Week 18
The bartender may have been given and heard more than he bargained for, when he first sought and got the job, even 424-3890-type telephone numbers.
Motion: THR how professional secrecy has in vain spread to most professions and vocations
Role: PM (gov.)
A hush or silence has slowly but surely descended on private and public affairs. We cannot talk about supersensitive or just plain sensitive stuff in the way we could decades and years ago. In the past, it was customary that there was a scandal, because there was a whistleblower, after which media outlets arrived like vultures to tear the flesh and bones of the object or subject of the scandal. Today, we are lucky if media outlets report verbatim what certain celebrities have themselves laid out on the internet on their Instagram accounts. There, scandals are thin on the ground. Nothing is being said sub rosa.
In the Beginning, Bankers, Doctors, Lawyers, Priests
An oath of confidentiality was at first the domain of but a few practitioners and protectors of sensitive information. The economical, juridical, physical and religious “SWOT matrices” (really, if you think about it) of people were guarded over by bankers, lawyers, physicians and priests. From the beginning, there has usually been the component of people or professions who have people or persons as their objects, points of departure and subjects as the grounds for professional secrecy.
However, an oath of confidentiality then spread to other, less important areas of human activities, such as hotels, offices and prisons. Today, civil servants, hotel concierges, and the police usually keep mum about the specifics of different cases and guests that they are dealing with. Especially with the police, it usually does not make any sense. If the suspect is apprehended, on “Riker’s Island” and under investigation, there is usually no reason why information about her or him should be withheld. Suspects do not have a cell phone to communicate with the outside world, they cannot interfere with the investigation, and the public is entitled to know about the hows, whens, wheres and whys of certain crimes and misdemeanours. Usually there is no need to protect the public from this information, inasmuch as their interest is merely curiosity, with which there is nothing wrong.
Now Most Professions and Vocations Have an Oath of Confidentiality
If the above was not bad enough, now more and more ways to support oneself fall under professional secrecy. Bouncers cannot tell what kinds of customers cause trouble. Cleaning women cannot tell what they find in their trash. Teachers cannot tell what happens in the classroom. And there is the juridical malady of non-disclosure agreements which crop up everywhere. According to them, participants cannot tell the media about abuses, incidents and rows that may have occurred between certain contract parties. It is a blocker against the free flow of useful information and serves only to let people save face, when they do not deserve that.
One case in its own right is the press and its source protection. It is grounded in the sense that the press needs to have access to sensitive information, but the downside is that the press, too, uses it just to further its own agenda. The press never tell lies, but their venality is in how they handpick what they show in photographs and tell in plain words. They reckon they never get caught spreading disinformation or misinformation, inasmuch as they tell a truth or two, without adding anything to them, but without telling the whole of truths. The source protection of the press is also, in a certain way, more a part of the problem than the solution.
We All Would Benefit From Less Professional Secrecy
My understanding is that these oaths of confidentiality should be lifted to most extent. If silence and whomever it is supposed to protect is not appropriate and defendable, silence should be revoked. Bring back the yesterday of acute scandals and chronic flow of muckraking.
Would there be any way to decide on what merits professional secrecy and what not? For instance, the determining factor could be whether it is a question of attacking downward or upwards, striking against the powers that be or someone who is already down. Or, alternatively, it could be about the thin green line between so-called professions and vocations. If you were a professional, you’d be entitled to professional secrecy. If you were someone in a vocation, you’d not be entitled to it. As simple as that.
Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Tässä puheessa tarvitsin apuja ulkopuolelta, kun en tiennyt, miten sanotaan “lähdesuoja” tai yleensä “vaikenemisvelvollisuus”. On kuitenkin kiitollista jättää tällaisia aukkoja puheeseensa, koska sanat voi selvittää kollegaltaan tai netistä. Tietämättömyyden takia ei kannata jättää käsittelemättä sanoihin liittyviä asioita, jos ne lankeavat luonnostaan paperille. Oletan, että vastapuoli käyttää tehokkaasti hyväkseen ajatusta herjauksesta tai kunnianloukkauksesta suurimpana syynä sille, miksi asioista vaietaan.
Polar Ice Standpoints Society 