinister also.

@Linda from Italy

I'm having one of those rare moments of disagreeing with you (@14 yet still enjoying your comments).
I agree that many secrets are a result of people/states claiming to be something they are not, and trying to hide the reality of their words, actions and motives.
Some secrets, are to do with privacy, which is why we have a password to your email account, and would probably be annoyed if we woke up in the morning to find a stranger having breakfast in our kitchen opening all our post.
Some secrets, however, are out of protection, like a bank card number, or the whereabouts of your Euromillion lottery winnings, or where a country has hidden its anti-missile capabilities, or the secret restaurant recipe etc. Bad people will do bad things with this knowledge, but good people won't be able to do anything with it.
I think what is scaring people about wikileaks is that by exposing the hypocrisy and lies of governments and media, the collateral damage is that they may also expose some secrets which are for protection.

I think Dwight from Cleveland (#20) has totally nailed it. If a country manifests its policies, foreign and domestic, in harmony with its values and ethics, then revealing its secrets can't cause it harm.

Yes, more or less.

To begin with, I want my government to conduct all its financial transactions in the full glare of public scrutiny.

and powerful nations like the US which have the inclination and resources to meddle with most of the world can do better with a little less secrecy.

None of this applies to individuals and their personal information.

@ Steve post 28.
“guess every woman should tell every person how many abortions she has had, both sexes should have to tell how many sex partners they have had”

Why ever not?
What is there to hide in a free, tolerant society, where religious dogma knows (or should know) its place.

For your info, I’ll tell the entire world
Answer to Q1: None, I had the sense to use and had access to free (good old Brit NHS) birth control when I didn’t want kids, but if it had failed I would have had an abortion but never even thought about keeping that secret.
Q2: Haven’t a clue, lost count sometime in the late 70s, never one for keeping a trophy cabinet, but if anyone did care, I really wouldn’t want to know them anyway.

Many would benefit if all stop imagining governments exist apart from the people governed. They mirror individual imperfection. If you want governmental transparency then face these simple facts: People most owe the truth to that person to whom they most frequently lie, themselves. If and when we stop lying to ourselves, then perhaps we may deal honestly with others. Once one can honestly rate oneself as no more worthy by birth of food, comfort, convenience, wealth, satisfaction, or any of the other features of happy life than is the lowliest-born human on Earth, and by this assessment realize all aspects of freedom, favor, right, rich, royal, deserving or blessed mean absolutely nothing, then one might begin to treat that lowly human exactly as one might wish to be treated. Transparency works only when all are equally illuminated.
g

@steve
#21 now THAT would be interesting
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/wikileaks-new-diplomatic-cables-contain-ufo-details-says-julian-assange-2452743.html

#25 criminal activity also extends to wikileaks opponents, including cyber attacks and death threats
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/12/2010123144744513729.html

@ Ibrahim UK
Thanks for the kind words, BUT, do we really have to live our lives in fear of what bad people might do?
A certain other regular on the blog often accuses those who don’t share his views as anarchists, Marxists etc. I don’t think I’m any kind of –ist, but maybe an –ian, as in Utopian, since I still believe, naïve as that may be, that the way to fight the bad is with the good, without invoking any sort of god to strike the bad down - which is why I am suspicious of most forms of secrecy, personal or political.
Rational fear is a part of life, as is the sort of security that makes you lock your house when you go out if there is a statistical probability that you will be burgled; happily, where I live, that’s not necessary. However, irrational fear leads to paranoia and secrecy feeds this process and the enormous fuss emanating from so many US sources over “revelations” that, so far at least, are not exactly earth-shattering, seems to me a symptom of a sick, polarised society, faced with global developments moving beyond its control that threaten its powerbase, creating insecurity, irrational fear and an almost clinical case of paranoia.

Live in a world without secrets?, impossible to do so. It is most necessary, all governments need some measure of secrecy which is in the national interests, to have them exposed is like opening a can of worms and is not in the best interests to a government and the people it protects.

Linda from Italy: Love your post and response to Steve. We must be close to the same age.

Secrets. Many viewpoints. While I want to know what my government is doing, I think the representatives should be allowed privacy when communicating with each other. I think telling everything you know, is not always a good thing. Like most things, you have to use your brain and common sense to know when things should be told and where and to whom. I don't think I want to live in a world with no secrets. Some things are best left unsaid.

A world without secrets is as naive a dream to have as world peace.

Never going to happen...

The sooner we accept that we are a violent species the better. before we used to screw each other over to survive. Now we do it for what we consider to be a better quality of life. It all comes down to instinct.
Previously, - kill him, steal his food = Survival.

now it equals,
kill/Blackmail/Rob etc them = Money = better quality of survival.

it's human instinct manifested into a sophisticated form, where food and water are no longer of value, but money which brings better and more food and champaign and bottled mountain water laced with gold is of tremendous value.
We can masqurade it as much as we like.
We will never live in a peacefull, open world where we all hold hands and share and share alike.
It just isn't realistic.

So no, i don't want to live in a world without secrets. Anymore than i wan't to live in a childs tv show.

The embarrassment suffered by the various governments will obviously be a lesson learned. Hopefully!

That information is unimportant! So we have a few countries and their leaders caught making stupid comments and doing stupid things. Nothing unusual there!!!

Information jeopardizing peoples lives without their permission is not much different than pulling the trigger, if it causes a life to be lost.

Transparency is good if it improves the government. Transparency is bad if it causes malicious damage, death, conflict, war or the lose of life!

No, these wikileaks supporters are criminal thugs. They are the same people that torch cars, and smash windows at World Bank, WTO, etc meetings. they are showing their criminality by hacking mastercard's et al websites.. They didn't get their way, so they then immediately resort to breaking laws and harming people and businesses.

Secrecy may be justified to protect the privacy of INDIVIDUALS.
BUT a democratic government is a government OF the people FOR the people.
The business of lies and secrecy should have no place in a true democracy where the PEOPLE choose their representatives based largely on the information available to them. Mixing DEMOCRACY with SECRECY is like mixing oil and water.

Lou Bragg

New Yrok

Why do people have to respect the privacy of their "democratic" governments when those same governments trample on the privacy and freedom of speech of their own citizens?

I'm very happy PAYPAL has stopped dealing with them. I use them all the time and I;m glad they no longer support actions of espionage.

Now the question is, Will governments be going after individuals that sent Wikileaks money and classifying them as supporters of espionage and terrorism?"

As for personal info. If it's not in the public interest to invade someones privacy, it's should be totally illegal.

The actions of Wikileaks will only encourage more secrecy. Gov'ts will be more careful now with the way the handle and share information.
A gov't is made up of individuals. And just as individuals have secrets, gov'ts are also bound to have and keep secrets. If Mr Julian wants transparency and a world without secrets, let him start with himself and with Wikileaks. Let him state the source of the leaked documents because that's a secret. Let him publish a staff list of Wikileaks workers, and also make public the list of contributors to the site, how the finances are used, all the locations of the servers and all such information.
You can't operate in secrecy and at the same time be fighting for a world without secrets.

For those who don't think there should be secrets/privacy, then you would no doubt agree that all dividers, stalls, privacy barriers in bathrooms should be removed? Got a bedroom door? That's got to go. everyone should know what you're doing in there.

Given that the Whitehouse is a government building, taxpayer paid for, but also a residence for the President, does the US President have any expectation of privacy and should the American public have a right to have cameras set up everywhere letting us view what he/she is doing at all times?

Transparency can be a great thing but it has to be transparency from all parties involved. If Wikileaks or these internet warriors really cared about transparency they would be going after all countries not just the US.

@ Steve's comment # 47

Bravo!

Unless he is paying people for the information or hacking into systems, he is not the problem. They should be focusing on their in-house people and how and why they release this information. This is like blaming the heads of governments for the banking robbery when it was the elected bodies that facilitated it all. This is as much about politics as it is about security.

Towards the end of your show, your guest brought up Blippy, a website where people can post what they've been purchasing on their credit cards. He mentioned it as an example of people giving up privacy, but that it can help people discover the cheapest places to buy things.

I know the creator of blippy. It's a creation that seems idiotic on its face, but given the extreme narcissism today, it can make a lot of money, and future ventures that make money of people's narcissism will also be created. The users are so narcissistic that have no second thoughts about giving up privacy to get attention. You'll even see people get charged over their credit limit feeds, or overdraft fees if they have linked a debit card to it. But to them, any attention is good attention.

Governments which seek the mandate of people in order to take up responsibilities on their behalf should not hold secrets back from these people. A transparent world,according to me, means having access to any information that the government holds on my behalf and I would need that information in order to make an informed decision.
I would not have any problem if information about my pay, medical report, or criminal record is sought by public in order for them to make informed decision based on such information. My personal information when it has nothing to do with public good/interest has no business being out there.
But any information relating to government and governance should be transparent and made available to the public. Otherwise, people will rely on leaks!

I grew up when President Nixon resigned and the Watergate stories broke. That is what I equate with democracy and it can only get better. The Media has to focus on corruption and untruths in government. Otherwise, they ought to be writing fiction or be in the advertising business.

I used to be part of the media machine but could not deal with the daily pressure to be part of the drunken mythological I-could- have-changed-the-world atmosphere at my job, where people started wanting to do something and got caught up in the stress and the daily grind to preserve the system at all costs.
I chose to stop and to continue being a sober idealist.
Transparency is the only way to catch the lies and deceptions that politicians call politics. The future has to get better and we as citizens have to be better informed.
I was 6 years old and lived in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated. Believe me, we are not going to be living in a world without secrets anytime soon. WE are already in a world that is suffering from information overload.

If I'm paying someone to do a job, I have a right to know how he's doing that job. Let's say I'm paying someone to paint my walls blue, and then come to see how he's doing, only to be met by top-secret barriers and "Sorry can't tell you it's top secret, it's for your own protection, you can't handle the truth". I'd think that's completely out of order, unfortunately it has become the norm to just blindly accept that explanation without question from other people we hire to do a job, such as the government.
The leaks answer questions that the employer should be asking, they show the kind of job the employees are doing, and whether or not it is what they were employed to do. None of the leaks are words or action taken from the private lives of individuals, or anything they do outside their working duty. Individual privacy is not being infringed.

I find it interesting the way these commenters sort out.

The Conservatives here show absolute trust in Big Government keeping secrets from them like some Nanny State which knows better that you do what is good for you. They want to shoot or imprison anybody who exposes corruption or illegal or immoral doings by their Nanny State-Big Brother government.

And the Non-Conservatives here don't put absolute trust in their government, they believe like former President Reagan said, "Trust but verify" (I know, it's hard to believe I would quote Reagan"). They welcome more transparency in government, they don't like the idea of a Nanny State taking total control of information and they don't trust that the government is always doing right. So they welcome imperfect policies and enforcement that allows the release of information about things that might be wrongdoing and they welcome the idea that some government employees are upright and moral enough that they put themselves on the line to expose government wrongdoing. Not always, just when public knowledge of secret information is needed.

Traditionally Conservatives say that they are against Big Government, but, ironically, the facts on the ground here tell us that they really are "for" Big Government and the Big Brother-Nanny State!

It's weird how it sorts out, isn't it?

I want to live in a transparent world! Only people who don't do things in the right way want to hide their secrets. If you are doing everything in a right & humane way, why do you want to hide your acts? Okay people say Government & military strategies have to be kept secret for successful progress & wars. Why do you want to fight wars in the first place? To satisfy somebody's ego or show your strength? That is not the right way to go about in this world! Governments want to hide truth because they want to show their strength,power & false prestige with a surprise element by playing games. Again that is not the right way to go! When there are better ways to do things, you choose the wrong way & keep it a secret because you very well know you are not on the right path! Transparency brings peace, justice & welfare to the world!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I just stumbled into this:

"Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures"

www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=2404

The more people who know something,the less of a problem that it is until it has faded away. Look at the Roswell conundrum. It is only kept alive because nobody knows whether it realy happened or not.Knowledge is power. If the people are concentrated on one thing,then they have no time to follow other,and perhaps, more dangerous things. If everybody were to know everything,then there are no reasons to have Governments.

we cant know about the character of persons v have given the responsibilities.how they r playing with us.and what their intentions really r.

but somethings r to b kept secrets.one never knows in what perspective the things r said and what actually they mean by saying that.in what circumstances they r saying them.so some secrets must remain secrets

taking all thing in consideration its better to live in world where secrets r kept secret according to me.

OK so A finds out Bs plans for world domination and does what exactly? OH WAIT we do nothing now cos' its all transparent! Sure! You want to live in a transparent world? Then whats stopping you? What is stopping everyone? It's total BlKS to say you want it when you won't go do it yourself! The only way is to shrug off our egos, vanity, personnas, greed, need, desires, advesaries and clothing and go back to the Garden of Eden!
SOoo.. don't see that happening in the next Millenia do you? Which means we have to have secrets to protect ourselves and to survive! This is both personal and National. Each country, just like it's individuals, needs to keep its own counsel for survival. Hatred rules the world and we can't be open if we all have enemies. Anyway why do I want to know the names of USA spies? Does it feed me? Am I going to do anything about it - Hell no! None of that conspiracy 'info' will - and if it did then we'd have done it years ago! Sorry but the only one its helping, is to line Mr Assange's pockets with gold.

Not everything is for everyone to know, a world without secrets will not be a pleasant place to live in.

I think the debate should be widened to include Assange's legal spokesperson after the tirade from the Centre for Security policy last night. What has become obvious is that the US policy of "Invade, assassinate, or render" would be popular with this think-tank's spokesman but that the rights afforded US and other citizens under American and International Law are not; the (apparent)pressure laid upon such businesses as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal etc to freeze incoming financial support for Wikileaks and Assange while allowing payments to paraphiliac and racist sites surely says something adverse about some politicians'attitudes to legal, civil, and human rights in the USA. An appeal to "World Have Your Say" listeners to lobby their politicians to join the debate could have Internationally important results and repercussions. I have begun the process in Australia; should others join in to give Julian Assange support in an attempt to give him a fair trial somewhere? I believe so.