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points by tancop 2 days ago | 0 comments
It's not justified and it can never be. Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation. And even then it must be balanced against the public interest in transparency, strictly time limited and narrow scoped (no blacking out whole documents).

I don't see how releasing an interpretation of a law could ever compromise law enforcement. Or actually I know how, it's because it would prove the way they do mass surveillance is illegal.

The problem is modern America doesn't see it that way. Any time the government does something evil they just say it's for "national security" and no one questions them. It's like a Winter Soldier password that makes courts go blank and say yes to anything.

[–] detourdog 2 days ago
I feel the role of the Press is to root out these stories and publish them.

To me the defining moment of the Press abdicating their job was when the NYTs reported the second gulf war. This was the end of me reading it. The Sunday times was staple reading growing up.

https://newrepublic.com/article/146481/new-york-times-bury-s...

https://fair.org/home/20-years-later-nyt-still-cant-face-its...

[–] fouc 2 days ago
Press increasingly started abdicating their job when journalism was no longer financially independent of the people and institutions it is supposed to scrutinize.
[–] tshaddox 2 days ago
> Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation.

Sure, but the obvious pro-government response is “revealing that the government is doing bad things reflects badly on the government and damages its reputation at home and abroad.”

Which is true, of course!

[–] simoncion 2 days ago
> “revealing that the government is doing bad things reflects badly on the government and damages its reputation at home and abroad.”

This is -incidentally- how the ancient English "state secrets privilege" got introduced into US law.

In the 1940's, godawful maintenance resulted in the crash of a bomber over US soil and the death of all three of the civilians on board the plane. The widows of the dead civilians sued the government and demanded the accident report. The government refused to provide the report, claiming the privilege because "national security", and courts all the way up to the Supreme Court agreed.

In the early 2000s, the accident report was declassified. Inspection revealed that the only real reason to refuse to release it was to both prevent government embarrassment and to avoid having to pay out -IIRC- nearly a quarter million in 1940's USD to the widows.

Given its enormous potential for unchecked abuse, along with the fact that the first ever invocation of it was abusive, courts should refuse to permit its use.

[–] awesome_dude 2 days ago
There is also a genuine case for National security in that - during the Second World War - releasing that information would (IMO) let the enemy know what maintenance was being held back, in bombers.
[–] jacquesm 2 days ago
That war ended at some point.
[–] awesome_dude 2 days ago
Absolutely - but another war quickly replaced it (actually several did)

WRT to this instance - I would likely argue that 50 years should have been more than enough time keeping the embargo

[–] rixed 2 days ago
Wars quickly replace one another, how unfortunate!

Or we have just independently rediscovered why most regimes seek the justification of some external threats to strengthen their power over their population, 1984 style.

[–] mxkopy 1 day ago
“The state makes war and war makes the state”
[–] emayljames 2 days ago
The planes in question would have been obsolete by that point, also those planes from WW2 would have already been widely distributed among allied (including Soviet) countries
[–] IAmBroom 20 hours ago
You are claiming we sold military aircraft to Soviet-bloc countries during the Cold War? Cite, please.
[–] kergonath 1 day ago
Yes, perpetual wars can be used as a tool of domestic control. The benign use is the rally around the flag effect. More harmful is using them as justifications to do anything without oversight. It’s one of the patterns shown by the vast majority of dictatorships and totalitarian governments. One of the aspects of fascism in Umberto Eco’s definition.
[–] simoncion 1 day ago
> ...releasing that information would (IMO) let the enemy know what maintenance was being held back, in bombers.

Nah. A single fucked-up maintenance shop is a single fucked-up maintenance shop. You can gut-check this by noticing that bombers weren't routinely falling out of the sky.

FedGov simply didn't want to be deeply embarrassed and wanted to try to wiggle out of paying a quarter million 1940s USD to the widows. Because they were unwilling to admit to their negligence and face the consequences, they did deep and lasting damage to the US justice system by introducing a mechanism that lets FedGov conceal nearly any evidence for any reason by uttering the words "state secrets privilege".

[–] awesome_dude 1 day ago
> You can gut-check this by noticing that bombers weren't routinely falling out of the sky.

1. One actually did.

2. Dear enemy - bombers maintained by shop X...

[–] simoncion 7 hours ago
> Dear enemy - bombers maintained by shop X...

If the enemy could track back the bomber to the shop that maintained it based on the information in that report, they

a) Already knew that it crashed.

b) Already knew if any other bombers maintained by that shop had crashed.

As I said, bombers weren't routinely falling out of the sky. And as I suggested, releasing a declassified report that only covered the reason for the crash revealed nothing that the enemy didn't already know.

[–] awesome_dude 4 hours ago
c) were learning that other bombers maintained by that shop were at high risk of being poorly maintained.

The enemy thanks you for your cooperation in telling them where possible weaknesses are

edit: While the FedGov absolutely abused the privilege in Reynolds to hide negligence, from a pure intelligence standpoint, operational maintenance audit trails are rarely "harmless" information to hand to an enemy during a War. (Cold or otherwise)

You're telling the enemy where to look.

[–] MichaelZuo 2 days ago
This seems fairly obvious, clearly vast amounts of possible wrongdoing, once exposed, could genuinely damage reputation abroad to some degree.

So how did such a law ever survive scrutiny?

It seems like a blanket ban on exposure of nearly all possible wrongdoing.

[–] Refreeze5224 2 days ago
> It seems like a blanket ban on exposure of nearly all possible wrongdoing.

And a proportional increase in power goes with that ban on exposing wrongdoing. Which is absolutely the goal of secrecy in government.

[–] bladegash 1 day ago
> Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation.

I think that’s A reason to keep information secret. The other is if it would reveal sensitive sources and methods (e.g., capabilities that it known, would impact the ability to use those methods).

Not saying the legal interpretation falls under that, but just mentioning it.