Any government that conceals information from it’s public is not a true democracy. To that effect, no government on the planet is a true democracy.
Anyone with even basic internet skills can find out about all sorts of classified stuff, and foreign governments probably know it all anyway, so why doesn’t the government just stop lying to everyone and let the public know?
Suggestions please (I’m sure there are plenty of innovative ones out there…)
What if the people decide that some types of info shouldn’t be revealed to the public? Like the address of a mafia informant? What’s undemocratic about witness protection?
We the people don’t want the social security administration blabbing our social security numbers to them the people.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Because as long as there’s 10,000 conspiracy theories floating around, nobody really knows which ones are true and which aren’t.
The government just denies everything and we are left to sort out what’s true and what’s not. When all the info is classified, these things aren’t easy to prove.
Wow, you don’t often see a simul-post at 5:31 AM.
There is a difference between politics and law enforcement. Mafia (and other) informants are probably on about a million hit lists anyway, but the government doesn’t need to release that information to jeopardise their lives.
What I was referring to is the restriction of knowledge which really doesn’t need to be classified but is. If the government just opened up about which are the TRUE ‘conspiracy theories’, it wouldn’t change much (apart from maybe help the public to trust them a bit more). Even if no-one believed them, at least they would be being honest as opposed to, as you so correctly say, denying everything and leaving the public to permanently suspect them…
“Now be quiet before I rather clumsily knight you with this meat cleaver” - Edmund Blackadder
Well if they tell us their scientists have made a major discovery, doesn’t really matter what the discovery is, we are going to ask them to prove it. To prove it they must present us with all their research and the scientists that did the research. Now all the sudden everyone in the world knows how to do the exact same thing, or at least knows who has the information as to replicating the discovery. Immediately you have taken away the reason for breakthrough in the first place, to be one step ahead of the competition. The military wants to have the top of the line, they also don’t want the competiton to have what we have. The same can be said for most industry technology, the longer you have the state of the art and the competition doesn’t, the higher the profits.
That’s a good point, I guess you could say I was taking the argument to the extremes. However, the advantage that you describe simply does not exist, as foreign governments will have already infiltrated every ‘top secret’ base there is and learned their secrets - pretty much guaranteed.
The point I’m trying to make is, if the other governments know these secrets, then why shouldn’t the public of the country that’s made the discovery? Even if all the government did was set up a website or something detailing the progress they were making, at least then only people that wanted to know would, and it would maintain a degree of restriction (ie - people with access to the internet who had an interest in the subject), but at least the information would be there in the first place.
Instead, we have to rely on the ‘evidence’ provided by people who claim to have worked in military (or other) research centres.
“Now be quiet before I rather clumsily knight you with this meat cleaver” - Edmund Blackadder
Bill Clinton can’t even cover up a simple sexual liasion.(sp??) How many conspiracies can there be?
LOL good point, but I have a nagging feeling that the answer may be more than you (or I) think…
“Now be quiet before I rather clumsily knight you with this meat cleaver” - Edmund Blackadder
BIGmatt
If you truly believe that other governments already have the information, then why don’t you ask one of them for it?
They don’t tell us because most people are sheep, easily startled. For the sake of Buddah, look what the y2k ‘scare’ is doing. imagine if the gov said, ‘yep, everythings going down!’
I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction–Oscar Wilde
GQ Mod