Published on December 3, 2025
From being custodians of public knowledge, governments are turning to architects of manufactured ignorance. Amid disappearing evidence, citizens are struggling to hold power to account
Governments around the world are engineering ‘information scarcity’ to escape democratic accountability. In Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro (centre) halted the publication of key health statistics.
From being custodians of public knowledge, governments are turning to architects of manufactured ignorance. Amid disappearing evidence, citizens are struggling to hold power to account
Around the world, governments are quietly deleting, manipulating, or withholding public data at an unprecedented scale, which is a direct threat to democratic accountability.
