Archaeo-Blogger and Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire wants to mandate additional record-keeping for dealers in cultural goods in the name of "transparency." Leaving aside whether creating more red tape will accomplish anything other than to place additional administrative burdens on the small businesses of the antiquities and coin trade, one wonders whether he would also acknowledge that transparency should be a two way street.
So, how about some transparency for the State Department and CBP concerning their process for imposing import restrictions on cultural goods? Or how about imposing new record keeping requirements on archaeologists, such as requiring them to publish their findings within in a reasonable time on the Internet so they will be easily accessible to interested members of the general public?
After all, State, CBP and the archaeological community all purport to act in the public's interest, so is some transparency from them too much to ask?