this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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Software funded by public resources should be a benefit available for the public. Is not only transparency and security, it should be owned by the people who paid for it.
This should apply to everything, not only software. If it's funded by taxes, it should be freely available to everyone (or provided at cost, depending on the thing in question).
Free public transport!
Scientific research
Sci-hub FTW
Top secret too? I'm sure you don't mean that.
Even top secret should be published automatically within the lifetime of the staff involved. If we decide that we need powerful people acting in secret, they should do so knowing that the public with scrutinize their choices 5 to 20 years later.
Okay, I wasn't aware that I had to tailor my comment to be consumed by extreme pedants. Allow me to revise my statement:
"This should apply to everything that's created for public consumption, not only software."
I would have thought that would be implied, but I guess not. Should I explicitly state that it also doesn't apply to military hardware, or can we just accept that a certain degree of reasonableness must be applied, given this is an internet forum, not a legal document?
How dare you not think of every single edge case and exception and explicitly call it out in an appendix?? I expect better of lemmy
I agree with you. I was giving you a chance to clarify your point so that you don't seem like a radical if you didn't want to. Chill - this is just an Internet forum where we share and discuss ideas in order to widen our own thoughts to include those of others. Here on Lemmy we're more alike than not. This isn't reddit. Try not to assume the worst from people.
Then you have to word your comments differently, I interpreted it identically to KoboldCoterie.
I'll work on that.
Why not? Why should we allow our government to keep secrets from us?
Well, off the top of my head, while it would be nice to live in a world without espionage that's not this one. I don't think you could do very good spying if everyone knew who your spies were.
Good question. How would that work?
Well, itβs not my area of expertise, so Iβm not sure exactly. But I suppose a good place to start might be restricting or removing the ability of government agencies to classify or redact information, alongside increasing the power and scope of FOIA/sunshine laws.
What do you think?
I don't know. It seems like there are some things that need to be kept close. Trade and peace negotiating. Open prosecution and defense cases. Plans during international conflict.
There's problematic cases like information on active spies (for example) that would make it hard to remove it entirely, but I agree with you that it could / should be drastically reduced. Obviously this is coming from someone without top secret clearance so I really have no idea how damaging unredacting everything suddenly would be, but there have been many cases where things were redacted or classified purely because it would make the government look bad if it were released, and that, in my opinion, is bullshit. That should be public knowledge.
In the US, officially, material cannot be classified to save face or because it would make the government look bad (I'm sure this has happened, even if it's something like: if it makes (official) look bad that will undermine our country's strength and therefore cause serious damage to national security or whatever).
Secret material is defined as information that could cause serious damage and Top Secret is exceptionally grave damage. And I suspect a lot of classified information does need to be kept classified, either to protect sources or plans of actions or enemy intelligence or even friendly capabilities.
Absolutely!