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‘That’s classified!’

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28 July 2023 / Athelstane Aamodt
Issue: 8035 / Categories: Features , Media , Freedom of Information
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As events in the US bring classified documents out of the shadows, Athelstane Aamodt shines a light on government secrecy

We’ve all seen it. That bit in a film when a plucky reporter asks about the existence of a rumoured secret black-ops mission that appears to have killed a lot of innocent civilians during their mission and for which they have gone undetected and unpunished. ‘That’s classified’, replies the aloof official, peremptorily ending the conversation.

The classification of documents by governments has become topical in recent months: Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and Vice-President Mike Pence, have been found to have classified documents in their homes. Thus far only Donald Trump has been indicted, and he has entered ‘not guilty’ pleas to 37 federal charges of document mishandling.

There is always something a little disconcerting about certain pieces of information being ‘classified’. Democracies, that are after all (at least notionally) founded on principles of transparency and openness, appear to be acting against their own nature by preventing their citizens from seeing all

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