A Quote by Jeff Jarvis
I would like to see transparency become the default for the American government: Abolish the Freedom of Information Act so we don't have to ask government for information but government must ask to keep information from us. The more transparent government is, the more collaborative it can become. The more our officials learn to trust us - with information and a role in government - the more we can trust them.
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I want people in all the government agencies to be communicating with people because for me, we're in an era - which didn't exist before - where you can have instant access to information, and I want to see my government be more transparent.
If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey?
Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives.
Normally if you add information to information, you have more information. In case of my art, I destroy information, I would say, because the image is disturbed by the writings. In a way, they become pure imagery. For me it's really fun because it's an idealistic approach to images, to just play around with information and see what's happening.
We live in a time when there are tech companies that have an unprecedented accumulation of power, wealth, and information with basically no competition. It's not in their nature to self-regulate, to break themselves up, or ask for less information. It's only in their nature to grow and gain more information from us, because the more that they know about us, honestly the better they can market to us and sell to us and make us better consumers.
When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.
Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.
As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day--both at home and abroad - ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever.
In any socialist government, they must destroy all alliances other than your alliance to the government, and they want the government to become your God. That for you to totally depend upon government. So we become slaves to government, through taxation, through regulation, through all kinds of restrictions, that makes us not free anymore.
WikiLeaks has been a very strong proponent of the Freedom of Information Act. This is probably, actually, if you think about it, probably against our interests as - as a publisher. But we believe that people have the right to know true information about what their government is doing.
We insist on producing a farm surplus, but think the government should find a profitable market for it. We overindulge in speculation, but ask the government to prevent panics. Now the only way to hold the government entirely responsible for conditions is to give up our liberty for a dictatorship. If we continue the more reasonable practice of managing our own affairs we must bear the burdens of our own mistakes. A free people cannot shift their responsibility for them to the government. Self-government means self-reliance.
I saw the government really using the excuse of a weak economy and a financial crisis to create more government and to push onto the American entrepreneurial society more and more restraints and government activity.
I was still in parliament when the Labour government passed the Freedom of Information Act. As the then shadow home secretary I queried whether in some areas it did enough to open up the work of government to public scrutiny.
There are myriad government programs out there to help small businesses. Few people use them effectively. The maze of information makes it difficult for any one person to understand it all, which often leads politicians, and citizens, too, to call for more programs. We don't need more government programs; we just need a better way to access them.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.
At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.
Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential information for human development is a must for every democratic society.
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