Keeping secrets

Reader Advocate David House has a nice column in the Wednesday paper about the growing move to keep previously available government information secret.

There’s almost always a good reason for doing so – national security, helping people avoid embarrassment, and on and on.

The problem simply is that it is the duty of the people to keep tabs on their government and they can’t do that unless they know what the government is doing. This is an issue that often gets cast as the press versus the government. But reporters are merely stand-ins for the public – going where readers would go and asking the questions they would ask if they had the time to do that.

House lays out the arguments, so I won’t go into that here except to say this: Freedoms and rights are easy to surrender and difficult to regain.

-- Paul K. Harral, Editor of the Editorial Page