New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Software is now an extension of law, would it be best kept open?

Ask HN: Software is now an extension of law, would it be best kept open?
6 by consumer451 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
Ever since The Code of Hammurabi, we have benefited from the advantages of laws being public, and therefore open source. Today, as software eats the world, we allow "proprietary knowledge" to enforce laws. If not make the laws, we at least allow black box code to enforce them. Arguably, this is the same thing. As "AI" progresses, this seems like it could only get worse, and yet more acceptable. This could be facial recognition, or social media metrics, or otherwise. Is it realistic, possible, and necessary to require all software which is used by government to be open source as it is an extension of the law? I am slightly conflicted. I believe that open source is not a panacea. For example, bio-weapons should not be open sourced. However, I would argue that we will regress as a species if law, and its enforcement, is not open. Maybe this is one of the more complex questions that we could consider. What are your thoughts?