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Comment by zarro | Hacker News Reader

I always found it annoying how things get "declassified" only after anyone that could have provided context and good points of objection, in order to develop a better system of rules, is dead.

How can you expect to perfect a system by making the negative feedback loop ineffective.

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It's a tricky balance between that and protecting the people involved from harm, as well as protecting methods that may still be of use. I think the US government is too conservative about when to release information, but in many cases even less conservative standards will result in information being withheld until most or all of the principals are dead.

I agree that's the argument used, but you have to weigh that against the possibility that it also incentivises malicious actor(s) to subversive behavior because they will not be held accountable for their actions.

In the grand scheme of things it comes to a subjective decision point, and I would tend to argue that an increase in accountability toward the customers (us), wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Hence why I think the US government is too conservative in deciding these matters. The accountability to us is supposed to come via our Congresscritters, but that clearly has issues.

It’s to protect themselves, usually the really nasty stuff doesn’t get declassified until the perps are dead or in adult diapers for the same reason

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