Reply #8: Should you be forced to publicise all your sources of income?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

The presumption in a democracy is that no-one should have to do anything unless it infringes on someone else's rights, and that people should be able to keep things secret unless knowledge of those things is necessary for the maintainance of law and order or similar.

If you want to distrust or campaign against a not-for-profit organisation because it won't reveal its sources of funding, fine. If enough people agree with you then keeping that information secret will undercut their work enough that they will choose to reveal it; if not it won't.

But the question in a democracy is not "why is it good for these people to be able to do this?" but "why is it necessary to force these people not to do this?"