Livestream the Government
~ watch bureaucrats and officials vs. corruption and slacking ~
TL;DR — Better than body-cams: all government employees are visible to the public (except for court and national security purposes, when they are STILL reviewed by master-assessors). I have a hunch that MAYBE, bureaucrats and officials are sitting at their desks doing nothing, or chatting with other bureaucrats about ways to exploit the rules. Maybe? It’d sure be good to CHECK, because that would be really bad if it kept happening, at all levels of government, for generations, without recourse… yeah.
One-Sided Privacy
If the public loses our privacy, while the government MAINTAINS its own privacy, that is the specific circumstance when government can abuse its knowledge of us, because it can KEEP that abuse SECRET. However, if the government LOSES its secrecy first, then it would be safer for us even when our own privacy is compromised.
I’m not talking about Homeland Security and Pentagon meetings, etc. Rather, I want to have a camera on that guy in the DMV. And the legislators at the state capitol. Why can’t we hear what they say to each other over lunch? Is it really national security? um…
>>>If streaming would be “disruptive to their work”, what sort of work are they doing that is disrupted by VERIFYING that they actually do it?<<<
People only say “I did the work, but I don’t want you to CHECK that I did the work…” when they DIDN’T do it. [Self-incrimination is only protected in courtrooms, because of the ethical weight of incarceration.] In the real world, if someone stands in-front of a door and says to you: “don’t look in there, there’s NOTHING to see!” Then, you know that they are hiding something in there. When someone refuses verification, we are correct to impute that their secret does NOT support their argument. If they had evidence that supported their claim, they would want to present it. It would end the argument in their favor. When the secret-keeper avoids that vindication-outcome, it is a behavior that demonstrates argument in bad faith.
And, fundamentally, if we are unable to verify the actions of elected officials and the bureaucrats appointed by them, then we have no measure of whether they have actually served our interests or not. We cannot give ‘informed’ consent to their governance, because they keep that information from us. Denied information, we lack an informed citizenry. Only the issues of actual security should remain secret; all activities on-the-job, all government employees, must be available for the public assessment.
Understandably, most people wouldn’t watch any of that; instead, a record is key for creating an avenue of recourse. We don’t need to constantly be using that power; we need to continually have the ability to use it.
