Information is power
So the ability to keep information secret is the first step towards controlling a population.
Want to avoid it?
Set the information free.
A couple years ago the Chinese took a couple terabytes of data from US military labs. This gives them an advantage over other countries, and decreases the advantage of the US.
To negate that advantage, the US should have published the stolen data for everyone, thus the new Chinese advantage disappears--though, of course, so does part of the US advantage--but that advantage was already lost.
Information per se is not the culprit, it is the gap between those who know and those who don't.
This kind of gap is routinely found in the US when companies locate plants and operations, as they play one municipality against another. In general, such battles consist of a well-informed company project against an ill-informed municipal government.
Thus while the company may threaten not to come without some sort of concessions (often such that the company itself pays nothing to the municipality, leaving the only advantage to the city being the employment, and the disadvantage of providing infra-structure.
But the company may be bluffing, because you may be the BEST location despite other locations concessions...but the government seldom seems to investigate anywhere near as well as the companies do...and they often provide a net gain to the company at a net loss to the community. This isn't helped by most small community's idea that a million dollars is a lot of money, when they face corporations which can and do waste hundreds of millions on projects that don't pay.
We spend billions on anti-terrorist operations when terrorists kill less people than lightening.
Meanwhile, medical expenditures are criticised though heart attacks alone kill far more people.
Worse, we have people bitterly complaining that keeping people healthy (which while reducing healthcare contributions to the GDP, increase the ability of people to work,) whilst totally ignoring the orders of magnitude larger expenses involved in fighting wars, paying interest for fighting wars and cleaning up after war.
No modern war has had major positive results for the people of the countries involved, though many individuals and groups have become extreme
It is amazing that the idea of basing government expenditures upon facts rather than rhetoric is still, in this age, a novelty.
