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> while it's a matter of public record, it's also secret. Is that a typo, or is it "doublethink"?!

• derefr 11y ago
  The opposite of "public" is "unreleased"—it's about whether something is known to people without clearance. Whether information comes out by being officially released or by being leaked, it still ends up "public." The opposite of "secret", meanwhile, is "unrestricted"—it's about whether people charged to act in the country's interests (public servants, politicians, members of the military, and corporate employees who have signed contracts granting them clearances) are required to avoid mentioning it in any document or speech that would be public-accessible. A well-known example is the content of the Edward Snowden leaks. They're also "public secrets": things civilians are allowed to talk about, but which people with clearance—having more restricted rights than regular people—are prevented from talking about to civilians. Do note that there are good reasons for this distinction, although it can seem absurd. Things are restricted or classified in large chunks. Because of this, a part of a secret can be public (e.g. the name and purpose of a secret project), without the entire secret becoming public. If public awareness meant declassification, you'd see a lot more still-secret information leaking out, as various people would think—since there's no "here's exactly what was leaked and what wasn't" memos that go around—that some part of the secret was leaked which wasn't, and is therefore fine to talk about. The simplest way to avoid leaking anything else is to just go on pretending that even the first part of the secret hasn't been leaked and preventing everyone from talking about even that—so that the rest of the secret can't be socially engineered out of them.