In liberal democracies, state secrets are not an anomaly, nor a crime, but rather a central aspect, if done well, to develop good government. The Government’s position of not revealing the details of how and who has carried out the legal and illegal espionage/eavesdropping on pro-independence leaders and members of the Executive itself, claiming that “the CNI has a duty of secrecy”, creates confusion, since in this case does not benefit the citizen, but rather the Government and ultimately the State, which represents an abuse of secrecy.
The philosopher Norberto Bobbio, in an article published in La Stampa in 1990, with the title “Secret and mystery: the invisible power”, observed that “the secret is not, in itself, a good or an evil”. He defended that “it is good when it prevents the dissemination of what is good, useful, and appropriate to be ignored, and it is bad when it prevents knowing what would be good, useful, and appropriate to be known.” The position of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, defending that it is positive that there is “a duty of secrecy”, becomes something negative when the secret is given the rank of mystery by the Government to prevent the law from sanctioning possible bad practices . When it happens, the secret must be revealed, the veil removed; if not, it ends up causing resignations, as has been the case of Paz Esteban López, former director of the CNI, and acting as a firewall when the entire forest is already burning.
The position of the Spanish Government of unwaveringly defending the mechanisms that the State has to spy on citizens for the general good and that, in principle, should transmit security to society, has caused the opposite effect, showing its fragility. Public opinion perceives that the CNI is a deviant and uncontrolled apparatus. The reason why it is necessary to clarify the motivations of espionage and the identification of those who have benefited from it is to avoid increasing suspicion of collaboration between the State and those who use it for their own interests.
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