One thing you have to realize about governments and the military: they never tell the whole world everything. They often say one thing and then they say just the opposite. This is a time-proven technique for keeping our "enemies" off balance. It's the same with this balloon. Since they haven't shot it down, they must have a good reason, but they don't want to announce that reason to the whole world. I figure we know about 2% of what's really going on in the world, and that's fine with me. The government keeps secrets for good reasons, and revealing them has done more harm than good. Two incidents come to mind.

The government was building a huge underground facility for a post-nuclear government at a golf club in VA. They spent a fortune on it. Then a reporter found out about it and published the story. That put an end to the project.

The government made a secret deal with Howard Hughes to recover a sunken Soviet sub. He outfitted a "research ship, the Glomar Explorer. The ship stationed itself over the sub and began lifting it. It broke in two, and half fell to the bottom. Although they had planned to go back the following year to recover the other half, a reporter found out and published the story. That was embarrassing for the US, to say the least.

We don't have a right to know everything.