Public opinion matters. Neither freedom of information nor privacy is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The World War II generation, faced with a global choice between open, democratic societies and closed totalitarian or communist states, opted for openness. The Baby Boomers, coming of age after the Watergate scandal, spread open government laws to the states. But these decisions are hardly unanimous.
High officials protect information by invoking national security.
In the name of privacy, thousands of tiny laws attempt to engineer bits of information out of the news stream. Battered but still alive is the basic idea that arose half a century ago all information is public unless the government can prove otherwise. It feeds upon facts. The natural process of things, warned Thomas Jefferson, is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Though new privacy laws and rulings do seem to indicate growing secrecy, the following timeline shows our route has been anything but straight.