Jeremy Bentham Quotes
Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
At the time “publicity” as a field had not been invented. The word meant “transparency” of “openness”.
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, British Jurist & Philosopher, 1768
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Louis D. Brandeis for an earlier phraseology.
Privacy was a much more important value then and for Smith and most contemporaries there should be NO compromising records kept at all. Keeping records secret was itself an unacceptable compromise.
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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}.
At the time there was no Secrecy & Classification System nor any laws enforcing secrecy or confidentiality. However there was no freedom of information laws of expectations even on the part of journalists. This was the first Freedom of Information policy of the American government. Some politicians were more open than others but there was no national, governmental before this. There were however leakers and whistleblowers though the terms were not in use. Note that Roosevelt herein created the first whistle blower protection—himself.
The George W. Bush White House which had tried to keep secret things that no other administration in history had attempted found itself in the position where it was leaking secret classified information. A Key staff member of the administration was indicted for covering up their leaking activities of secret material.
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
