If you're living in Japan, you may be surprised to know that your right to know has been replaced by the right to remain silent. Shhh ... don't protest. It's practically a done deal.

The first rule of the pending state secrets bill is that a secret is a secret. The second rule is that anyone who leaks a secret and/or a reporter who makes it public via a published report or broadcast can face up to 10 years in prison. The third rule is that there are no rules as to which government agencies can declare information to be a state secret and no checks on them to determine that they don't abuse the privilege; even defunct agencies can rule their information to be secret. The fourth rule is that anything pertaining to nuclear energy is a state secret, which means there will no longer be any problems with nuclear power in this country because we won't know anything about it. And what we don't know can't hurt us.

The right to know has now officially been superseded by the right of the government to make sure you don't know what they don't want you to know.