Human beings have a right to privacy. Do corporations?
Car chases begin when a police car tries to pull over a driver for something minor. When the driver tries to get away, the police pursue, because "if they run, they've got something to hide". This may be true, but why don't we apply this logic to the masses of confidential, top secret, and above top secret government (and corporate) documents?
Just what is the advantage of trade secrets, which either waste resources on redundant research or leave most of the economy inefficient?
Would the truth just hurt and confuse us?
This seems to be the official view of the US elite, summed up by Madeline Albright: "We are the indispensable nation. We see further." I don't know just what it is she sees, but if it can justify bombing and starving people it must be pretty spectacular.
Obviously government has responsibility to keep a few secrets - how to make nuclear bombs, for example. But how would one learn to make bombs from reading the FBI files of Grouco Marx? Several pages from his FBI file are withheld "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy". Call it bureaucracy, but "national defense or foreign policy" is not something that "anti-bureaucracy" politicians want to lessen. (Or for that matter spending $2,000,000,000 on counter-productive anti-drug ads)