Nepal, Dec. 5 -- Around the world, governments are quietly deleting, manipulating, or withholding public data at an unprecedented scale, which is a direct threat to democratic accountability.

As official information becomes harder to access, journalists struggle to hold the powerful to account, watchdog agencies lose track of policy failures, and citizens are left increasingly in the dark.

This trend stretches far beyond countries with fragile or emerging democracies. Authoritarian governments such as Venezuela, Indonesia, or the Philippines have long treated data as a political weapon. Similar practices are now surfacing in nations with long-standing democratic institutions such as Australia, Italy, and the United States.

In the Unite...