Antony Jay Quotes

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

Classification is used, not to protect the national interest but to prevent national embarrassment.

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows

The fact is that when it comes to judgment as to what should be secret and what should not be secret, Julian Assange's judgment has been pretty good so far.

The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.

Leaks usually have more value to the public at large than the harm which they occasionally do.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

I believe that the American People have a right to know what was done in their name..

As leakers take great risks in releasing information, assuring them that they are not sacrificing themselves in vain and that their leaks would have public consequences would most likely encourage more people to leak.

The job of a journalist is to find out stuff. The job of the government - sometimes - is to keep stuff secret. There's a natural tension there.

There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.

The American people have been denied important information for their own protection.

People intrinsically know there are secrets being held from us. Look at WikiLeaks: There are secrets that are really true to the world.

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

The law does not distinguish terribly well between real secrets and sort-of secrets, especially in an age when the instinct to stamp “classified” runs rampant.

The secrecy stamp … has been used to withhold information which in 99 ½ percent of the cases would present no danger to national security.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to give them to the people than he would have to filch another man's property off a taxicab seat. The Government, of course, commonly leaks classified documents when it deems publication convenient to manipulate public opinion to its advantage. Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents.

Our government cannot function cloaked in secrecy. It cannot function unless officials tell the truth.

Some information has to remain in the privy of the office of the Prime Minister and the ministers for the proper administration of government.

In a democracy threatened by excessive secrecy and the criminalizing of news gathering, the more sunlight the better.

There should be a precedent that says that when government higher-ups are committing crimes that whistle blowers should be able to blow the whistle in a way that exposes the crimes that they’ve committed. Whistle Blowers who expose systemic crimes against the population … deserve to be treated as heroes, not as criminals.

Usually the public is better off with more information than less. That includes information the government would like to keep quiet.

Politicians often refuse to talk about things on the grounds of national security. Most of the time it’s not national security; it’s national embarrassment.

Censorship is being abused as a cloak to cover all political, naval and military mistakes..