We&8217;ve all heard it for years: what you don&8217;t know can&8217;t hurt you. But what if that&8217;s incorrect?

What happens when something you don&8217;t know is harmful?

Top-secret documents sometimes include lines completely blacked out. The curious among us always wonder: What was blacked out?

Despite what some folks say &8212; ignorance is bliss &8212; the problem arises when you know something is being kept a secret.

Knowing someone is hiding something can be infuriating.

&8220;You can&8217;t see that.&8221;

&8220;It&8217;s none of your business.&8221;

&8220;It&8217;s top secret.&8221;

The curiosity of wanting to know what is hidden is human. Stand in line at almost any grocery store and you&8217;ll see one of our nation&8217;s darkest sides: Americans love a good secret. We hunger for them &8212; the juicier and more bizarre, the better.

And the nation&8217;s tabloids feed that hunger to know the secrets from the rich, famous and &8212; sometimes &8212; just plain obscure.

We&8217;ve all stood captive in the grocery store line when some scandalous headline grabs our attention.

&8220;Tom And Katie Are Already Married!&8221;

&8220;Gay Clay Exposes Himself &8212; Says Gay Teacher.&8221;

Those headlines are like car wrecks on the highway. We just cannot help but stop and look for a bit, anxious to see something lurid, but disgusted when we do.

That&8217;s right, judging by the popularity of the celebrity-filled tabloids, magazines and TV shows, we love to know about the secret lives of others.

The reality is that few of the tabloid &8220;secrets&8221; can actually harm anyone other than the celebrities about which they focus.

The really dirty secrets, the ones that keep the public rights advocates up at night are the ones that involve issues of a little greater magnitude than the marital status of Tom and Kate.

Imagine the scandal here in the Miss-Lou if it was discovered that Adams County had illegally used taxpayer funds to buy county workers automobiles for personal use.

Think of the reaction if taxpayers discovered that Natchez police officers were pocketing the money collected from speeding citations.

Of course, none of that is necessarily true, however, it&8217;s interesting to consider how, exactly, we&8217;d know for sure.

Without laws to protect the rights of John Q. Public, Lord only knows what kind of monkey business might be going behind closed doors.

Newspapers all across the country are celebrating Sunshine Week, a week set aside to remember the importance of living in a country that has laws on the books to help prevent government secrets.

Unfortunately, Mississippi knows quite a bit about state secrets.

For seventeen years, the State of Mississippi kept secret files on its citizens. The Sovereignty Commission operated largely in secrecy since its purpose was to combat the Civil Rights Movement.

The commission&8217;s files contained thousands of pages of documents kept hidden for years. After years of legal battles, the files were made public, but only after court-approved redactions were allowed to people who received &8220;victim&8221; status.

The Sovereignty Commission files illustrate what can happen when a government agency operates in secrecy. To this day, every line of blacked out type from a government source remains suspect. Constant vigilance is needed to seek answers to all of the things that we don&8217;t know, but may have need to fear.

Kevin Cooper

is associate publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or

kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com

.