4 ms·
> I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years. How about technical papers on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb?
by lazaroclapp 11y ago
> I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years.
How about technical papers on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb? Or the name of cover agents who were active twenty years ago and either are still active, or at least alive and could be targeted in retaliation?
Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a way for people to expose illegal or immoral actions of the organizations (government or not) they work for, while protecting them from retaliation. Wikileaks serves that function. But no secrets with a longer life than 20 years? ever? I don't think I really agree.
- deciplex 11y agoEh, maybe. 20 years would put you in the late 60s/ early 70s for thermonuclear bombs, I think. I could see it staying classified for a while past that. And, if releasing the information will put someone's life in danger, sure. But I suspect situations like this account for a fraction of a percent of stuff that stays classified for decades. If the reason the government keeps something classified is to protect a person's career, or (as I assume is usually the case) just because they can so why go to the trouble of declassifying it, that is not a good enough reason. The default state of information held by the government is that it should be public domain, and anything classified ought to be scrutinized heavily - and regularly - to confirm it should be so and should remain so.