Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

Re:Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for ... by zeraynor on Thursday August 18, 2022 @06:57AM (#32507780)

I do understand the dangers of a government that can arbitrarily declare something a "state secret" and subsequently stifle speech on some arbitrary grounds.. but at the same time, can you recognize that there may be legitimate grounds to forbid dissemination of particular information on the grounds that it is advantageous to hostile entities, and thus a detriment to the US as a whole?

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Re:Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for ... by phpisthebest on Thursday August 18, 2022 @07:39AM (#32508126)

While conceptually I can see such information can exist, I take it the same way I do free speech as a concept, over all I believe the negatives of allowing governments to hold secrets to be more damaging than any positives

Just like I do not believe tech companies, or governments to censor "misinformation" or "disinformation" because the negatives of controlled speech far far far out weigh any net positives that would come from censorship

Back to state secrets, I think the clear and obvious abuse of the practice should make it more than clear we should cease giving government agencies the "benefit of the doubt" and massively shift the Overton window back in the direction of total transparency

State secrets, if they exist at all, should be EXTREMELY abnormal, rare, and continually in need of justification. Today however state secrets are the default, standard procedure, and we need justification to open records which is a complete inversion of how it should be

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