Especially when it will be received negatively by the public. What’s the point? Why do they willingly allow themselves to be crucified in the media and potentially give intel to their enemies of what they’re up to?
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In Western-style governments the government is beholden to the people, the citizens of the country. Information which plausibly needs to be kept secret is not declassified at all, however information which has no reasonable case to remain classified is revealed to the public precisely because the citizens might object. They deserve to know because they are exercising oversight over the government; the government serves them, not the other way around.
” allow themselves to be crucified in the media”
Basically everything a government does meets this description if the country has anything remotely resembling free press. Kind of a “must be Tuesday” situation.
“ive intel to their enemies of what they’re up to”
It would be extremely rare for anything relevant to current operations to be declassified.
Because long term it adds legitimacy to the system of government.
If a government hides everything then you can’t believe anything it says.
Files are generally declassified decades later, long after anyone implicated is gone from politics. So the people who look bad have no control over the process, and those doing it look good for being transparent about government mistakes (just not their own).
Ultimately, governments in democracies are agents of the people for the people, at least in theory. If there’s no longer a compelling reason to keep it secret it should be made public.
Keeping information classified is also very expensive. It requires a lot of control mechanisms to keep it protected.
Also I should point out that it’s technically not legal to classify information just because it would cause embarrassment to the government or its officials, or to cover for illegal activities. Obviously there is a lot of room for disagreement about what is and isn’t properly classified. However anyone who has a security clearance knows that they do not get the final say, it has to go through the proper channels for a challenge.
Classified document laws require a reason for the document to be classified. Usually it’s for reasons of national security. But when that doesn’t apply anymore, then the ordinary release process applies. When it’s not the cold war anymore and modern commercial satellites have greater imaging power than the classified spy satellites back then did, then the documents about those spy satellites has to be declassified.
Unfortunately for the government, “it would be embarrassing to tell the public we did that,” is not a valid reason to keep a document classified. If the government performed unethical medical experiments related to treating wartime injuries and illnesses and the results of those experiments are no longer a matter of national security because we have modern antibiotics and advanced surgical techniques, then the existence of those unethical medical trials can’t be classified any longer.
If all of a government’s bad decisions are kept secret, then future leaders have no way to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Declassified documents undergo rigorous review to make sure their contents don’t pose a risk to national security.
Most of the time they’re required to declassify documents by law, either because the documents aren’t actually damaging to national security or because enough time has passed that they should not be.
Loss of face is irrelevant. A government that can’t handle loss of face is unworthy of power. What actually happened is more important than the way anyone feels about it, *especially* when considering those who rule.
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