[jariel]

"There is no good reason for this, "

No, there are a ton of things the US et. al. do in secret, it's normal.

There needs to be oversight, public is better, but an independent council can work.

But yes, there's going to be a problem with graft.

[kergonath]

You can have both industrial secrets and FOI. Documents got through FOI requests are routinely redacted, and requests denied, when there is a real justification. A blanket policy is counter-productive and a strong indication that there's something very dodgy.

I mean, if you FOI the MoD, they say no, but they don't have a blank cheque to avoid any scrutiny either.

[grey-area]

We have government agencies for secret stuff - spies and the military, they already have lots of R&D funds.