united state's secrets and citizens

Informed and aware citizens are what make any society  a real democracy.  That is why independent media exists and why it is so important that it remain independent.

The State would rather keep anything that matters a secret. And the excuses they find to keep the citizens in the dark  are many. More than all the world's mushrooms which are "kept in the dark and fed bullshit"

The government’s vast secrecy bureaucracy does two things with great frequency. The first, of course, is keeping secrets. The second is devising elaborate reasons why you can’t know what those secrets are.

It’s hardly a secret that the government overclassifies basic information about what it does. What often gets overlooked is that the reasons it cites are often absurd. Sometimes they’re craven cover-ups learned years after the fact. Sometimes they’re ironic — or cynical — invocations that disclosure would aggravate the very problem it’s supposed to solve. Sometimes they’re bald contradictions of established policy or routine procedure.

Either way, the government has left a long, twisted trail of pretzel logic when it comes to all of the reasons you can’t know what it’s doing. Here are some of the lowlights.

Nuclear Experiments on People Would Have ‘Adverse Effects on Public Opinion’

Knocking Off Castro Would ‘Cause Public Confusion’

Budget Math Will ‘Cause Damage to the National Security’

It Would Violate Your Privacy for the NSA to Say if It Violated Your Privacy

Obama Can Talk About Drone Strikes, Just Not the Agency That Performs Them

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/government-secrecy/all/