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I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy. You want people to tell the truth to government
by IncreasePosts 2y ago
I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy.
You want people to tell the truth to government investigations in the future, and not hold something back because they think in 15 years the government might just release a transcript of everything you told them.
- declan_roberts 2y agoThat's not the stated reason why they're dragging their feet.
- dehrmann 2y ago> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy I also remember that story, but it's no justification for keeping something with this much public interest secret.
- MeetingsBrowser 2y agoSo you would like people to feel comfortable telling the whole truth, unless it’s something really important?
- dehrmann 2y agoSecret witnesses aren't allowed to testify in the US. Not that these were court trials.
- lazide 2y agoExcept for FISA. And don’t forget that cases ‘pertaining to national security’ get thrown out all the time. [https://www.fjc.gov/content/overview-7 https://www.fjc.gov/content/overview-7] Either because key evidence is classified, or witnesses are, or testimony would be considered a threat to national security, etc.
- nozzlegear 2y agoIs public interest the only thing we need to drum up if we want to strip away somebody's right to privacy?
- kelnos 2y agoThey can still redact parts of the documents, including names or other identifying information.
- chrisco255 2y agoIf the transcript involves evidence against a random psychopath who committed murder against beloved public figures (with no connection whatsoever to the government), I don't understand why anyone involved with such an investigation would be upset about the release of such transcripts immediately, much less 15 years or 65 years in the future.
- yardstick 2y agoAnd if those transcripts don’t have incriminating evidence, should they still be released? If they interviewed everyone at that parade, what they were doing etc, and some of those people were completely uninvolved but maybe having affairs, or doing something immoral (whatever that is), then shouldn’t they be afforded privacy? Eg Imagine one would be mortified to have what sex toy was in their pocket at the time documented in public transcript.
- nepthar 2y agoI think a simple redacted name would address that concern
- yardstick 2y agoI’d mostly agree with that. After sufficient years have passed. Name isn’t the only way to identify someone.
- Someone 2y agoFor people taking part in the parade, I doubt that. Extreme example is Jackie Kennedy. “I was sitting next to the president” identifies her pretty well. There were people in the crowd who can easily be identified, too. For example, Zapruder’s testimony would have to leave out that he shot a movie and was life on television that day, and quite a few other details to anonymize it.
- afavour 2y agoIn our conspiracy theory riddled world? The first thing that comes to mind is Sandy Hook. Those poor parents being harassed by people accusing them of being “false flag” actors and all that nonsense. If you were a key witness in the JFK assassination you can bet nutjobs hell bent on some conspiracy theory or another are going to track you down and harass you. Not to mention the way more vanilla stuff: people whose testimony incriminated friends, family members etc etc
- throw10920 2y agoThat's a legitimately good reason. Are the entirety of those remaining 1700 documents redacted? If so, then they should just redact parts that would uniquely identify those last surviving people and release the rest of the documents.
- agsnu 2y agoSounds like a bunch of work. I thought the priority was reducing waste of taxpayer dollars?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throw10920 2y agoThis is a snide, low-effort comment that didn't have the bare minimum of effort put into it to research whether or not its core premise was correct, and actively degrades the quality of discourse on HN. It would have taken thirty seconds to Google "President Trump administration priorities" and come up with https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/president-trumps-america-first-priorities/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/pres... The efficacy or utility of those priorities doesn't matter - the fact is that the claim that "the only (or top) priority is reducing waste" is trivially easy to invalidate, in addition to making the gross logical error that good uses of taxpayer money (of which "making sure that the taxpayers are aware of what their money is being used for" is one) and bad/inefficient uses of taxpayer money are equivalent, which doesn't even require a Google search to understand is wrong. Comments like this shouldn't be on HN. The guidelines directly state "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle." (which is what this comment did) and that HN is for intellectual curiosity, which also didn't happen because it took less than a minute to invalidate the core premise of this comment. HN is explicitly for intellectual curiosity and thoughtful discussion like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874301 - not this.
- thejazzman 2y ago
- zombiwoof 2y agoTruth to this government is funny
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy. you probably also think that mk ultra is a conspiracy theory.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIt was a conspiracy.
- nomel 2y agoThe released files have redactions for this reason. Why couldn't the names be redacted in the remaining? Doesn't pass the smell test.
- hulitu 2y ago> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy. Are the Dulles still alive ?