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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

Apple is a private company that answers to shareholders. The DoD is a government department that used to answer to the people.

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I don't think the US DoD meaningfully answered to me (a US citizen) by its previous policy of letting a bunch of reporters from some mainstream news outlets have offices inside the Pentagon under one set of rules, and I don't think the US DoD meaningfully answers to me by its current policy of putting more rules on those reporters that they don't like and are willing to resign over. I have a healthy amount of mistrust for both the US military and mainstream US journalism operations, and I don't assume that the military-related stories these reporters covered previously were the ones that were actually important for me to know.

No one resigned.

Answering to the people doesn't mean that every secret must be made immediately public.

No one is suggesting that secrets be made public. The gov can and does classify info that must be kept secret.

Who is allowed to decide which secrets should or should not be made public?

If your answer is "the government", then every cover up will never be revealed, and the government will answer to no one.

If your answer is "journalists", then you have the status-quo in any functioning democracy.

And when it actually moves into sedition territory, that's what an independent court system is for.

Unfortunately, once things devolve into a two-party system, it becomes ever increasingly difficult to keep the various branches independent.

But it does require answers. Answers are a response to questions, otherwise they're just statements.

This is about not wanting the journalists to even ask for information from e.g. generals. No-one is saying that they want immediate disclosure of all secrets - I'm concerned that you're building a strawman.

You have classified information for that reason. It's not the same as requiring journalists you literally let into public press conferences to shut up and spread propaganda unquestioningly

This is moving the goal posts from your original position. Spend the time to refocus - if your position was erroneous, it was erroneous. Correct it, figure out what that means, then proceed.

Moving on to a new version is to waste your own intelligence in reactionary sentence creation.

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