Consider, for a moment, cameras operating in public places for the public good e.g. crime prevention, weather monitoring, tourism and so on. To me, I would say all such cameras that are publicly funded should also be publicly viewable... because this transparency helps to answer the question of who is watching the watchers e.g. preventing abuse from a select few. However, it doesn't work like that because a minority will complain that their face isn't blurred (when they're cheating on their girlfriend), or that their car was seen at a particular time (when they should of been working), and so on.
But you see, this is how the public are socially brain washed.. on the one hand they are encouraged to consider their personal info as private.. yet equally, at the same time, they are told, "you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide". Thus, suddenly the only perceived solution is that a privileged few should have full unabated access over the majority (legalised hacking and so on).
And so, with a transparent block chain, one half of the above scenario is met, "you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide". Meanwhile, the other half of the problem is executed i.e. we must ring fence some "personal data" (even if it's publicly viewable). Go ahead and ask Coinfirm to make their data publicly available.. no chance of that happening! Suddenly they have licensing agreements in the way, or that cross-data analysis exposes too much personal data (location) etc.
A transparency-first block chain simply doesn't help when you're working in such a hostile environment.
With a privacy-first block chain, you can have your checks and balances through open source and strong governance.