Former Commissioner Reid's bill started on the subject of trade secrets by saying, take out this consistent “confidential”. It's just a ploy by the corporations to.... And I would go further. I would say, take out the third-party notifications of corporations, special privileges originally put in by the business lobby in the access act; they delay records to no end.
Commercial information is one of the most cited exemptions. If it were really crunched down and narrowed to “significant injury” to trade secrets, if they weren't environmental health safety matters, there would be some legitimacy. But you can't keep those secret forever. Part of the problem is that there has been jurisprudence built up around commercial confidentiality, which is tried by the lawyers from the corporations, who have many more resources. They've tried to confine it, but it's such a broad overwhelming thing that I've tried to restrict it even further.
National security is a difficult one. Again, I think you have to try to limit it. I would say to use a time restriction up to five years, but only for highly sensitive military defence data or data concerning verifiably hostile organized crime or terrorist activities. The problem is that it's so broad that you can't even find out, for instance, about the outsourcing of security contracts. In the United States, well over 50% or even more of the current security intelligence budget is consumed by groups that are unaccountable. We have to find out these things.