All publicly elected and possibly some or all appointed officials should receive significantly fewer privacy protections than the general population. This does not necessarily mean that significantly more information would be made available to the general public. This is only to ensure that a much lower threshold of privacy protections would apply to elected and appointed officials so that it would be much easier for the proper authorities to detect corruption or any other wrongdoing at a much earlier stage. In other words, part of the price of serving in public office is that much more or even all of an individual’s private finances, travels, communications, and perhaps other activities would be subject to government surveillance without the official’s knowledge and/or in spite of his objections. Furthermore, interrogations of family member and/or others closely related to the subject could be conducted, often times even before hiring and periodically during service, but especially when suspicions are aroused. Any information gathered in such a manner would be treated as confidential and not publicly divulged unless it serves a public interest.

Potentially significant past information (such as virtually all financial transactions) should also be disclosed by the elected or appointed official (preferably before their election or appointment) so that the proper authorities and even the public, if necessary, could be made aware of potential conflicts of interest or other concerns. Monitoring of the past and present financial activities and other potentially significant areas of a public servant’s life should continue at least throughout their public service.

Perhaps 5 or 10 years after the individual’s public service is complete and his surveillance has ended, several details, or even his entire surveillance history, should be made know to him, unless the divulging of this information could compromise the effectiveness of certain methods of government investigation.

Intelligence People Working Like Monks and Under Intense Oversight

In addition, very high level government/intelligence people with knowledge of very important information that is classified or very closely guarded should be required, as a condition of their employment or access to such information, to live either as virtual monks, with little or no travel or little or no engagement in activities that introduce the possibility that important information could fall into the wrong hands, and/or they should agree to undergo strict, 24-hour surveillance and be limited in where they could go and what they could do for the rest of their lives or until the information they have becomes outdated or not a security threat. There should be absolutely no privacy protections for these people. All their financial dealings should be reviewed constantly. Perhaps they should be recorded by video 24 hours a day or they could even be required to wear some device, like a watch, that would record audio, video, body characteristics, etc. This information could be required to be downloaded every day and stored or reviewed by others, ‘monks’ for example, sworn to secrecy. These recordings would be kept for many decades.

Anyone who misuses any of this private information should be heavily punished, potentially including torture and death. This is to necessary to maintain the public trust.