The government has tremendous power to obtain information about the citizenry. The latter, however, often has difficulty obtaining information about government activity.

Using Public Information 

to Protect Religious Liberty

by Brian Simboli

The government has tremendous power to obtain information about the citizenry. The latter, however, often has difficulty obtaining information about government activity. This “information asymmetry” threatens the continued exercise of religious freedom. To address this problem, religious freedom advocates must diagnose the source of this asymmetry and take concerted action to counteract it.

Examples abound of threats to religious liberty. Many lawsuits are underway about the HHS mandate’s threat to conscience rights. Extensive documentation has been submitted to Congress concerning alleged IRS targeting of pro-life groups. Alliance Defending Freedom released a tape of an IRS agent haranguing a pro-life group. The recent SCOTUS ruling about the Defense of Marriage Act unfairly ascribed negative motives to defenders of traditional marriage. Steven Ertelt of Lifenews claimed that “during her tenure, [Department of Homeland Security] Napolitano aggressively targeted pro-life advocates and a number of incidents occurred that had her agency calling pro-life people terrorists or comparing them.” A Pew Charitable Trust assessment discerns a decline in religious freedom in the U.S. One could go on and on.

In response, Catholic religious liberty advocates and their allies need to cultivate great information savvy about government information sources. Unfortunately, there is an asymmetry between the government’s panopticon ability to obtain information from the citizenry and the latter’s limited ability to obtain information about the government. Again, the IRS can harangue groups and individuals with intrusive questions about their activities. Also, a message appeared on the WH webpage asking citizens to report misinformation about Obamacare. In contrast, investigations into IRS and possible inter-agency abuses proceed in a relative information vacuum, with plaintiffs to the large number of lawsuits having to wait largely on the discovery process and with Congressional investigations proceeding slowly.

How did this information asymmetry arise? As government departments, sub-departments, and regulations multiply, it becomes increasingly difficult to extract useful data from the burgeoning mountain of government information. Unscrupulous bureaucrats easily exploit this tendency by hiding, destroying, or manipulating information while political lobbyists and special interest groups influence, without reprise, politicians and the bureaucrats who execute their policies. So, too, opacity serves bureaucratic interests. As Max Weber noted long ago in Economy and Society, “bureaucratic administration always tends to exclude the public, to hide its knowledge and action from criticism as well as it can…. Bureaucracy naturally prefers a poorly informed, and hence powerless, parliament—at least insofar as this ignorance is compatible with the bureaucracy’s own interests” (992-993).

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