提高政府透明度过犹不及 Why transparency can be a dirty word

It is hard to think of a political good that is more universally praised than government transparency. Whereas secrecy shelters corruption, abuse of power, undue influence and a host of other evils, transparency allows citizens to keep their rulers accountable. Or that is the theory.

很难再想象出一种比政府透明更受到普遍赞誉的政治上的善。不透明会遮掩腐败、权力滥用、不正当影响及许多其他罪恶，而政府透明能让公民对自己的统治者问责。或者说，理论上是这样。

It is clear that there are vast areas in which modern governments should reveal more. Edward Snowden’s revelations of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency has encouraged belief that the US government has been not nearly transparent enough. But is it possible to have too much transparency? The answer is clearly yes: demands for certain kinds of transparency have hurt government effectiveness, particularly with regard to its ability to deliberate.

很明显，现代政府应该在大量的领域披露更多信息。爱德华斯诺登(Edward Snowden)揭露的美国国家安全局(NSA)窃听丑闻使人们更加相信：美国政府远未达到足够的透明。然而，有没有可能出现过度透明的情况？答案显然是肯定的：对某些种类透明度的要求已经伤及了政府效率，尤其是商议问题的能力。

The US has a number of statutes mandating transparency passed decades ago in response to perceived government abuses, and motivated by perfectly reasonable expectations that the government should operate under greater scrutiny. Yet they have had a number of unfortunate consequences.

美国几十年前就通过了多项规定透明度的法令，这源于有人察觉政府滥用权力，也受到完全合理的预期的推动——政府应在更加严格的审查下运行。然而，这些法令导致了许多令人遗憾的后果。

The Federal Advisory Committee Act, for example, places onerous requirements on any public agency seeking to consult a group outside the government, requiring that they are formally approved and meet various criteria for political balance. Meetings must be held in public. The Government in the Sunshine Act stipulates that, with certain exceptions, “every portion of every meeting of an agency shall be open to public observation”.

例如，《联邦咨询委员会法》(Federal Advisory Committee Act)对任何试图咨询政府之外团体的公共机构施加了繁琐的要求，规定它们必须通过正式批准并满足政治平衡的各种标准。会议必须在公开场合举行。《政府阳光法》(Government in the Sunshine Act)规定，除了某些例外情况，“政府机构所有会议的任何部分都应当向公众监督开放”。

These obligations put a serious damper on informal consultations with citizens, and even make it difficult for officials to talk to one another. Deliberation, whether in the context of a family or a federal agency, require people to pose hypotheticals and, when trying to reach agreement, make concessions.

这些规定严重阻碍了政府向公民进行非正式咨询，甚至使官员之间的交流都变得困难。不论在家庭还是联邦机构中商议问题，都要求人们提出假设，并且在试图达成协议时做出让步。

When the process itself is open to public scrutiny, officials fear being hounded for a word taken out of context. They resort to cumbersome methods of circumventing the regulations, such as having one-on-one discussions so as not to trigger a group rule, or having subordinates do all the serious work.

而当这一过程本身对公众监督开放时，官员们担心受到断章取义的干扰。他们只好利用繁琐的方法以绕过监管规则，比如进行一对一的讨论，以免触发团体规则，或者让下属去做所有重要的工作。

The problem with the Freedom of Information Act is different. It was meant to serve investigative journalists looking into abuses of power. But today a large number of FOIA requests are filed by corporate sleuths trying to ferret out secrets for competitive advantage, or simply by individuals curious to find out what the government knows about them. The FOIA can be “weaponised”, as when the activist group Judicial Watch used it to obtain email documents on the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 attack on the US compound in Benghazi.

《信息自由法》(Freedom of Information Act)的问题则不同。该法的制定是为了服务调查权力滥用的调查记者。但如今，大量《信息自由法》请求是由企业的探子提交，他们试图为获取竞争优势而打探机密，或是由个人提交，他们出于好奇想看看政府都知道他们哪些信息。《信息自由法》可以被“当作武器”，比如活动组织司法观察(Judicial Watch)利用它来获取奥巴马政府回应2012年美国驻班加西领事馆遭袭的电邮文件。