[sievebrain]

I'd think it's the least achievable thing of all. Governments will happily pass laws to {increase transparency / reduce privacy} and will happily pass laws that {add new taxes / close tax loopholes}, because these things align with their pre-existing agendas. They will not, under any circumstances, make it easier to engage in whistleblowing and especially not large data dumps, because governments absolutely do not want millions of { citizens holding them to account / vigilante info-warriors } increasing their OWN transparency!

That said, whilst I agree with that part, the rest of John Doe's essay left me cold. Other than its defence of whistleblowers it reads like more or less any standard left-ish Guardian article. The cause of increasing global inequality being a handful of law firms, really? They "write the laws" themselves, really? Which laws does he have in mind? All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? The British island territories are the "cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide" and not, say, African states where the corruption actually occurs? Billionaires own the press and serious investigative journalism is dead, except, presumably, the press and the journalists who he worked with?

I was and still am a huge supporter of Snowden because he revealed behaviour that was unquestionably bad. Literally nobody tried to defend what he showed was happening, and in fact the people doing it had lied in Congress to try and cover it up. It was a classic case where whistleblowing is justified. Additionally, Snowden had a very clear and straightforward thought process justifying his actions: what was happening was unconstitutional, and his attempts to use the formal complaint paths had failed.

John Doe comparing himself to Snowden rubs me up the wrong way, because although he claims the MF files are bursting with criminal evidence, so far all the stories I read about the Panama Papers were about things that are not illegal, and in fact apparently some of the papers show MF dropping clients when they started to suspect illegal activity, which implies MF was not quite the sinister conspiracy Doe makes it sound like. They clearly had legal compliance efforts and they clearly did things. And his justification is a long, rambling and rather incoherent screed that tries to claim the fault of every problem in the world lies with a kind of global conspiracy of evil and spineless people.

I think Doe is walking a very thin line between whistleblowing for a cause and generic vigilante-ism with his actions.

[lolc]

> so far all the stories I read about the Panama Papers were about things that are not illegal

So the accusation of perjury left you cold? It was linked in the piece.

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/03/19506/offshore-la...

[unusximmortalis]

Maybe you should read more about these panama papers before saying he is walking a thin line.

[scalio]

The thing is, whoever John Doe is, he or she is probably right. Maybe you should read http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise... and connect some dots.

Try thinking about the issue from the other side: suppose the dickheads ruining our future were actually doing all they are accused of doing (tax evasion on a massive scale, global 'conspiracies' i.e. forging strong alliances to screw everyone else over, etc), how would that look to the People? What would happen if the big media outlets were in these dickheads' pockets? What kind of coverage would the People get of such issues? What did the People get in this case, for example? No actual, in-depth analysis of the papers, that's for sure.

The world we are living in today exists in this form almost solely thanks to spinelessness and corruption at every level imaginable. What happens to a politician if he speaks openly about corruption in his own ranks? He'll be gone from the public eye in no time! Making people disappear like that is trivial: just stop reporting about them, and if they made too much of a mess to do that, just push another crisis to the frontpage. Public memory is horrifyingly short.

Your second paragraph displays the problem beautifully: how exactly is anybody supposed to have a clear view of global happenings (including lawmaking) when they happen in ways inaccessible to the common man (incomprehensible language or plain ol' closed doors)? Saying corruption actually occurs mainly in African states is just plain ridiculous. Some have valuable resources that get exploited by western or chinese corporations by way of corrupting the locals with nice gifts and whatnot. But that's pretty much it.

On the other hand, any western city with large building projects is subject to corruption. How else do you justify an advertised price of 600mil for, say, a new airport, blowing up ten-fold over the period of the airport's construction and its supposed opening (which only happened years later)? I'm thinking about Berlin Brandenburg here specifically, but no month passes without a similar case of a project starting out at a couple hundred million and progressively climbing up to billions in costs.

The recent VW scandal is another beautiful specimen of what you'd call global 'conspiracy' turning out to be ice-cold money-grabbing. VW was stupid enough to get caught by US environmental agencies and is dropping buttloads of cash to repair their image, all the while the rest of the automobile industry is quietly calling back cars to "fix problems". How come nobody covers this the way VW was scandalised?

Most shady things don't get covered because there's a total lack of material to work on or publish. Which brings us back to square one: how exactly is anybody supposed to have a clear view of global happenings (including lawmaking) when they happen in ways inaccessible to the common man (incomprehensible language or plain ol' closed doors)? I think the people in power have proven enough times already (not just nowadays, but throughout history) that they are not to be trusted. So instead of asking > They "write the laws" themselves, really? or > All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? try finding out what made that person make these claims instead of dismissing them based on your current knowledge. I'm not saying you have to agree with the claims, but you should at least make an effort to understand the issue for the sake of broadening your horizon. Knowing more about something never hurts ;)