10 - The Emerging Right to Information

Summary

As the capacity of technology to deliver information expands, the idea that citizens have a right to information grows. Access to information is, in fact, an issue of the electronic age. Until recently the question of a right to information has largely been an American concern because the development and application of information technology came first in the United States, but with information technology and networks spreading to the rest of the world, the same debates are taking place in other democratic countries. The fundamental issue is essentially the same question as in so many other areas of human need: What is the proper role of the state?

Like most of the newer rights that concern quality of life, the right to information is being defined by what is possible and by what is available, as well as by what is desirable. Issues that must be resolved range widely; they are philosophical, political, social, and economic. What information equity means is yet to be defined, who is to pay yet to be decided, and how abuses are to be prevented yet to be determined. How much of the promise and how many of the glowing predictions can be realized remains to be seen. Past experience offers only limited guidance because the world of computer-processed and digitally transmitted information is a quantum leap beyond the world of the telephone, the environment with the most similarities. From the confusion of conflicting views and countervailing actions definitive answers are slow to emerge. Trends tend to be of short duration, and the extent to which a right to information will be affirmed is in doubt. Both the United States and Germany are in the process of rethinking the theory and practice of the welfare state, and in neither is the climate receptive to the assumption of new responsibilities by government.