In recent years, there has been a great deal of debate about the suppression of federal government information on the basis of national or homeland security. Who Needs to Know? helps readers assess the impact of the various trends and forces on the ability of the public to find, obtain, and use federal government information. It presents some of the recent history of withdrawn access, looks at the controls that have been imposed on public access in a variety of arenas, and explores the tension between the efforts of government officials to provide meaningful public access in non-security related areas and the concerns of the private sector about the impact of such efforts.\\This is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand what his or her government is doing, how to interact with it, how to engage with public policy decision-making, and how to hold government--and those who act on its behalf or under its regulation--accountable.

There ought to be a law : the need for findable and usable information -- Tracking the wild government : the Federal Records Act and government publications -- Government-wide information policy -- The regulatory system for accountability : the Freedom of Information Act -- The Critical Infrastructure Information Act : the story of a FOIA exemption -- Access restricted : the black hole of "sensitive but unclassified" information -- Classified information : reclassified, overclassified, and misused -- The executive's power over information access -- Manipulating information : the dangerous capacities of the executive branch -- Political science -- A republic : how to keep it.