If knowledge is power, who should possess it? Does freedom of information endanger us, or make our society stronger? The tension between security and liberty is at the core of this documentary from Peter Galison and Robb Moss. Interweaving commentary from journalists, lawyers, and government officials with evocative animation and conceptual art, the film edges into one of the crucial public policy debates of our time. Galison and Moss probe the history of intelligence and state secrets, from Pearl Harbor and the Manhattan Project to 9/11 and Abu Ghraib, and reveal a government culture whose regulation of information is still based on Cold War–era models, sometimes keeping secrets not only from the public but from itself. In the words of a Navy lawyer defending prisoners at Guantánamo, “In the dark, you can get as lost as the people you're trying to hide things from.”