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Comment by throwaway48476 | Hacker News Reader

Does the unclassified part of the government have secrets? If so, why?

They have lots of confidential information. Some examples:

* Many agencies - for example, the IRS, Medicare, Social Security, FEMA, agencies that provide loans, or any other service - have lots of information on individual citizens.

* Many agencies have information or make decisions that would distort markets if leaked - it's release must be carefully managed - such as the departments of Treasury, Labor, Commerce; or the Federal Reserve.

* The Department of Justice has lots of information pertaining to lawsuits and investigations that must be kept secret.

etc.

Yet another example that I've dealt with from the outside: as part of regulated community, I must submit some trade secrets to the government for regulatory purposes. Those trade secrets are legally required to be kept secret by the government from disclosure. This regime allows the government to inspect things that involve trade secrets, and me from those trade secrets being disclosed to competitors.

Now Elon Musk and friends may have your trade secrets - they may have everyone's trade secrets.

Aside from the other reasons already mentioned, fully public agencies would be astoundingly inefficient and ineffective. Government agencies are already subject to an intense amount of scrutiny (some sincere, some extremely bad faith) and if every email, bulletin, roadmap, etc. were public by default agencies would become even more catatonic than they already are. There needs to be a space for reasonable disagreement and problem-solving without the possibility of immense personal, professional, and political consequences.

It could also make accountability harder because it would encourage avoiding paper trails whenever possible, even when employees believe they are acting within the law.

Is FOIA the right amount of openness? I don't know, probably not, but it's definitely better than public-by-default.

I've thought about that. I suspect, like many things in the new very open Internet world, people would become accusomted to everything being out in the open, and no longer respond strongly to every little issue.

I think it would look a lot like LibsOfTiktok. The sheer volume of information flowing would allow creating any polarizing narrative you want for an audience already primed to hear it and do something about it.

There is a large volume of information about Trump, but nobody is doing much.

1) Political violence is very asymmetric in the US

2) two people have tried to kill him in the last 6 months

How did this shift into violence? I thought we were talking about day-to-day activities of bureaucrats.

Because the social security numbers, health records, or geographic details of people who have interacted with the government shouldn’t be open to the general public, for one.

All of that is exempt from FOIA already. In the case of other government agencies I'm sure they aren't allowed to disclose it either.

Yes, that’s exactly right. These are secrets the unclassified part of the government has. Being secrets they are exempt from FOIA.

When people think classified, they think UFOs and Assassinations. But something as simple as which agencies and agents are investigating which issues, companies and people, can be unclassified, effectively giving private interests opportunities to shut things down.

You have to pass a "public trust" clearance for alot of Gov departments. They vary in intensity. For example, GSA and USDA are both pretty quick and easy. Dept of Ed, treasury, and IRS are way more in-depth.

The VA has PHI of veterans. You need to have a clearance to work with that data.

They legally don't have secrets but they practically do have secrets.

Maybe its time for the government to be public by default.

> Maybe its time for the government to be public by default

Have you filed a FOIA request?

Thanks for being a voice of sanity in this insane thread

I have seen many FOIA requests get answered with heavy redactions and otherwise partial answers. For "public by default," lots of arms of the government don't see transparency as something they are supposed to do, and more as an imposition.

Other parts of the government are good at responding to FOIA requests, but it's generally inversely proportional to the value of the information.

https://www.justice.gov/d9/what_are_the_9_foia_exemptions.pd...

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