TLDR: Public officials lose their right to privacy and are subjected to surveillance. Corruption is impossible if they cannot make private deals.
Preface: The American government has been rolling out mass AI surveillance systems with facial recognition much like we've seen in China. There are currently 5,000+ cities in America that are covered, roughly 1/3 of all law enforcement now uses AI cameras. These databases recognize and keep track the movements and behaviors of literally everyone, the systems are incredibly expensive to install and maintain (we foot the bill) and they are often misused or compromised. It's a huge ongoing issue in America that very few people know or care about so it's been growing and expanding over the passed few years and, if not stopped, will eventually become a beast. This got me to thinking about what an ambitious goal they have: to create such a powerful a system to track and predict patterns of half a billion people; and it's possible with enough energy into a data center but would take a lot of energy and a lot of cameras (currently there are 100k cameras by Flock and a partnership that takes footage from everyone's Ring doorbell).
The solution: Flip the system around. It's much easier, much more doable, much less ambitious, much much cheaper, to surveil politicians than it is to surveil everyone else. Public officials lose their right to privacy and are subjected to surveillance. They cannot have a conversation with their wives without everyone citizen hearing it, they cannot take a bathroom break without everyone knowing exactly how long it took, they cannot exchange a nickle without the whole world seeing the receipts, they cannot receive a gift without the everyone knowing exactly what it is and who its from. Corruption requires privacy. Without privacy, corruption is impossible.
In the simplest terms, we have the Private citizen & the Public official. Citizens have a right to privacy, politicians don't.
Can you find a problem with this idea? I still need to think of a name for this political system, has anything like this ever happened in the past?
Valid. I'll have to think on these.
Someone else also mentioned that there would be no intelligent rulers worthy of those positions that'd be willling under the condition of no privacy. This makes sense under our current system but I'm not convinced that it would be true under a new one. In the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, their elected rulers lived in isolation within special quarters and had no personal business whatsoever, they were forced to focus on only ruling without any possibility for personal gain or corruption. Those 5 rulers, called Ephors, were prohibited from indulging in any form of luxury, such as eating meals or wearing cloth above the lowest class Spartan, and kept each other in check until the next annual election.
The archon's in ancient Athens lived in public quarters and swore oaths to live as a lower class during their term. They had no privacy and the citizens kept them in check, they weren't allowed to have personal relationships.
In the 17the century Edo era in Japan, the rulers besides the emperor, the Tokugawa shoguns, also lived similar minimalistic lifestyles in public areas under the watchful eye of the citizens.
There are probably other examples of similar systems in the past that likely worked well at preventing corruption at the time. So I wouldn't dismiss the idea because people wouldn't want to participate. If all those who want to enact great change or have power over everyone else must also make the personal sacrifice to do so, that wouldn't mean less intelligent or less worthy rulers; it'd mean more committed, more trustworthy rulers.
I'll reply to the military point in another comment.