People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is up to the government to keep the government's secrets.
Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.
The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.
In an age when many of our citizens casually reveal information about themselves in social media wildly beyond anything imaginable only a decade ago, it would seem to be a useful exercise in civics to re-educate the public about the value and purpose of protecting against unwarranted government intrusion.
In real danger sometimes even a democracy can really keep a secret.
It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.
Usually you kind of give the President a pass on leaking confidential stuff.
It's remarkably easy to dig up enormous amounts of information about individuals, without their consent.
Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.
People intrinsically know there are secrets being held from us. Look at WikiLeaks: There are secrets that are really true to the world.