You may say the whole idea of character in fiction is defined by people holding specific information which for various reason. Sometimes perverse... Sometimes noble. They are determined not to disclosed.
Even when liberalisation arrives, as it did in civil aviation late last year, it sometimes comes with perverse conditions attached (in this instance, that foreign investors were welcome unless they were foreign airlines).
Dysfunctional incentive systems will get dysfunctional and sometimes prosecutable results, whether by employees gaming the system or by perverse controls that unwittingly incentivize the wrong behaviors.