With secrecy a daily preoccupation of governments who routinely weigh security concerns over disclosure of covert operations, the balance of these two priorities becomes an ever more pressing national debate. We asked our panel of global experts what, if anything, they believe governments should or must keep secret.
All governments engage in furtive behavior and in the name of national security commit acts they prefer to conceal. It is often too easy to oversimplify the contrast between the “righteousness of openness” and the “evils of secrecy.” Not all confidential information held by governments needs to see the light of day. Personnel files of government employees, tax records of its citizens, sensitive internal agency memoranda, measures to control crime, and those to advance diplomacy and national defense should not be available to the media or the public. The devil, however, is in the details. When governments develop extensive police powers, create...
