That isn't the goal, not for privacy advocates nor for Wikileaks or Julian Assange, who said:

"The goal is justice, the method is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method."

Advocates of individual privacy rely on the government, as a service provider, to keep secrets in order to protect the rights of individuals.

----

"The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance

[...]

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption."

http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936id_/http://iq.org#T...

http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

Did WikiLeaks ever leak the documents describing Ecuadorian network surveillance equipment they were trying to buy? It was leaked to WikiLeaks first but they, for some strange and surely innocuous reason didn't publish it. It was eventually leaked by BuzzFeed instead.

How about the promised massive leaks regarding Russia? [1] Not only have those leaks never panned out, but Assange now has his own TV show on the RT channel run by the Russian state, which is a far cry from how Russia described him in 2010, as a "petty thief running around on the Internet." [2]

If transparency, and transparency alone were the goal, I wouldn't be able to ask about these. But transparency alone isn't the goal. Assange has his own political agenda to push, Wikileaks is his instrument to do it (especially after he pushed out DDB). It should then not be surprising that when Assange's political ends were altered, that the focus of Wikileaks shifted as well.

[1] http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2028283,00... [2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/11/30/moscows-bid...

You don't have to read the stories I linked. You might want to at least glance at the URL though. E.g. [2] was posted in 2010. Still waiting...

Does that include personal information about you, for example your personal medical information that is part of the treatment records of a government-administered medical insurance plan? Some countries (not many) make personal income tax filings public information. Do you live in such a country?

This is not to say that extreme transparency applied to all things is right - just that it often looks a lot more scary than it is. When you act transparently you relinquish some control, and some people hate the very idea of giving up any control.

Or is it only transparent if you're in the club?

Here's the payscale in short, then. There are 2 main roles within the company: client management and sales.

Salespeople get £20k p.a., plus a 15% commission on sales, plus a share of the bonus pool. The base salary never goes up according to the current scheme.

Client Managers get £28k p.a., plus a share of the bonus pool, but their salary goes up by £2k/quarter for the first year, £1k/quarter after that, up to £40k.

The bonus pool is calculated by taking all the turnover, halving it, then deducting overheads, commissions and base salaries. The remainder is the bonus pool, split in a number of shares.

Now to derail the discussion:

How do you reward excellence? There will surely come a time where an employee has been working considerably harder than his colleagues asks for a pay-increase. How do you envision this would go down with the other employees? Your Client-Manager salary infact seems to be based purely on duration of service, not output.

Also, your company seems very unique to only have two roles, which perhaps explains why you can reveal this information freely. Full transparency would include how much you get paid, how much the office admin gets paid, the lawyers, accountants, coders, etc.

First, it's worth noting that this is a work in progress. We have quarterly meetings where the whole company decides on what changes they want to see made to the compensation scheme, so this stuff might very well change over time.

Secondly, they are rewarded for their hard work already - but as a team, rather than individually - via the bonus scheme. Whatever's left of their 50% of revenue is in the bonus pool, so if they generate an extra £100k of revenue, that will translate into an extra £50k of bonus pool.

Are there individual incentives? Not at the moment. They may well come in in the future, of course.

> Also, your company seems very unique to only have two roles, which perhaps explains why you can reveal this information freely. Full transparency would include how much you get paid, how much the office admin gets paid, the lawyers, accountants, coders, etc.

My cofounder and I get paid the amount of wage and dividends that allows us to pay no income tax. It's pretty standard (and not all that high) in the UK. There's just one director and one office manager, so I'm hesitant to post their current salaries as that is private and specific information, at least outside the company, I think...

The only thing we don't share openly in this manner is personal health problems.

edit: of course, if this is something you feel stongly about, you should just add it to any future employment contract you sign - I imagine most employers would be pretty flexible about this sort of thing.

The European Union takes this matter pretty seriously - hence the whole do not track and cookie notification policies that you see with European websites these days. I live in Canada now, and here they have two federal privacy laws, the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act - though some provinces are deemed federally exempt because they have their own legislation that is substantially similar in nature to the federal mandates. I guess this "right" isn't accounted for in U.S. law?

> Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

> 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

> There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

I am not a lawyer, however I think this refers to personal and family matters. How much you're being paid by your employer is not a personal matter, it's a business matter.

There are many public employees whose salaries are published openly and regularly. If this was a breach of human rights, then it is a breach that the UK government is guilty of on a regular basis.

Ref: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/005.htm

(disclaimer: that's a joke)

* Methamphetamine

* "Bath salts" (i.e. MDPV)

* Synthetic cannibinoids

Do even approximations to such boogieman figures even exist?

Absolutely, it would have been heroic. It might have led to real justice instead of ruinous warmongering.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_on...

Secondly, even if it were remotely true, there would have been significant incentives for any involved parties to alter or hide any evidence. History continues to be written by the victors, and crackpots continue to doubt it.

The typical line of thinking with conspiracy theories seems to be the less substantiated the theory, the more credence it should be lent, under the logic that the government is suppressing evidence.

So basically the less evidence, the more believable. Beautiful, isn't it?

And where do statements of indeterminate truthfulness fit in?

If allowing Japan to continue its (quite brutal) invasion of China is what you call justice, I'm not sure we are seeing eye to eye here.

Entering the war made a mess, but so would have staying out of it. The mess was already in motion, it was too late to avoid it either way.

There are many instances of Allied forces breaking codes but not acting on them, because to do so would have signalled to the enemy that their codes had been broken and the advantage would be lost. This comes back to my post further down, most individuals simply don't know the bigger picture!

It's true the US had an isolationist movement, and even business ties to Germany, but it would have eventually entered the war against Nazi Germany. After all, it was already supporting its allies (UK, Soviet Union, etc) via materiel through the Lend-Lease program, before the attack on Pearl Harbor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-lease )

Also, without wanting to diminish the participation of the US in the war, most of the effort was done by other countries, such as the Soviet Union.

Doubtless the final shape of Europe would have been different if the US had entered the war later, but Germany would have been defeated anyway.

You are implying that there was a good vs evil paradigm with WWII which is completely a USA fallacy.

Both sides were being funded by the central banking cartel. Do you actually think there would be any difference if you were living under Nazi control or not?

Look at all the astroturfing of the phrase "6 million Jews" in WWI before Hitler even came in to power.

[1] Yes, there would be a big difference to living under Nazi control or not. Whether we would know, or care, is another matter. Homosexuality and Judaism would surely be non-existent, but would that bother us if everything around us is 'Nazi' and the very idea of Judaism or Homosexuality didn't exist? Much like most peoples attitudes towards witchcraft. We are all a product of our society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Bombing_North_Korea

"As a result, almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed."

All the ridiculous, obtuse comments just to feel superior. If you can't attack the actual message, then impeach the character?

Grow up.

I assume he meant what he said.

Every citizen has a right to know the nature of what we are doing (how else can we decide whether or not we want to live with the trade offs or not?), and to be informed when something goes off the rails on the ethics side of things. This is a pretty low bar to set.

How can we call ourselves a democracy when money is taken from us and we don't know where it goes? It seems like we're voting for people, but there's no discourse about the secret stuff.

[1]: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror

It's not hard to think of others.

I can't quite find where I first saw this, but googling a bit brings up a few interesting example. For instance, http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency

While this tactic does fall into the grey area of morality, it is quite effective.

I also don't think they'll be able to do an equifax/transunion lookup without your permission. And it's perfectly reasonable to say no to that, as credit checks are bad for your credit.

With respect to court documents: It could result is someone getting hurt or a mis-trial due to outside influences (ie. Rob Ford video)

There are obviously many reasons...

    It would really hurt a company if their detail pricing
    scheme was released, as a competitor could easily
    undercut if they had access to that information

What if the electorate decides that a government should keep certain things secret from them? Directly at the ballot box or through their representatives?

I think in the US we have done so when we allow or congressmen to continue to renew the patriot act. For good or ill, the government keeping things secret for national security purposes is something we (through our votes, and through our congress) have asked them to do. Maybe we should stop doing so.

I share your hope and support the leaks. It is an awkward position to be in for the next US administration, I'll be curious to see how it plays out during the all annoying campaign season.

Information wants to be free...

Just remember that for the next NSA-related story.

How would you propose that "culture" be contained within the sphere of government? It clearly could not, it would spread to corporate and private spheres of life (if it didn't start here). It sounds dangerously close to a 100% surveillance society. How lovely.

The fundamental problem with this is that a government isn't a single entity. It's comprised of thousands of people all working on their own specific piece. So by it's very nature, only a very few people will know the bigger picture. If "governments" start leaking information left, right and centre, what that means in reality is hundreds of workers start exposing all of their work without understanding the larger picture.

What if a worker reveals details of a program to track "innocent people". Only to find out after the leak they were actually all in witness protection and they're now in great danger.

When you're part of a huge machine like a government (particularly in Policing or security), most workers will not know the full extent of their work, and therefore cannot understand (or be answerable for) the wider impacts of their actions.

Sounds like you expect governments to be ashamed of what they do once the plans become public.

It's not about shame. It's about the power to persist until the goal is reached.

The plebes have neither the goals nor the persistence - this is what makes them plebes, and they will stay this way with or without Wikileaks.

As long as there is quasifood in the supermarkets and quasientertainment on the TV, the masses will not give a damn about what or how the government is doing. Human nature has not changed for thousands of years.

Here's a simple manual for running a country that has been working like a charm ever since the emperor Septimius Severus: "Enrich the soldiers and damn the rest".