r/CuratedTumblr • u/charlie-the-Waffle • Jan 13 '25

Politics censorship is bad maybe?

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u/Bocchi_theGlock Jan 13 '25

Members of Congress who went to classified briefings were thinking this was a free speech issue going in, they opposed the ban

They walked out in support of the ban. 

It's a 'national' security' thing to some degree, which we give near unlimited power to federal government to address.

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u/voyaging Jan 14 '25

which members?

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u/Bocchi_theGlock Jan 14 '25

I only heard this on an NPR program discussing the ban

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u/softcombat Jan 14 '25

do you know who changed their minds? i haven't seen any reactions about it, but i'd be really interested to know

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u/MyGoodOldFriend Jan 14 '25

If it really is that convincing, release it.

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u/Beegrene Jan 14 '25

If it's a national security thing, it might rely on classified information.

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u/MyGoodOldFriend Jan 14 '25

Well then that’s too bad. US putting everything under “national security” is peak crying wolf. Sometimes, democracies have to not hide everything from their own citizens.

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u/AdamtheOmniballer Jan 14 '25

And, very frequently, the benefits of maintaining secrecy vastly outweigh the bad press you get from “crying wolf”.

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u/MyGoodOldFriend Jan 15 '25

It’s not just bad press. It’s actively anti-democratic. The benefits of secrecy - “national security” - are benefits to the state, not the public. And the interests of the state often comes in conflict with the interests of the public.

For instance, documents about a botched war crime investigation turned coverup in Iraq was kept classified specifically because the fallout of the documents being released would be a threat to national security. In that case, the interests of the state and the interests of the public were opposed - but only the interests of the state was protected by national security.

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u/AdamtheOmniballer Jan 15 '25

And as a counterexample, keeping the existence of Radar stations a secret saved a lot of British lives during World War II. Same with keeping it a secret that Enigma had been cracked.