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We are a democracy

shis-ka-bob 26th Jul 2010

@frgough The people need to be able to know what is actually going on. There is a long history of government abuse of secrecy going back (at least) to United States v. Reynolds, the very case that created the claim of privilege for national security. In this case, the US government refused to grant access to an accident report to the widows of the crew of a B-29 that crashed on the grounds that the accident report would compromise national security. The Supreme Court accepted the argument without even checking to see if there were in fact secrets that would damage national security. The documents were recently declassified. There were NO SECRETS in the documents, other than bomber was not being adequately maintained. If we have a government that uses secrecy to cover its ass, it is only reasonable to expect that government cries of secrecy will sound to some like the boy who cried wolf.