14 - The Variance Principle and Digital Transparency

Summary

Since the digital space enables close to complete transparency, and the perpetuation of the transparency through data storage and not forgetting, it could be said that human rights law measures in the digital domain enable as high a transparency as possible, and have to be given the quality label. This in turn also means that almost anything which the private domain puts forward as self-normativity, and any practice implemented to enhance transparency, would without hesitancy be viewed as positive features. Digital transparency here becomes a shield against any critique of self-normativity and nonaccountability. The higher the degree of supposed transparency and openness in the digital domain, the stronger the immanence that many features remain hidden because in the conditions of ideal transparency the term loses its meaning, and it can only be defined in combination with the opposite. Complete or close to complete transparency has to mean the simultaneous existence of complete or close to complete non-transparency. Since the immanent feature of complete digital transparency is positivity on the surface, there is also non-transparent negativity beneath the surface.