Neal Katyal Quotes

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.

In real danger sometimes even a democracy can really keep a secret.

I am pleased to report that Texas is known for having one of the strongest set of open government laws in our Nation. And ever since that experience, I have long believed that our federal government could use 'a little Texas sunshine.'

All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

Why does the White House sometimes seem so determined to close the door on the people's right to know what their government is doing?

Secrecy in government, in the public mind, becomes synonymous with deception in government.

The present trend toward Government secrecy could end in a dictatorship. The more information there is made available, the greater will be the nation’s security.

Open government’ must not be sacrificed on the altar of bureaucratic secrecy.

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

The government being the people’s business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at all times open to public view.

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

Independence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it is mutually exclusive with accountability. The more independence you give a prosecutor, the less you make that prosecutor accountable to the public and regular checks and balances.

The more government transparency, the better.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.

WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire U.S. government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.

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.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

In my first year as governor, we solved some of the problems that had begun to undermine the Open Records Act. We gave the act teeth by providing criminal penalties for knowing violations.

I think there's been a decline in the public's access to what's being done with their tax dollars, what's being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

I'm a freedom of information campaigner, so obviously I support the cause of Wikileaks.