Seriously.

Think about this:

Let's say we gave the government permission to keep EXACTLY ONE secret. They could change their mind about what that one thing is at anytime. In order for them to choose a new secret, all things must be kept secret by default (otherwise, the Streisand Effect holds). A grace period must be allowed for the government to review the new things before deciding whether they want to publish that new information or change their choice of one secret, publishing the old secret.

Since everything is secret by default, they could just not tell us about the new information. They could cheat to keep TWO secrets. If one secret leaked, they could easily say "Oh well, that was our one secret! Damn." and we'd have no way to prove that they weren't keeping another secret.

The only way to prevent bad secrets is to disallow all secrets. We must systematically uncover sources of secrets and shine a spotlight on them. In the event that a secret is uncovered, there must be immediate and stern repercussions.

> "The only way to prevent bad secrets is to disallow all secrets."

There is no way to prevent bad secrets. Bad secrets will remain secret as long as everyone who knows about them is dedicated to keeping them secret, regardless of what's legal or required, or what sort of repercussions you threaten.

I wish I could up-vote this more than once. Making everything officially open in no way will make everything actually open.

Do a cost-benefit analysis then. Cost: several spectacularly costly (lives and dollars) wars. Benefit: some profitable industrial espionage? I'll let someone else fill in the blanks for the benefits, but I don't think anything really compares to the cost of getting us into countless wars and 'low intensity conflicts' around the world, all the way back to the invasion of Cuba and even earlier. So many wars, each time started by lying to the american public.