Government Transparency Is Getting Quietly Worse

Germany's move to restrict its Freedom of Information Act to only German and EU citizens (48905290) landed on HN with a thread that went beyond the specific policy. Commenters from Romania described the same pattern: governments using procedural reforms to reduce accountability right at the moment when transparency matters most. The Romanian example was concrete, a president spending tens of millions on private jets for non-official trips, exposed only because FOIA requests were still available.

This is not an isolated story. It fits a wider pattern of governments treating information access as a threat rather than a right, often framed as protecting against foreign actors but with the practical effect of shielding domestic officials from scrutiny.

For the builder community, the implication is about data access for products that depend on government data, regulatory filings, or public records. If FOIA access tightens, the data pipelines that feed compliance, research, and journalism tools get harder to maintain.