Transparency: A Nessesary Component for Accountablity in A Democracy

The Athenian golden age of the 5^th Century BC embodied democracy in its purest incarnation. Though a significant percent of the population couldn't vote, those who could wielded substantial input in the actions of their government. Yet, even a true democracy, one in which citizens voted on specific proposals, the administration of the Athenian empire required officials. In Athens the majority of officials were chosen by pulling different colored beans for a jar, by lot, and were replaced in the same way. Those lucky or unlucky to be chosen (given ones preference) were meticulously observed by the voting population of Athens, because the citizens understood their government was of the people, by the people and for the people. So the Athenian's devised a creative policy for holding their own citizen's accountable.

From 488 BC – 417 BC the Athenian's used the policy of ostracism to maintain the peace and manage the powerful. Once a year citizens voted whether to send one person into a temporary exile of ten years. Though it was not explicitly for the purpose of sending away politicians, these were the preferred target of ostracism. By nonpermanent banishment Athens was able to maintain consensus in politics, forcing out divisive figures, but also able to punish politicians who performed poorly in their duty. At the end of a magistrate's term the citizens questioned whether the official had succeeded or lead the city astray, and rewarded or punished him accordingly.

The purpose of this article isn't to recommend the United States institute the policy of ostracism. As a continent spanning nation, our size prohibits the personal knowledge the ancient citizens of Athens could obtain about each other. But more critically, no citizen should be able to exile a politician in the United States, because no public citizen can successfully evaluate the success or failure, the corruption or virtue of the highest officers of the land. The complexity of international relations, the economy, and military affairs have compounded exponentially since the country's birth, thus stifling understanding, but more insidiously, modern government operates under such secrecy the public can't possibly know what has been done by whom. A Republic, even more than a Democracy, rests upon officials, and a Republic fails when candidates hide behind an opaque screen of deception and misinformation. Without proper transparency of elected officials there can be no accountability, and no democracy.

Candidate Trump recently criticized the United States for failing to launch a secret attack upon the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, as if a combined assault composed of fifty thousand soldiers from five different nations could be prepared without an enemy noticing. Large scale military options remain helpfully obvious, but in the last century the United States has authorized three agencies whose very mission is incompatible with the promise of democracy.

The FBI, founded in 1908, has been complicit in a dismaying number of cases of attempting to destroy groups considered subversive such as the the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP, progressive student groups, and anti-war organizations. They've mostly avoided recent attention, until their director James Comey thoughtlessly vacillated while overseeing an investigation into Senator Clinton's emails, unable to determine how to proceed as to avoid political repercussions. While transparency of candidates is important, the vague wording of Comey's letter to Congress obfuscated the very transparency he hoped to foster.

The CIA, formed two years after World War II, came under review after the Iraq war. “After”, is a precarious word, because the war continues, and one could imagine that United State's forces will remain for another decade at least. The CIA, operating a number of black site prisons, committed actions banned by both United States and international law. Working through cynical, legalistic loopholes, and with the full knowledge of the President, the CIA tortured foreigners, but not on US territory. United States law does not permit the public to learn about what happened at these heinous locations, yet some of the illegal techniques of the CIA were recorded. In 2009 the Senate Intelligence Committee learned that the CIA had destroyed almost one hundred videos of interrogations completed during President Bush's War on Terror (2001 through 2006). It began an investigation which resulted in a report. The completed document was released in 2012, but not to the public. A declassified edition wasn't made available to the public until 2014, and this summary contained only one tenth of the complete file.

In compiling the report, the Senate Intelligence Committee was lied to by the CIA director, and determined the CIA had also lied to the President about how serious the torture was, its effectiveness, and the number of detainees. As the Committee tried to conclude their research, they were impeded by CIA agents, who destroyed evidence and hacked the Committee's files. The director of the CIA refused to apologize to the Senate for these unforgivable breaches.

The conclusion is, the public is not allowed to know what was done, or who authorized it. And likely, no one alive today will ever know. The elected officials who are supposed to oversee secrecy must fight for every truth from the agencies who are supposedly dedicated to protecting the United States.

In 2013, the NSA (founded in 1952) was revealed to be conducting a number of programs of dubious constitutional value, likely violating the 4^th amendments right for persons to be secure in their effects, protected from unreasonable searches, and requiring probable cause for a warrant. The NSA's dragnet surveillance, which collected American phone call data and monitored public internet communications certainly violated citizen rights, even if Congress passed a law justifying their actions. The court responsible for approving warrants, FISA court, is a secret body whose judgments are also secret, and never seen by the public. But it has approved 33,889 of the 33,900 requests made over the last 33 years. While is says it's requests receive a high level of scrutiny, because the request, deliberation, and verdict are secret it's impossible for the public to judge.

While the NSA has claimed secrecy is necessary for security, the director Keith Alexander was caught lying when he told a Senate committee that the NSA had stopped 54 attacks. In fact, they had only stopped two or three, and only one of these used the meta-data the NSA collected. The NSA also secretly compelled an undisclosed number of internet and phone companies to collect data for them. Considering recent revelations about Yahoo's spying for the government, the programs undoubtedly continue.

If these agencies are going to claim so much secrecy is necessary for halting terrorism, they could at least have proven themselves by preventing the rampages at San Bernardino, the Orlando Night Club, the Aurora theatre, Fort Hood, Newtown, CT, and Virginia Tech. It's not like they haven't had their opportunities to halt domestic terrorism. And if they can't stop these, how can the public expect them to stop sophisticated enemies?

Instead the public is left to wonder what they are doing, when they aren't spying on or harassing citizens. These agencies work under such secrecy, it is difficult for their overseers in the Senate and the White House to monitor them. And the public will never to be able to oversee the overseers. Who watches the Watchmen? With no public oversight there is no responsibility and no democracy.

The United States doesn't need to ostracize politicians to solve its problems, but as long as it continues to embrace pervasive secrecy the United States can never be a democracy. It can never achieve the ideals which it was founded on, and it can never be a world leader for freedom, peace, and justice.