Full public transparency is not all good, argues Lawrence Lessig in a substantial critique of what he calls the “naked transparency movement”.

It’s a must read for all openness advocates, and published in the New Republic.

In short, Lessig’s argument is that transparency have many ill-considered side effects, and that transparency reformers should take responsibility for them. For example tying votes to financial contributions, without change in the political structure, may only lead to anti-democratic cynicism.

Transparency needs to be tied very strongly to democratic reform, in order to be a positive influence on the democratisation of politics.

However, critics from the transparency movement are less than stellar about his editorial, you can read their response here and here. Their argument is simple and convincing: the answer to poor analysis of open data is not less transparency, but more. Less informed arguments won’t improve the lack of a rational culture of open debate.

It must be said that after reading the critiques, Lessig’s editorial appears as a emotional and not thought-through reactionary rant.

A short excerpt from Lawrence Lessig’s article:

“To know whether a particular transparency rule works, then, we need to trace just how the information will enter these “complex chains of comprehension.” We need to see what comparisons the data will enable, and whether those comparisons reveal something real. And it is this that the naked transparency movement has not done. For there are overwhelming reasons why the data about influence that this movement would produce will not enable comparisons that are meaningful. This is not to say the data will not have an effect. It will. But the effect, I fear, is not one that anybody in the “naked transparency movement,” or any other thoughtful citizen, would want.”

An excerpt from the critics:

Sunlight Foundation co-founders Ellen Miller and Mike Klein:

“The current transparency movement actually is quite different from the “naked transparency” straw man Lessig creates and attacks in his essay. We do not believe in solely releasing data and then reaping the whirlwind. We and our colleagues spend most of our efforts creating tools and sites to help draw meaning from the information we help put online. For example, we annually directly train more than a thousand reporters and bloggers on how to use these datasets, tools, and sites to better inform their investigations into the work of government. Untold others find and use these resources on their own. Our flagship sites are packed with detailed narrative postings seeking to help connect the dots; the mashups we have fostered aim at making meaning from minutia. The very idea of exposing government data feeds for outside developers is, at its core, about spurring innovation in the way we all perceive and contextualize data.”