A Little Knowledge Can Be A Dangerous Thing

Information is, of course, crucial to everything we do. It also has a value – witness the burgeoning (and criminal) market in identity theft. This is particularly true in relation to personal financial information where society currently finds itself torn between two competing principles. On the one hand governments want transparency in relation to these matters so that they can tax consistently and make it difficult for people or corporations to avoid or evade their fiscal responsibilities. On the other hand, these same governments acknowledge rights to privacy and confidentiality, which are often enshrined in data protection legislation or (in some jurisdictions) specific bank secrecy rules.