Your black-and-white dogmatism is still showing; as I've suggested before, your posts wouldn't be imparting such a foetid reek to this whole affair if you were able to recognize and appreciate the nuances of the issue. Your country recently endured literally years of overblown rhetoric and quasi-political grandstanding over a public employee communicating about public business who failed to maintain adequate privacy and security of its contents, so your notion that it's a free-for-all is obviously and utterly bollocks.
Advocating an anti-privacy, big brother style of approach is somewhat troubling. But even if we were to suppose a presumption of scrutiny in which all publicly-funded information is available unless there is a reason for it not to be - rather than a presumption of privacy in which any specific information can made available if there is a reason to do so - there are numerous and often very good reasons for maintaining privacy. For example in contrast to areas like the military or intelligence networks, whose explicit purpose is to serve the public (though secrecy may still sometimes be necessary), it is a fundamental requirement of legitimate scientific enquiry that researchers maintain their objectivity and some degree of independence from the tides of political, societal and financial opinion. Regardless of what percentage of their work may be funded by government versus private investment and endowments to universities and academic grants, most scientists are not public employees in the same way that, say, a soldier or a spy is.
The chilling effect which the kind of regime you want is another point to consider, albeit only a probable rather than definite consequence: Every trainer and educator in the world knows that having others constantly looking over your shoulder and viciously criticizing every real or perceived mistake or misstep is a serious impediment to success, yet that apparently is what some folk want to impose on the people we've tasked with learning more about this world in which we live. Many scientists would inevitably start corresponding with each other on private networks to mitigate such intrusions... perhaps institutions will take steps to hinder such actions... which of course will have workarounds of their own, draining though the effort may be...
If you had managed to bring yourself to even acknowledge these nuances and serious concerns which have been pointed out to you before, you yourself might have some shred of legitimacy. Instead all you've got is simple dogmatism.
Apparently so. I was merely commenting on what their decision implies about their motivation; far from a genuine concern about public access without ulterior motives, they apparently intend to keep it under wraps until it can be presented in their chosen light.
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