Confidentiality is not just a problem at the highest reaches of the government. It seems to me that once any modicum of fame is involved, the entire concept of confidentiality goes right out the window.

During the course of my professional career(s), I have held a few different positions at a few different companies. In most cases, when I left one position at one company to take another position at a different company, I entered into a "confidentiality agreement" with my former employer(s). The essentials of these agreements boil down to a simple arrangement: I won't tell anybody the nature of my departure from company X (nor divulge any company trade secrets) and, in exchange, the company will also not tell anybody the nature of my departure from the company (nor divulge any other personnel-related information about me).

This is Standard Operating Procedure for most organizations, especially larger ones, and it stands to reason: it protects the company as well as the individual from a number of possible problems down the line. It protects the individual because it establishes what is essentially company policy: the company will never say anything bad about you to potential future employers who choose to check your references. A potential future employer can confirm that you once worked for company X, but not what your salary was, or why you left, or whether anybody at company X had problems working with you. There's nothing left to interpretation. They can't say *anything* about you (other than to confirm that you once worked there), so there's nothing they can say that could possibly be misconstrued (or, for that matter, correctly construed) as a reason for the potential new employer to not take you on.

It also protects the company. You agree not to say anything derogatory about your former employer, or to otherwise give potential job applicants, stock analysts, or other industry professionals any reason to be concerned with how things are going at company X. More importantly, if there was any kind of a severance or other financial arrangement that was part of the deal, current employees should not hear from you what the terms of those arrangements were. For obvious reasons, your former employer wouldn't want everyone to know how much you were getting paid, if anything, as part of your separation arrangement.

As a former manager, I can assure you that there are often financial components involved in separation arrangements. And no, I won't give you specifics.

The heart of the matter is this: when employer and employee part ways, both agree not to bad-mouth the other. This is a contract. A binding, legal commitment. And yet, we read examples of confidentialities being betrayed seemingly every day.

I'll skip the obvious examples of how this happens in the higher levels of the government. The Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, et al, administrations seemed to be plagued with bigger leaks than the Titanic. One such leak killed the Nixon presidency, and another has caused some harm to the current administration.

However, the problem plagues the civilian ranks, as well. The best (most public) example I can think of in recent memory is the departure of corporate executive turned television star, Carolyn Kepcher. She's got good looks, brains, a book deal, a well-defined public persona, and she and her former employer parted ways. So what happens? A "person close to the situation" told the New York Post that she was fired because she wasn't taking her job with the Trump organization seriously.

Further, according to the Associate Press article linked above, this sentiment was "echoed for The Associated Press by a person close to the situation. The person insisted on anonymity because it was a personnel matter."

That's right! It's a personnel matter! That means they are not allowed to talk about it. There's confidentiality involved. These individuals are betraying a very real, very important confidence. The Trump organization could lose a lot of money if Ms. Kepcher were to choose to sue over this (assuming, of course, that the betrayal came from within their ranks rather than from hers.) Since confidentiality and integrity actually matter to me, I'd like to see the Trump organization either find the source of the leak and fire that person; or, if the leak can't be found, fire everyone in the department who *could* have been a source of the leak.

(I've often felt the same way about leaks from within Presidential administrations. How ironic -- and pathetic -- if one of those leaks should have actually be approved of by the President himself. I'm not just talking about the current administration, by the way, with regard to the Plame Game. The leak of the Stealth bomber project under Carter's administration comes to mind, among many, many others....)

I realize that this particular example may not elicit a great deal of sympathy. There is a general preconception that the rich and powerful play by different rules (read: dirty), and therefore when they break their promises to each other (even if it's a lowly minion who is casting the stones without the approval of his or her boss), the only people being harmed are, well, rich and powerful and therefore they can handle it.

Bullshit. Integrity matters, whether you're the boss or the employee, the elected or the appointed or the electorate, the wealthy or the aspiring.

In the voting district where I used to live, a candidate for State Representative had previously left the employ of a large, local company (where I, too, had formerly been employed) in order to run for office. Word got out that her performance at said employer was not quite up to par. This, from a source "close to the situation."

As a former News Director at a commercial radio station, I recognize that sources must occasionally be protected. But these cases, like so many that we read about on a regular basis, involve sources very clearly breaking the law and/or violating confidentiality in order to share information that is not only not theirs to share, but is also not in the public's interest to have that confidentiality breached. By news organizations coddling such sources, and corporations (or government organizations) not acting to cauterize such leaks, our society as a whole infers the message that confidentiality agreements will neither protect you nor are they binding upon you.

This is a shame because confidentiality, like any social convention, is part of the glue that helps hold our society together. We erode it at our own peril.