Gary McKinnon and Democracy
It has been said that when democratic state withholds information from its citizens it is no longer a democracy. The truth is, as always, not so black and white. There are, for instance Iraq, nominal democracies with little but the name to qualify their claims, others, such as Norway, guarantee human rights and freedom of information. These positions are fluid and will change over time. The direction a nation is taking towards either of these polls is the only real way that a democracy can be assessed.
It seems that in hacking into sensitive US military websites Gary McKinnon has become a barometer for US democratic realisations.
It could be that decisions on where and on what the taxpayers money is spent are
not the business of a democratic nation's population. It may even be that decisions
about the moral worth of these taxpayer funded projects are not the province of the
average citizen. But it is certainly not the case that we, who live in the democracy
in question, should be uniformed about them. Perhaps most people would not really
want to know why the schools are being short-
In breaking into these sites McKinnon exposed information that he reported had been deliberately hidden from us all. The point of a democracy is that the individual has the free choice to decide whether Gary was a lunatic or a saint, vitally the individual can decide to engage in the democratic process and create changes, or equally to sit back and do nothing, only if they have this information.
If we sit back and do nothing in the case of 'Gary McKinnon VS the US' then we could well be on the road to loosing even this basic right.
It would be more fitting if the US administration were brought to trial; I suggest that a charge of 'covering up corrupt practises and withholding information pertinent to the safety and lives of the population, might be suitable. Every person has an unalienable right to life and property under western democracy. In keeping such secrets the US government denies us both. To put it in a more obvious light: if the person who exposed the true extent of the Sellarfield radiation leaks had been silenced by 70 years in jail, would it improve our democratic rights or hinder them?
There are many reasons why a democratic state should have secrets. All of them are fatal for democracy. There are many ways a democratic state can keep secrets, putting citizens behind bars for discovering them is, beyond doubt, a criminal offence.