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It's important in this instance to distinguish how wolverine876 thinks the system should function and how the system is intended to function. It's possible for

It's important in this instance to distinguish how wolverine876 thinks the system should function and how the system is intended to function. It's possible for it to simultaneously be the case that you hate the system and that the system is working as intended. In the US the people elect a government, the government passes laws creating rules (or passes laws delegating rule-making authority which is functionally the same thing) for, among other things, how information gets declassified. That information then gets declassified or not in accordance with those rules. > we don't know what we're missing. That is literally always true, it's impossible to prove that the government isn't hiding something.

toyg 5y ago
> In the US the people elect a government Considering that voting rates are around 60%, eligibility rules are often a joke, and most of those votes are typically wiped out by FPP anyway, it's more like some people elect a government... This said, the US declassification system is as good as it gets. Most countries on the planet don't have anything comparable, and anything deemed a state secret will forever remain as such in those countries (at least officially, bar revolutions). Not even Western Europe is particularly good in that regard. Somewhat ironically, and particularly on Cold War matters, us Europeans are often keeping secrets that would otherwise embarrass the US government, which wouldn't be possible if US agencies kept them on their books.