Government Secrecy is Growing During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Students at the University of Florida who want to know how they are being protected from the COVID-19 pandemic can’t find out.

The university is hiding its emergency response plan under a legal loophole intended to keep terrorists and enemy combatants—not viruses—from exploiting government weaknesses.

Since the spread of coronavirus accelerated in recent weeks, local, state and federal officials throughout the United States have locked down information from the public. Examples include:

The city of Palestine, Texas, banned a news reporter from a city council meeting on March 23, even though fewer than a maximum of 10 people would be in the room, and did not allow the public to listen in on the meeting through a toll-free phone number, as required by state law. Read more…