Wow, I spend a weekend pretty much disconnected from the world, living off simple food, juice and a West Wing boxset and it turns out a huge knowledge bomb has been dropped by the Guardian.

So the big question, for me anyway, is have we learnt anything that we didn’t already know? I am betting no. We learnt that AID money disappears, that isn’t a surprise. We learnt that Pakistan is inextricably linked to terrorists, so no shock there, and that said terrorists will not be bought off. Pretty rubbish terrorists if they were able to be bought off, right? Not very ideological if money can sway them.

Which gets me to the next issue, should these have been leaked to the public? Given that this government thinks it should be privy to the content of my electronic communications, I don't really care for its privacy. Was anything or anyone actually brought down in the long run from 'too much truth'? I don’t think so. I would say the exact opposite that people have been kept in power by the truth being withheld.

Clearly the only way to hold the state to account is by having complete transparency. How can anyone claim to know who to vote for, for example, when what politicians do when they are in power is kept secret? We can only have democracy when we know what they are doing, we can only have freedom when the state doesn't have the right to hide things from the people it is supposed to serve.

At the end of the day, the Guardian is in effect using it to drive revenue- it is a commercial enterprise, not some not-for-profit dedicated to information freedom. This story is driving huge traffic to its site, which can only be good for it thus removing any idea of altruism on its part.

It is a complicated issue, and we will only see the impact it will have some time from now. Knowledge is power after all. I am going to end on a quote by Thomas Jefferson:

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

- Anand