The difficulty in acquiring documents and information from the government through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) prevents watchdog groups and concerned citizens from understanding and knowing the actions taken by their government. As it stands, the system requires a degree of specificity that borders on insanity, documents pertaining to a subject may not be found unless a component is given a very limited time frame.
The system also requires a document to be found and then have the agency to which it most applies redact information of importance. This creates a conflict of interest.
Ideally, our government should be able to open information to the general public and still be able to redact the parts that are of national security and interests.