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But this strategy faltered when the dossier about which they were being so open proved to be wrong about the secret (Saddam’s weapons) it supposedly revealed, and attempts at transparency have now got Blair’s successor into even more trouble.

The revelation that criticisms of Israel had been removed from the draft of the Iraq dossier released under the new freedom rules coincided with the prime minister’s struggle to explain why the Northern Rock rescue deal had been exempted from open-government requests for details.

Brown cites commercial confidentiality, but this defence is easily made to look shifty by the opposition. In a third blow to claims of openness, it was officially admitted yesterday that an MP consulting a constituent was secretly recorded by the spooks. So, having come into office on a promise of hiding nothing, Brown is left looking like a classic smoke-and-mirrors politician.

But this outcome was probably inevitable because we have a confused attitude to secrecy. Policies of openness are promoted in the hope of reducing public cynicism about government; yet such is the level of cynicism now that any attempt to let in light on the establishment’s actions is almost bound to be dismissed, by the very people at which it is aimed, as just another feint in the game of deceit.

So, a sequence of spies will appear at the Diana inquest next week — wasting time that might have been spent more usefully on counter-terrorism — because of a belief that this proves the state has nothing to hide. And yet it can be guaranteed that their evidence will immediately be discounted, simply because of the source from which it comes, by those who suspect them of malign involvement in the case.

Indeed, the Diana inquest stands as a sort of Statue of Liberty for the freedom-of-information age: bring me your befuddled masses of conspiracy theories and I will shelter them! The laughable fantasies of a father deranged by grief are treated as if they were respectable evidence, because the state hopes that this display of judicial tolerance will somehow convince doubters that the state did not secretly send a man and a dog in a clapped-out Fiat to wipe out the future king of England’s Muslim half-brother. But there is no degree of openness which could have any impact on minds so firmly closed.

And whatever we may have gained from the authorities becoming slightly more open to us has been lost by the way in which we have been forced to become more open to them.

Concepts such as “total surveillance” (an invention of the American defence department) and “total information” (a coinage from Amazon.com) in which almost every move a citizen makes is filmed, listened to, or digitally stored — have become commonplace, excused by September 11, July 7, or simply a promise to improve our online purchases.

Freedom of information has become a two-way street, although the traffic restrictions remain far tougher on the road to the government’s secrets than on the freeway leading to ours. This collision has occurred because the move towards a more open society was driven by the end of fearing Russia but soon coincided with the new enemy: Al Qaeda.

Most people understandably object to these levels of intrusion — they are alarmed to read, for example, that London police have made 3,000 requests for details of private journeys on the London Underground — but any contemporary defence of privacy is compromised by the willingness with which personal security is surrendered.

The comment traditionally made by the British when informed by a reporter that their neighbour had been exposed as a serial killer — that “he kept himself to himself” — has been made redundant by the fact that almost anyone now charged with a crime turns out to have maintained an elaborate online presence in which they posted compromising pictures for their “friends” to see.

Even casual inspection of the web suggests that a case can be made for greater secrecy, at least at a personal level. In the public arena, the cynical view would be that the business of government will always involve secrets and lies and that any politicians who promise differently, or voters who believe them, are deluded.

Yet there is a more optimistic position. We now know, relatively soon after the events, that the Iraq dossier was censored, that MPs are bugged by spooks, and the cops can track our tube journeys. It might once have taken 30 or 50 years to learn these things in England. So freedom of information is, to some extent, working. The mistake was to think that such transparency could ever make people think better of their betters. Openness can encourage suspicion as much as secrecy did.

Mark Lawson is Guardian’s cultural columnist and television critic