Transparency and the right to know

The 'right to know' is sometimes touted as the ethical foundation for corporate and governmental transparency. The best account of general moral rights to know will not justify total transparency, though. Broader transparency is possible if corporations voluntarily arrange to disclose information, but Such special rights are far from the strong claims for information that rights to know generally entail. Moreover, we cannot easily extend the justification for rights to know about government to rights to know about corporations. Rights to know about government are grounded in public consent, whereas rights to know about corporations rest not primarily on autonomy, but on the protection of other fundamental interests such as privacy, security, and health.