Suchergebnisse

Buiyan and Watson features some international experts who reflect on the central issue of what governments should keep secret. Among them is George O. Liber, a specialist on the Soviet Union and Modern Ukraine, who believes that when governments develop extensive police powers, create sophisticated surveillance systems, or gain control of the mass media, secrecy increases and accountability withers away. As the experience of Russia and most post-communist countries in Eurasia demonstrates, limited transparency too often nurtures moral and criminal corruption, massive fraud, and the undermining of democratic institutions. Also, Dieter Dettke, a foreign and security policy specialist, points out that what governments legitimately need to keep secret must be checked with as much openness about capabilities and intentions as possible. Deception is only useful for the purpose of waging war. Adapted from the source document.

Secrets and Leaks examines the complex relationships among executive power, national security, and secrecy. State secrecy is vital for national security, but it can also be used to conceal wrongdoing. How then can we ensure that this power is used responsibly? Typically, the onus is put on lawmakers and judges, who are expected to oversee the executive. Yet because these actors lack access to the relevant information and the ability to determine the harm likely to be caused by its disclosure, they often defer to the executive's claims about the need for secrecy. As a result, potential abuses are more often exposed by unauthorized disclosures published in the press. But should such disclosures, which violate the law, be condoned? Drawing on several cases, Rahul Sagar argues that though whistleblowing can be morally justified, the fear of retaliation usually prompts officials to act anonymously--that is, to "leak" information. As a result, it becomes difficult for the public to discern when an unauthorized disclosure is intended to further partisan interests. Because such disclosures are the only credible means of checking the executive, Sagar writes, they must be tolerated, and, at times, even celebrated. However, the public should treat such disclosures skeptically and subject irresponsible journalism to concerted criticism.

Crossing a survey of literature in sociology of health and her own inquiries in the field of mental health, the author studies the historical change in policies of secrecy in health domains and specifically, in modern democracies, practical aporias opposing rights and duties to and towards secrecy, rights and duty to and towards transparency. The paper describes weakening of medical secret regarding legitimization of standards of transparency, coordination and evaluation supported by the New Public Management (NPM). Two forms of resistance against technocratic enforcement to publicizing are suggested. The first of these forms is the historical exception, nowadays vilified as out of date, of psychoanalysis bound to strict secret of the singular interview and building there a space for emancipation, preventing any governance of behavior by healthiness. The second one: some intentional and paradoxical break of secret can result in symbolic reversal against domination and shame.

This articles aims to highlight the issues, challenges and constraints of intelligence studies considering the notion of cryptic space, understood as a "secret space of communication within which the individual is exempt from the requirements and constraints of secrecy "(Bulinge, 2002). This article aims to highlight two ways for social research in the field of intelligence. In particular, we will show that the multiple dimensions of information can be addressed by researchers without prejudice to the constraints related to the preservation of secrecy. In other words, secrecy as a part of intelligence is not a barrier for intelligence studies.

As many anthropologists and sociologists have long argued, understanding the meaning and place of secrets is central to an adequate representation of society. This article extends previous accounts of secrecy in social, governmental and organizational settings to configure secrecy as one form of visibility management among others. Doing so helps to remove the secret from a post-Enlightenment value system that deems secrets as bad and openness as good. Once secrecy itself is seen as a neutral phenomenon, we can focus, rather, on the politicality or ethics of any particular distribution of the visible, sayable, and knowable as well as the conditions that underpin a regime of visuality. Alongside understanding the work secrecy performs in contemporary society, this article argues that we can also seek inspiration from the secret as a methodological tool and political tactic. Moving beyond the claim to privacy, a claim that has lost bite in this era of state and consumer dataveillance, a 'right to opacity' – the right to not be transparent, legible, seen - might open up an experience of subjectivity, responsibility and even liberty beyond the circumscribed demands of the current political and technological management of visibilities.

This volume examines government secrecy in a variety of contexts, including comparative examination of government control of information, new definitions, categories, censorship, ethics, and secrecy's relationship with freedom of information and transparency. It expands on the theoretical and policy literature of government secrecy, freedom of information and transparency