Fukuyama on Secrecy
From the New York Times:
All new threats entail huge uncertainties. Then, as now, there was a pronounced tendency to assume the worst, and for the government to claim enormous discretion in protecting the American public. The Bush administration has consistently argued that it needs to be protected from Congressional oversight and media scrutiny. An example is the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of telephone traffic into and out of the United States. Rather than going to Congress and trying to negotiate changes to the law that regulates such activities, the administration simply grabbed that authority for itself, saying, in effect, “Trust us: if you knew what we know about the threat, you’d be perfectly happy to have us do what we’re doing.” In other areas, like the holding of prisoners in Guantanamo and interrogation methods used there and in the Middle East, one can only quote Moynihan on an earlier era: “As fears of Communist conspiracies and German subversion mounted, it was the U.S. government’s conduct that approached the illegal.”
Even if we do not at this juncture know the full scope of the threat we face from jihadist terrorism, it is certainly large enough to justify many changes in the way we conduct our lives, both at home and abroad. But the American government does have a track record in dealing with similar problems in the past, one suggesting that all American institutions—Congress, the courts, the news media—need to do their jobs in scrutinizing official behavior, and not take the easy way out of deferring to the executive. Past experience also suggests that the government would do far better to make public what it knows, as well as the limits of that knowledge, if we are to arrive at a balanced view of the challenges we face today.
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Clive Robinson • October 12, 2006 8:01 AM
If you need an example of why all over site on Gov activities needs to be open then look no further than a report on BBC Radio 4 this morning.
Apparently an advocate reviewing evidence supplied by MI5 has found that that they have deliberatly supplied conflicting “secret” evidence to two seperate trials.
The only reason this was picked up despite Charles Clark’s much touted oversite and review, was the pure chance that the advocate had been involved with both cases…
So MI5 are cooking the books in the UK to increase the likleyhood of convictions well well well, so much for oversite.
Unfortunatly I have not been able to find a link to the story on the BBC website yet, when I do I will post it.