Dick Durbin Quotes
Sunlight is better than secrecy when it comes to making laws.
Durbin, Dick. "Statement on Senate Healthcare Bill Transparency." Congressional Record, Government Publishing Office, 19 June 2017.
There were many critics who were concerned that the ITU was trying to regulate the Internet, but no one could be sure as the proceedings and meetings of the ITU are not publicly available. This is a classic UN problem. They see themselves as representing governments and not people. The Governments have the information and so they delude themselves into believing that they are transparent, when the reality is that for the individual they are totally opaque. Most critics who worry about UN regulation of the Internet, are just as concerned with what other countries are proposing than what there own government’s position is. And most governments themselves do not release the actual transcripts or proceedings of the ITC meetings but only documents giving their positions. This is an example of secrecy being promoted as transparency where the UN covers for member nations who want to maintain secrecy.
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For many people the implication of this quotation is that there should be no government secrets withheld from the citizens who have the right to examine. Others argue that government may have temporary secrets to protect against foreign enemies for example, but that these must be declassified very promptly so that the citizens can examine the actions of their government in time to replace the government if they are not satisfied. Almost all government officials tend to reject the first implication out of hand, and grudgingly accept the second with their discretion controlling when declassification should take place. The problem of America is twofold. There is much over-classification (material kept secret that should not be at all), and the time till declassification is long in general and truly absurd in many cases. For example, there are documents from WWII that by 2013 had still not been declassified. See {591444}, {641317}, and {589105} for exemplar views. William Jennings Bryan introduced this principle into the American political dialogue. See {641027}.
Obama wanted to follow transparency and openness in contrast to the previous George W. Bush Administratiom. He did do better, but he disappointed many of his supporters by not being totally transparent on many occasions.
Richard Joseph Durbin is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Illinois, a seat he was first elected to in 1996. He has been Senate Democratic Whip since 2005, the second-highest position in the Democratic leadership in the Senate, and Senate Majority Whip since 2021. He chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
