A few articles and quotes on the subject,

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The NSA, Snowden, and Bradley Manning: In praise of government secrecy, and the limits of perfect transparency.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/08/the_nsa_snowden_and_bradley_manning_in_praise_of_government_secrecy_and.html

By Eric Posner

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden’s defenders make what seems like an unassailable argument grounded in democracy: In a democracy, the people discipline government officials who act badly by throwing them out of office, but they can do so only if they know what the government does. Hence, government policy and activities cannot be secret. Manning and Snowden, by defying secrecy, are heroes to democracy, as shown by Congress’ efforts to revise NSA powers in light of Snowden’s revelations.

But this “democracy requires transparency” argument is incomplete.

Consider the opposite argument, which we can call “democracy requires secrecy.” People exercise their democratic rights by directing the government to engage in various projects. In many cases, these projects can be effective only if they are secret. People who disclose projects that work best if they are conducted in secret undermine democracy by depriving the people of the most effective tools for governing themselves.

Thus, the debate is not “democracy vs. security,” as the press has invariably framed it. It is, paradoxically, “democracy vs. democracy.” The secret ballot is the most famous illustration of the essential role that secrecy plays in a democracy. The secrecy of the ballot protects people from intimidation so they can vote sincerely, but it also enables a dishonest government to manipulate elections since people’s votes are not publicly verifiable.

Commentators always emphasize the importance of openness to democracy, forgetting that secrecy is just as essential. Often they treat secrecy as a disagreeable golem that lurks unwanted in our democracy, whose claims must be entertained but should be treated with the utmost skepticism. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy, for example, celebrates Snowden (and Manning) for generating huge gains in public accountability, while discounting the government’s claims that he caused serious harms to national security by revealing methods to enemies who can henceforth evade our spies.

Cassidy apparently doesn’t believe these government claims, perhaps because the government doesn’t offer up the corpses of agents as proof. But if the government can punish leakers only after proving that they have caused severe harm, then it will rarely be able to punish them, because the harm—or how the harm was caused—must itself remain secret for national security purposes. Courts have long recognized this problem, which is why they developed the state secrets privilege, which enables the government to avoid disclosures on its own say-so. This doctrine receives nothing but scorn from commentators, who should laud it for promoting democracy by empowering the people to direct the government to engage in secret activities.

Some say we can evade this paradox by limiting secrecy to narrow domains of government activity. The usual line is drawn around national security. But such an argument does not rescue Manning and Snowden—who disclosed national security–related secrets. And in any event, even this argument collapses before the democracy-vs.-democracy paradox.

It is precisely in cases of national emergency that the government poses the greatest threat to the people. When enemies threaten, the people are most willing to tolerate extraordinary action and put their trust in their leaders. If we don’t know where the troops are, we might find out too late that they have crossed the Rubicon and taken up positions on the homeland. So if we willingly tolerate secrecy during emergencies, we ought to tolerate it whenever it furthers public purposes, even (or maybe especially) during normal times when the risk of government abuse is more limited.

Another reason is that, in fact, all kinds of “normal,” nonemergency policies require secrecy. When we pay taxes and submit bills to Medicare or Medicaid, we hope very much that the government can keep that information secret. The IRS’s secret algorithm for detecting abuse of the 501(c)(4) tax exemption enraged conservatives because they believed that it was biased against conservative groups. But if the IRS were forced to disclose its auditing algorithms, tax cheaters could readily evade detection, and the democratically approved goal of raising revenue for public projects is defeated. Secrecy is just as essential to democratic governance as transparency is—neither is conclusively more important than the other—and the risk of abuse is the price we pay for the benefits of effective policy.

Could courts provide a way out of this thicket? Many think so, arguing that judges can prevent government abuse while protecting secrecy by examining compromising evidence in camera.

This sometimes works—judges can handle FOIA requests and trade secret disputes. But recent events prove that courts do not escape the paradox, and indeed are sometimes subject to it themselves. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was set up to review intelligence-related surveillance activities. The court consists of regular judges with the independence that comes from lifetime tenure, but it deliberates in secret and issues secret opinions. The founders of the court sought to preserve secrecy while still subjecting the government to a check from the independent judicial branch so that it would not abuse its powers.

Yet rather than provide reassurance to the public by providing a check on secret government activities, the court itself has been tainted by its association with these activities. The judges are said to be biased toward the executive, and to be creating an enormous “secret body of law,” based on secret (and hence dubious) interpretations of public statutes. The story has gotten hold that the court does the bidding of Chief Justice John Roberts, who appoints the judges (mostly Republicans). And that it rubber stamps requests for warrants rather than scrutinizes them—having denied only 10 of more than 15,000 applications for warrants since 2001. (It hasn’t occurred to anyone to ask how frequently regular courts turn down requests for warrants. Answer: Over an 11-year period “federal judges rejected at most four of 6,684 wiretap applications.”)

There is a significant irony at work here. Government filing cabinets overflow with thousands of secret legal opinions written over decades by executive-branch lawyers without the participation of any court. Secret legal opinions—“secret law,” if you want—must exist as long as secret government activity exists. I myself wrote one of these opinions when I was in the Justice Department 20 years ago (it involved a very unsexy accounting issue). If the CIA must follow the law, but cannot reveal its activities, then it must ask for legal advice which is then kept secret, given that any legal opinion must describe the (secret) facts to which it applies. The legal opinions are filed away, and then relied on when the question recurs, and thus they effectively become a body of secret “law.” The FISA court took over a small portion of this executive-branch secret lawmaking, but rather than increase our confidence in the executive branch, it has reduced our confidence in the court.

So then a court, too, cannot resolve the conflict between secrecy and transparency—or, as I have insisted on, democracy and democracy. But the solution is staring us in the face. Our representative (as opposed to direct) democracy does not require public knowledge of every government action. It is based on the idea that public intervention will be episodic, based largely on very broad outcomes (is the economy doing well? Do we feel secure?) and values (are government officials corrupt? Can we trust them?). It is not based on specific policy choices. An array of secret government actions will produce an observable outcome—prosperity and security at some level, or not—and on that (highly imperfect) basis the public votes. The risks associated with the loss of public control over specific policy choices in a large, representative democracy have been debated since the founding, but time and against this loss has been deemed a reasonable sacrifice in return for the benefits of living in a large, rich, and powerful country.

The row currently raging over the government’s prosecution of Manning and pursuit of Snowden may remind us of these sacrifices, but it will not change anyone’s minds about the advisability of them. Expect Congress to drop the subject or to legislate some narrow limits engraved with large loopholes. The government knows that the public will blame it for failing to stop a terrorist attack, and not for abstract harms like collecting and holding our metadata. Only real harms like the jailing of dissenters or harassment of innocents could lead to a substantial negative public reaction to NSA surveillance and meaningful changes in the law. For all their revelations, Manning and Snowden have not shown that such harms have occurred.

Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is author of The Twilight of International Human Rights Law. Follow him on Twitter.

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"People exercise their democratic rights by directing the government to engage in various projects. In many cases, these projects can be effective only if they are secret."

Do you know anyone that has asked the government to engage in a project that required secrecy?

"The secret ballot is the most famous illustration of the essential role that secrecy plays in a democracy. The secrecy of the ballot protects people from intimidation so they can vote sincerely, but it also enables a dishonest government to manipulate elections since people’s votes are not publicly verifiable."

The people who vote, are supposed to be the master, and the government is supposed to be the slave. The people are not the government's bitch, the government is the peoples' bitch. If you hired someone to perform a task for you, you would know what that task is. People in some other country would not know. To have someone perform a task that you are paying for, yet not know what that task is, is fucking retarded. That's like sayig, hey man, I got 50 bucks to pay you to do something, just surprise me! In other words, the people are the true authority, and know more than the government does. The people create a government and give it a task. The people voting can be secret about their vote, but the government is only to follow orders, and therefore does not keep secrets, especially from the true authority. The secrecy can only go one way, not both.

"Some say we can evade this paradox by limiting secrecy to narrow domains of government activity. The usual line is drawn around national security."

The only thing that comes to mind about when it would be legit to keep secrets, is during a legit war. Tactics, strategy, weapon tech, etc..

"When we pay taxes and submit bills to Medicare or Medicaid, we hope very much that the government can keep that information secret."

There isn't supposed to be income tax, or government health care, insurance, etc.. No contsitutional authority delegated for those things means they should not exist.

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Today's Editorial: What are the reasons for secrecy? | News | dailyitem.com

http://www.dailyitem.com/news/today-s-editorial-what-are-the-reasons-for-secrecy/article_00547926-0aed-11e5-91ef-7ba8e16ca10f.html

On May 20, two armed men — one with a revolver and another with a knife — entered the rear of a home in Selinsgrove where a small group were gathered. The men attempted to rob seven people before a fight ensued and the two perpetrators escaped on foot.

A similar incident occurred in the spring of 2013 when two men — one carrying a shotgun, the other a semi-automatic handgun — robbed a dozen Susquehanna University students. One student was injured when she was struck in the face with the shotgun.

Neither of those cases has been solved by Selinsgrove police. Chief Thomas Garlock said this week his department is still investigating both and have yet to determine if they are related.

On Memorial Day, an unknown intruder broke into a home on Charles Avenue while a Selinsgrove couple slept inside. Police have identified what they called a “person of interest” in this latest case, although officials waited more than a week to alert the public to the break-in. Garlock said he believes it was an isolated incident, despite acknowledging the person of interest in the case has no apparent link to the victims. For that reason, police did not publicly disclose the break-in.

It seems illogical to conclude a “person of interest” with no connection to a specific residence would mean an isolated incident. To be isolated, would there not have to be a specific reason for the break-in?

In the three cases above, the public notifications were sketchy or nonexistent. Police issued a press release in the wake of the armed robberies, officials never disclosed addresses, only streets.

Additional details were difficult to acquire as well.

With each incident, law enforcement personnel determined no additional public threat was imminent. That is their prerogative, their professional judgment.

Selinsgrove Mayor Jeff Reed said this week he has no concerns about the decision to not inform the community about the Charles Avenue burglarly. “I have every confidence in the chief and how he conducts himself,” Reed said. “There may be reasons he didn’t say anything.”

It is hard to imagine reasons for secrecy that are not explainable. There are, however, imaginable reasons why secrecy would be a disservice to the public, which would erode police credibility.

Law enforcement personnel have numerous duties, none more fundamental than securing public safety. Information helps people protect themselves and their community.

Residents of Selinsgrove deserve to know reasons for secrecy.

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We shouldn't even have police. People should be able to defend themselves. Neighbors should know each other, and have communication abilities for sharing relevant information that concerns them.

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If you were to go to a library that is also a respository for government documents, and you started looking at the state statutes from the beginning of the founding of that state, you would notice that the statute books were very thin. The reason is because the legislature was not in session all the time, and when they were it was only for a few reasons. The legislatures were not meant to continuously craft new laws. The basic operation of the government was for few reasons, therefore there was no need to constantly create new laws. Being a legislator was not meant to be a full time job. Same goes for the national government. As you progress through the years, you will notice the statute books get thicker and thicker. Endless creation of laws. Why? Are present day situations that much more complex than the past? No. Why then? Gaming the system?

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The Big Question: What Should Governments Keep Secret? | World Policy Institute

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2013/bigquestion

From the Fall Issue "Secrecy + Security"

What Should Governments Keep Secret?

With secrecy a daily preoccupation of governments who routinely weigh security concerns over disclosure of covert operations, the balance of these two priorities becomes an ever more pressing national debate. We asked our panel of global experts what, if anything, they believe governments should or must keep secret.

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Geoge O. Liber: "Living in a Secret World"

All governments engage in furtive behavior and in the name of national security commit acts they prefer to conceal. It is often too easy to oversimplify the contrast between the “righteousness of openness” and the “evils of secrecy.” Not all confidential information held by governments needs to see the light of day. Personnel files of government employees, tax records of its citizens, sensitive internal agency memoranda, measures to control crime, and those to advance diplomacy and national defense should not be available to the media or the public. The devil, however, is in the details. 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.

George O. Liber, a specialist on the Soviet Union and Modern Ukraine, is Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an International Election Observer for the Organization for Security and Coooperation in Europe (OSCE).

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Dieter Dettke: "As Little as Possible"

Total openness and transparency is not possible. Governments need confidentiality for consultations during negotiations on treaties, agreements, and joint actions. In the fight against international terrorism, certain data and information with regard to ongoing operations must remain secret. A legitimate question is whether more public information on terrorists and terrorist organizations might be useful in the battle for the hearts and minds. More information on terrorists could help to delegitimize their cause. Too much work on terrorism by too many people is being done on the basis of secrecy. The enormous size of confidentiality must be reduced. The era of secret treaties is over. Today there is less demand for the art of deception. In a democracy, transparency is the normal, not the exception. Governments should keep secret as little as possible.

Moving forward into the post-Snowden era, broad legislation allowing governments to collect data on their citizens without public knowledge and only held in check by a secret court is not sustainable. The bureaucracies of law enforcement need more precise legislation and more efficient congressional oversight. The quality of legislation dealing with personal data needs to be improved. There is an urgent need for more balance between the needs of law enforcement and individual freedom. In the realm of the military, governments need room for secrecy and confidentiality. 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. To avoid war, openness is an advantage.

Dieter Dettke is a foreign and security policy specialist and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

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Frank Vogl: "Government Accountability"

In remote, poor villages across India, citizens are learning how to use the Right to Information Act to hold local government officials accountable. As a result, tens of thousands of very poor people are securing healthcare and other social benefits to which they are entitled, but which corrupt officials have long denied them.

Indeed, access to information is crucial to curbing every facet of corruption. Some years ago, then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair halted a UK Serious Fraud Squad investigation into alleged foreign bribery by British Aerospace, Europe’s largest arms manufacturer, on the grounds of national security. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development challenged Blair’s decision, arguing it violated the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Eventually, the United Kingdom legislated a new tough anti-bribery law, and British Aerospace was prosecuted.
Too many governments claim a right to maintain information secrecy on the grounds of national security. This enables them to abstain from publishing their defense/military budgets and procurement in the defense sector. Needless to say, corruption is often rampant in the defense sector in such countries. When national security is deployed to assert secrecy, it needs to be tightly defined, and the public needs to be effectively assured there are vigilant mechanisms in place to guard against abuse. It is vital that those in government who are able to operate in secrecy do not have the ability to transform their operations into islands of corruption. The public has a right to know what areas of governmental activity its government wishes to keep secret, what the justifications are, and what respective independent review systems are in place to serve the public interest.

Frank Vogl is the author of Waging War on Corruption—Inside the Movement Fighting the Abuse of Power and co-founder of Transparency International.

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Maximilian Forte: "Secret From Whom?"

Not all goverments are alike. There are not just differences in ideology, but also in the varying capacities of states which governments rule. Moreover, each is differently situated in terms of power in a global context. Strategies and objectives vis-à-vis citizens and other nation-states thus vary widely. So-called weaker states of the “periphery,” formerly colonized nations, especially those which are the targets of covert war, economic destabilization, and political inference both by more powerful states and by multilateral financial institutions, have historically been the ones with the most to lose from “openness” (whether voluntary, or as in most cases, coerced).

The question of what governments should keep secret also implies a second question: secret from whom? Here questions of legitimacy arise, and legitimacy is differently grounded and constituted across diverse societies. It is already understood that all governments attempt to restrict access to some information so it can be circulated among limited numbers of appointed agents and specialists. Secrecy is not so much about the “unknowable,” as it is about who gets to “tell” to whom, and when. Secrecy is embedded in relations of trust and notions of responsibility, but it can also impede accountability. Power is also the basis of secrecy, and sometimes secrecy is pursued for the sake of it— to entrench or advance that power. Secrecy is thus more about the power to set the rules governing knowledge acquisition than it is about the empirical content of the knowledge itself. Therefore, a catalogue of essentially secret information is not a productive avenue of inquiry either: the answer will not only be highly variable given the diverse power and policies of states worldwide, but it will also be very contingent and in constant flux.

Maximilian C. Forte is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal.

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Rick Falkvinge: "Infrastructure War"

There is an infrastructure war going on at the moment. Who gets to control the world’s information? Governments and corporations are fighting to get control over it, and to deny citizens both insight and control of the same. This is alarming. All societies in history with transparent citizens and a closed-door government have been low-happiness societies. We need the concept of privacy for the citizenry and the concept of accountability for government. Governments most definitely do not have any right to know everything about their citizens. They do not have the right to hold the electorate accountable for its opinions and votes.

Longer-term, we are slowly adopting a different perspective on public servants, and should ask ourselves why they are allowed to keep secrets directly related to their jobs from their employers at all. That’s not something any other employee would be allowed to do. He or she would be fired on the spot. However, this does require a bit of change in perspective. We’re still in the mindset of electing kings and queens to rule over us, rather than the mindset of conducting an interview to hire a public servant in our role of employer. Such a change would require a shift in doctrine in how several branches of government work. It would be impossible to collect governmental databases of private, sensitive information at all—a positive change, I would argue. The next generation is going to demand that kind of accountability in the long term. Democracy, after all, depends on the electorate’s ability to critically evaluate the performance of its elected leaders.

Rick Falkvinge is the founder and first party leader of the Swedish Pirate Party.

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Nada Alwadi: "Baring Secrets"

For an investigative journalist in the Arab world, government secrecy has always been a problem. Ideally, governments should keep secrets to a bare minimum. In an ideal world, governments should be completely transparent. But we don’t live in an ideal world. So I understand when governments keep secrets in the name of “national security.” But even when the government is using this reason legitimately, it should be used minimally. National security should be invoked only when the public is actually in danger, when the government or state is in conflict. It should not be used simply to preserve the reputation of the government. The term national security has been misused a lot in many countries by many governments simply to hide information from the public.

Though perhaps a legitimate excuse in some ways, national security has lost its meaning because it’s been misused in many countries. We need to find a new definition and identify when governments can keep information legitimately. This decision will be based on the situation in any government, especially how democratic the government is. Transparency laws should be guaranteed and enforced, even by the United Nations. There should be a mechanism to push governments who don’t have transparency to enforce these kinds of laws, to allow the public to know what is going on. As a journalist, I feel strongly that citizens and the public should be able to pursue their right-to-know information. For journalists to investigate a story, they need access to this information, the government should grant that. But especially in the Arab world, governments act in complete secrecy. This opens the gates for corruption.

Nada Alwadi is a Bahraini journalist, co-founder of the Bahraini Press Association, and recipient of the Award for Nonviolent Achievement by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

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Chong Ja Ian: "Challenging Secrecy"

The increasing public demand for information is challenging long-held government insistence on secrecy throughout East and Southeast Asia. This applies as much to societies with open political systems, like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, as those with more government control, such as China and Vietnam. Citizens are demanding access to official information on everything from environmental impact assessments to development zoning and food safety.

In Singapore, perceived lack of transparency over population policy brought thousands out in an unprecedented protest in early 2013. Similarly, a desire for openness in the treatment of military personnel and the military justice system prompted approximately 250,000 people to demonstrate before Taiwan’s presidential office in August 2013.
The opacity of the Chinese political system makes it difficult for China’s neighbors to understand the motivation behind Beijing’s toughening position on maritime disputes, fueling regional apprehensions. Chinese officials admit not knowing the full extent of local government indebtedness, raising concerns about China’s economy. The fact that member governments appear less forthcoming about ASEAN activities encourages skepticism about the organization’s ability to deal with regional issues from maritime disputes to human trafficking.
Too much government secrecy can hinder cooperation in a world where information of varying levels of quality is increasingly abundant. Persistent official reticence promotes a distrust of governments worldwide. Citizens, businesses, and other governments may fear the worst under such conditions. Governments do need confidentiality to function, yet need to develop procedures for responding effectively to shifting demands of openness and secrecy. Developments in this direction benefit citizens, businesses, governance, and foreign policy. This is an area where Asian governments can do more.

Chong Ja Ian is an assistant professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His new book, Imposing States, examines the influence of rivalries and security concerns on formation of governments.

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Adil Najam: "Ideally Nothing"

What should governments keep secret? Ideally, nothing. They should not, and they cannot. Secrecy is a close cousin of prohibition. At the heart of both lie the cancer of societal distrust. Some truths may be difficult to handle. But the path of secrecy can be even more treacherous. A state that does not trust its citizens will produce citizens who do not trust their state. The result is a vicious downward spiral. The state invents more reasons to withhold secrets. Citizens feed on their own doubts, including those that may not be so secret. In short, secretive states breed untrusting citizens, and untrusting citizens spawn conspiracy societies. My own country, Pakistan, is one such untrusting society, made all the more untrusting by a culture of secrets. Conspiracy is now a staple of our diets.

Second, technology has not only increased our ability to uncover the secrets of others, it has also decreased our ability to hold onto our own. Ironically, the net result is the desire to create more secrets, not fewer. The parallel between state secrets and state bans is, again, relevant. The goal in both cases is to regulate the information with which society can be trusted. In both cases, regulation is destined to fail. Again, Pakistan is instructive. Recently, the government tried to block reports of the investigation into the Abbottabad operation at Osama Bin Laden’s compound. The government has also banned YouTube. Neither has worked. Locating the investigative report on Abbottabad on the Internet in Pakistan is as easy as accessing YouTube.

Keeping some secrets may indeed be inevitable. But let them be so few, so infrequent, so vital, and so unusual that triggering secrecy requires not a public list or standard procedures, but deliberation, and maybe even introspection, at the highest levels. When in doubt, governments should err on the side of openness.

Adil Najam, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, was Vice Chancellor of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

[Compiled by Johana Bhuiyan]

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Recall the national government of the USA is not supposed to have a standing army.

Recall the USA is not supposed to have intelligence agencies.

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Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/secrecy.html

Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption
Stephen H. Unger
September 14, 2011

An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate information related to government operations. This was well understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

The standard excuse for the suppression of governmental information is national security. In practice, it is improperly used in most situations. I.e., there is no legitimate reason for keeping secret the great majority of information classified secret by the government. Secrecy is used to conceal abuse of power, illegality, corruption, incompetence, and waste. A common instance of misuse of secrecy is when government officials make statements to reporters on controversial matters under the condition that they not be identified in the published stories. Below, I discuss how secrecy is being misused in the US. But first, consider when secrecy does make sense.

Justifiable Secrecy

There are situations where secrecy is clearly appropriate. These are cases where revealing the information is likely to have significant negative effects, and unlikely to confer significant legitimate benefits. Examples are:

Sealed bids for a government contract.
Passwords or other information required to access personal records of individuals.
Identities of secret agents.
Details of weapons systems and military operations plans .
Bargaining positions and strategy pertaining to ongoing or anticipated international treaty negotiations.

Sometimes there are both positive and negative consequences of exposure of information. For example, people required to testify as witnesses to accidents or crimes, might be compelled to reveal private information relevant to their credibility. Or information essential to revealing incompetence or corruption in the development of a new weapons system might also be useful to an enemy in devising means for countering that system. In such cases, decisions must be made as to priorities.

National Security Secrets

At first, it may seem obvious that scientific and engineering developments that might have significant military applications, ought to be kept secret, so as to prevent actual or potential enemy countries from exploiting them for the same ends. But a closer look suggests that, even in the military world, secrecy is often counterproductive. If important new ideas with possible military applications are shrouded in secrecy to hide them from foreign scientists and engineers, then they will be less likely to come to the attention of Americans who might be able to utilize them. The detrimental effect is often increased since, if the US is in the lead with respect to some particular technology, Americans are more likely to be able to use "secret" information in that area than would their rivals in other countries. So restricting the dissemination of such information may hinder the US more than its opponents [Unger].

An example of an absurd invocation of military secrecy is the 1984 case in which a civilian navy intelligence analyst received a two year prison sentence for selling US satellite photos of a Soviet aircraft carrier to the British publication, Jane's Fighting Ships [Wikipedia]. There was no suggestion that espionage was involved.

Perhaps even more absurd, and certainly more serious, is a 2011 instance in which the Department of Defense first classified the criteria for holding detainees at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan, then released the information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU, and then, in an effort to put the genie back into the bottle, demanded that the document be treated again as secret [ACLU]!

An important example of a "national security" secret is the federal budgets for intelligence agencies of all types. We are talking here of tens of billions of dollars annually. The budgets for such entities as the CIA, NSA, the National Counterterrrorism Center, and many more, are shrouded in secrecy. In 2010, the annual total was revealed to exceed 80 billion dollars [Dilanian]. Keeping agency budgets secret helps cover up incompetence, abuse of power, and corruption.

Perhaps related to the growth of intelligence budgets is the fact that a major portion of US intelligence is now carried out by private contractors [Shorrock]. In 2007 it was stated that 70% of the classified intelligence budget was spent on private contractors and that about 60% of CIA employees were private contractors. Apart from providing opportunities for big league waste and corruption, the use of private companies in the operations carried out by intelligence agencies, which includes interrogation of prisoners, and analysis of information, raises serious civil liberties concerns [Murphy].

Misuses of Secrecy

Following is a sampling of instances where national security was used a a pretext for concealing bad governmental behavior.

A set of photographs showing shocking abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan is being suppressed by the Obama administration on the ground that releasing it might stimulate retaliation against Americans [Romero]. This act of censorship clearly is related to the presidential decision not to prosecute, or even to investigate, the higher-ups of the preceding administration who were responsible for this despicable behavior. The implicit argument here is that revealing an atrocity is more harmful than committing it.

A former FBI agent who was active for about eight years in anti-terrorist activities, including service as an interrogator, wrote a book exposing the government's torture program, which he considered immoral and ineffectual. The CIA acted to prohibit publication of large parts of the book, despite the fact that the great bulk of that material was already in the public domain, and there seemed to be little likelihood that any of the book's material actually qualified for legitimate secrecy status [Greenwald-1].

Another use of secrecy related to torture is the argument made to deny access to the courts to people who were kidnapped by US government agents and sent to countries where they were tortured. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have argued that the victims of such treatment (termed extraordinary rendition) could not seek redress in the courts because the resulting litigation would expose state secrets [NYT]. It is important that, in these cases, the government did not simply ask that certain very security-sensitive evidence be suppressed, but rather that the cases be summarily dismissed. And the courts (at least the Supreme Court) have acquiesced.

A similar use of the "state secrets" argument was to block law suits by Muslims (two Americans and an Egyptian) claiming they were singled out as targets of a sweeping FBI surveillance program [Gerstein].

The Obama administration is keeping secret how it is interpreting certain features of the Patriot Act to collect information about Americans [Nakashima]. It denied a request by two senators to explain.

About a decade ago, a CIA agent and his family became ill as a consequence of being assigned to housing in a mold-contaminated building, part of a military facility he was assigned to investigate. When the CIA denied responsibility, he brought suit in federal court. The Justice Department invoked the "State Secrets Privilege" and the judge summarily dismissed the case and ordered the agent and his family not to discuss it [Savage].

A request for documents pertaining to the proposed wording of a treaty on intellectual property rights was recently denied by the Executive Office of the President on the grounds that the information is classified in the interest of national security [Love]. The information is available to numerous foreign governments and to lobbyists for various industries.

One of the most bizarre secrecy incidents is one where, during the cold war, the US government apparently felt compelled to outdo the masters of secrecy, the Soviet Union. In 1976, the distinguished Soviet physicist, L. I. Rudakov, toured the US, speaking at several government facilities including the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. He presented his latest ideas on electron beam fusion (a topic pertinent to hydrogen bombs). After each of his talks, the host laboratories were instructed by Washington not to discuss what he had told them [Metz]. We can only speculate about the rationale for this strange action to protect Soviet secrets, as the guidelines for governmental decisions dealing with secrecy are themselves generally secret.

The traditional way that important information unjustifiably classified as secret is brought out into the open is via the action of conscientious government employees, often called whistle-blowers. In line with the trend toward increased government secrecy, the current administration has been vigorously working to identify and criminally prosecute government whistle-blowers [Greenwald-2].

Staggering Numbers

Since the end of WW II the use of secrecy by the US government has proliferated at a wild rate. In 1970, a distinguished DoD committee chaired by Frederick Seitz and including Edward Teller produced a report on secrecy that recommended measures be taken to reduce the amount of classified material by 90% [Seitz]. It apparently had little effect. Nor did a 1997 report by a Senate committee chaired by Patrick Moynihan, which also deplored excessive secrecy [Moynihan].

The number of classification decisions made in 2001 was a whopping 8.7 million. This number increased to about 54.9 million in 2009, and then increased by about 40% to roughly 76.8 million (a record) in 2010. About 2.4 million people are cleared to see classified material, and, of these, about 854,000 are cleared for top-secrets. The government's Information Security Oversight Office estimated that security classification activities cost the executive branch over $10.17 billion in 2010, and cost industry an additional $1.25 billion [German].

One important driving force propelling the explosive growth of secrecy is that it is much easier to criticize the release of a particular piece of information than it is to show that classifying it secret is harmful. So, from the point of view of the bureaucrat, the "safest" decision is to classify. Similarly, there is minimal motivation to declassify "secrets", even when the passage of time has eliminated any need for secrecy (assuming it ever existed).

Another factor is that politicians and bureaucrats have learned how to use secrecy to promote many objectives having nothing to do with national security. Control of the release of information is a valuable political tool. It can be very useful for biasing the outcome of a policy debate, quashing a law suit, making a political ally look good, or making an opponent look bad, concealing a blunder, hiding wasteful expenditures, and covering up corruption.

The Future of Governmental Secrecy

It would be nice to be able to point to progress with respect to curbing governmental secrecy. Sadly, this just can't be done. All indications are that it is growing like a malignant cancer. Secrecy in the US is facilitating, and is facilitated by, the permanent state of war and the continual erosion of civil liberties. The two major parties are equally responsible, tho the Democrats pretend otherwise [Strassel]. It is interesting that the same government that is concealing more and more of its activities from the public, is also, to a growing degree, snooping on the private affairs of the citizenry, stripping away traditional rights of privacy.

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Quotes About Secrecy

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/secrecy

Quotes tagged as "secrecy" (showing 1-30 of 106)

Mahatma Gandhi
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
? Mahatma Gandhi

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”
? Joseph Pulitzer

Oscar Wilde
“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”
? Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Criss Jami
“Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.”
? Criss Jami

Gabriel García Márquez
“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”
? Gabriel García Márquez, Gabriel García Márquez: a Life

David Nicholls
“If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.”
? David Nicholls, One Day

Abraham Lincoln
“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”
? Abraham Lincoln

Plato
“You should not honor men more than truth.”
? Plato

Patrick Rothfuss
“That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.”
? Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

John F. Kennedy
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Judith Lewis Herman
“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”

Criss Jami
“It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.”
? Criss Jami, Killosophy

Gregory Maguire
“The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.”
? Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Chris Hedges
“The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock.”
? Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

Katherine Neville
“Privacy - like eating and breathing - is one of life's basic requirements.”
? Katherine Neville

Susan Sontag
“Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.”
? Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays

Clay Griffith
“There are springs in the mind from which others cannot drink.”
? Clay Griffith, The Greyfriar

Michel Faber
“These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.”
? Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things

Michael Bassey Johnson
“Keep your innocence and ignorance aside, and expose yourself to dangerous situations, and understand the deeper secrets of life.”
? Michael Bassey Johnson

Dahlia Lithwick
“Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.”
? Dahlia Lithwick

Daniel Schorr
“I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.”
? Daniel Schorr