Reply #6: Well on the one hand, the public are the employers of the government, they work for us. [View All]

[bemildred]

Or that's the way it is supposed to be. So we would have the rights that any employer has WRT any employee, that is what they do in performance of their jobs.

However, the private sector employer/employee relation is different. Theoretically, the relation between employer and employee is between equals, so they would have the same rights to know what each other is up to, or not. Whereas the relation between public and government is not between equals, the government is a creature of the public and it does not have the same rights as we do, all of it's operations ought to be subject to our inspection in the same way any owner has the right to know everything about his or her property.

Edit: this argument, BTW, has interesting consequences when applied to other artificial entities like corporations too.