Download or read book Secrecy in the Sunshine Era written by Jason Ross Arnold and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-08-25 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of laws passed in the 1970s promised the nation unprecedented transparency in government, a veritable “sunshine era.” Though citizens enjoyed a new arsenal of secrecy-busting tools, officials developed a handy set of workarounds, from over classification to concealment, shredding, and burning. It is this dark side of the sunshine era that Jason Ross Arnold explores in the first comprehensive, comparative history of presidential resistance to the new legal regime, from Reagan-Bush to the first term of Obama-Biden. After examining what makes a necessary and unnecessary secret, Arnold considers the causes of excessive secrecy, and why we observe variation across administrations. While some administrations deserve the scorn of critics for exceptional secrecy, the book shows excessive secrecy was a persistent problem well before 9/11, during Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Regardless of party, administrations have consistently worked to weaken the system’s legal foundations. The book reveals episode after episode of evasive maneuvers, rule bending, clever rhetorical gambits, and downright defiance; an army of secrecy workers in a dizzying array of institutions labels all manner of documents “top secret,” while other government workers and agencies manage to suppress information with a “sensitive but unclassified” designation. For example, the health effects of Agent Orange, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria leaking out of Midwestern hog farms are considered too “sensitive” for public consumption. These examples and many more document how vast the secrecy system has grown during the sunshine era. Rife with stories of vital scientific evidence withheld, justice eluded, legalities circumvented, and the public interest flouted, Secrecy in the Sunshine Era reveals how our information society has been kept in the dark in too many ways and for too long.
Download or read book The Transparency Fix written by Mark Fenster and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the government too secret or not secret enough? Why is there simultaneously too much government secrecy and a seemingly endless procession of government leaks? The Transparency Fix asserts that we incorrectly assume that government information can be controlled. The same impulse that drives transparency movements also drives secrecy advocates. They all hold the mistaken belief that government information can either be released or kept secure on command. The Transparency Fix argues for a reformation in our assumptions about secrecy and transparency. The world did not end because Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden released classified information. But nor was there a significant political change. "Transparency" has become a buzzword, while secrecy is anathema. Using a variety of real-life examples to examine how government information actually flows, Mark Fenster describes how the legal regime's tenuous control over state information belies both the promise and peril of transparency. He challenges us to confront the implausibility of controlling government information and shows us how the contemporary obsession surrounding transparency and secrecy cannot radically change a state that is defined by so much more than information.
Download or read book US National Security Reform written by Heidi B. Demarest and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays considers the evolution of American institutions and processes for forming and implementing US national security policy, and offers diverse policy prescriptions for reform to confront an evolving and uncertain security environment. Twelve renowned scholars and practitioners of US national security policy take up the question of whether the national security institutions we have are the ones we need to confront an uncertain future. Topics include a characterization of future threats to national security, organizational structure and leadership of national security bureaucracies, the role of the US Congress in national security policy making and oversight, and the importance of strategic planning within the national security enterprise. The book concludes with concrete recommendations for policy makers, most of which can be accomplished under the existing and enduring National Security Act. This book will be of much interest to students of US national security, US foreign policy, Cold War studies, public policy and IR in general.
Download or read book We Know All About You written by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We Know All About You shows how bulk spying came of age in the nineteenth century, and supplies the first overarching narrative and interpretation of what has happened since, covering the agencies, programs, personalities, technology, leaks, criticisms and reform. Concentrating on America and Britain, it delves into the roles of credit agencies, private detectives, and phone-hacking journalists as well as government agencies like the NSA and GCHQ, and highlights malpractices such as the blacklist and illegal electronic interceptions. It demonstrates that several presidents - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon - conducted political surveillance, and how British agencies have been under a constant cloud of suspicion for similar reasons. We Know All About You continues with an account of the 1970s leaks that revealed how the FBI and CIA kept tabs on anti-Vietnam War protestors, and assesses the reform impulse that began in America and spread to Britain. The end of the Cold War further undermined confidence in the need for surveillance, but it returned with a vengeance after 9/11. The book shows how reformers challenged that new expansionism, assesses the political effectiveness of the Snowden revelations, and offers an appraisal of legislative initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Micro-stories and character sketches of individuals ranging from Pinkerton detective James McParlan to recent whisteblowers illuminate the book. We Know All About You confirms that governments have a record of abusing surveillance powers once granted, but emphasizes that problems arising from private sector surveillance have been particularly neglected.
Download or read book Whistleblowing Nation written by Kaeten Mistry and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-first century witnessed a new age of whistleblowing in the United States. Disclosures by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and others have stoked heated public debates about the ethics of exposing institutional secrets, with roots in a longer history of state insiders revealing privileged information. Bringing together contributors from a range of disciplines to consider political, legal, and cultural dimensions, Whistleblowing Nation is a pathbreaking history of national security disclosures and state secrecy from World War I to the present. The contributors explore the complex politics, motives, and ideologies behind the revelation of state secrets that threaten the status quo, challenging reductive characterizations of whistleblowers as heroes or traitors. They examine the dynamics of state retaliation, political backlash, and civic contests over the legitimacy and significance of the exposure and the whistleblower. The volume considers the growing power of the executive branch and its consequences for First Amendment rights, the protection and prosecution of whistleblowers, and the rise of vast classification and censorship regimes within the national-security state. Featuring analyses from leading historians, literary scholars, legal experts, and political scientists, Whistleblowing Nation sheds new light on the tension of secrecy and transparency, security and civil liberties, and the politics of truth and falsehood.
Download or read book Crisis of Conscience written by Tom Mueller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter "Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal what it can mean to live in an age of fraud." — The Washington Post "Tom Mueller's authoritative and timely book reveals what drives a few brave souls to expose and denounce specific cases of corruption. He describes the structural decay that plagues many of our most powerful institutions, putting democracy itself in danger." —George Soros A David-and-Goliath story for our times: the riveting account of the heroes who are fighting a rising tide of wrongdoing by the powerful, and showing us the path forward. We live in a period of sweeping corruption -- and a golden age of whistleblowing. Over the past few decades, principled insiders who expose wrongdoing have gained unprecedented legal and social stature, emerging as the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct--and the citizenry's best defense against government gone bad. Whistleblowers force us to confront fundamental questions about the balance between free speech and state secrecy, and between individual morality and corporate power. In Crisis of Conscience, Tom Mueller traces the rise of whistleblowing through a series of riveting cases drawn from the worlds of healthcare and other businesses, Wall Street, and Washington. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than two hundred whistleblowers and the trailblazing lawyers who arm them for battle--plus politicians, intelligence analysts, government watchdogs, cognitive scientists, and other experts--Mueller anatomizes what inspires some to speak out while the rest of us become complicit in our silence. Whistleblowers, we come to see, are the freethinking, outspoken citizens for whom our republic was conceived. And they are the models we must emulate if our democracy is to survive.
Download or read book State of Silence written by Sam Lebovic and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A top scholar reveals how the Espionage Act gave rise to a vast American security state that keeps citizens in the dark In State of Silence, political historian Sam Lebovic uncovers the troubling history of the Espionage Act. First passed in 1917, it was initially used to punish critics of World War I. Yet as Americans began to balk at the act’s restrictions on political dissidents and the press, the government turned its focus toward keeping its secrets under wraps. The resulting system for classifying information is absurdly cautious, staggeringly costly, and shrouded in secrecy, preventing ordinary Americans from learning what their country is doing in their name, both at home and abroad. Shedding new light on the bloated governmental security apparatus that’s weighing our democracy down, State of Silence offers the definitive history of America’s turn toward secrecy—and its staggering human costs.
Download or read book Whistleblowers Leakers and Their Networks written by Jason Ross Arnold and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-08-26 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its conceptual innovations and case studies, Whistleblowers clarifies the much-discussed but under-studied phenomena of leaking and whistleblowing, with a particular focus on the collaborative networks that make the extraction and publication of secrets possible.
Download or read book Neither Confirm nor Deny written by M. Todd Bennett and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1974, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, ostensibly an advanced deep-sea mining vessel owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, lowered a claw-like contraption to the floor of the Pacific Ocean. This high-tech venture was only a cover story for an even more improbable scheme: a CIA mission to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine. Like a Jules Verne novel with an Ian Fleming twist, the saga of the Glomar Explorer features underwater espionage, impossible gadgetry, and high-stakes international drama. It also marks a key moment in the history of transparency—and not just for what became known as the Glomar response: “We can neither confirm nor deny. . . . ” M. Todd Bennett plumbs the depths of government secrecy in this new account of the Glomar mission and its consequences. Trawling through recently declassified documents, he explores the logistics, media fallout, and geopolitical significance of one of the most ambitious operations in intelligence history. Glomar, Bennett argues, played a pivotal but underappreciated role in helping the CIA ward off oversight amid a push for transparency and accountability. He reframes the operation’s history to offer an alternative perspective on the 1970s, a decade known for expansive openness, as well as the persistent tension between the demands of democracy and the need for secrecy in foreign policy. Combining keen historical analysis and gripping storytelling, Neither Confirm nor Deny brings to the surface fresh insights into the history of the security state, the politics of intelligence, and the CIA’s relationship with the media and the public.
Download or read book Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic written by Stephen Skowronek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful dissection of one of the fundamental problems in American governance today: the clash between presidents determined to redirect the nation through ever-tighter control of administration and an executive branch still organized to promote shared interests in steady hands, due deliberation, and expertise. President Trump pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. On one side was the specter of a "Deep State" conspiracyadministrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of "the unitary executive" gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out. These conflicts are not new. Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King trace the tensions between presidential power and the depth of the American state back through the decades and forward through the various settlements arrived at in previous eras. Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic is about the breakdown of settlements and the abiding vulnerabilities of a Constitution that gave scant attention to administrative power. Rather than simply dump on Trump, the authors provide a richly historical perspective on the conflicts that rocked his presidency, and they explain why, if left untamed, the phantom twins will continue to pull the American government apart.
Download or read book Troubling Transparency written by David E. Pozen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.
Download or read book Free Speech and Unfree News written by Sam Lebovic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does America have a free press? Many who say yes appeal to First Amendment protections against censorship. Sam Lebovic shows that free speech, on its own, is not sufficient to produce a free press and helps us understand the crises that beset the press amid media consolidation, a secretive national security state, and the daily newspaper’s decline.
Download or read book Spy Watching written by Loch K. Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Given the dangers in the world---from terrorism to pandemics---nations must have effective spy services; yet, to prevent the misuse of secret power, democracies must also ensure that their spies are well supervised. This book focuses on the obstacles encountered by America as it pursues more effective intelligence accountability"--
Download or read book Freedom of Information and Social Science Research Design written by Kevin Walby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multidisciplinary volume demonstrates how Freedom of Information (FOI) law and processes can contribute to social science research design across sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology, journalism and education. Comparing the use of FOI in research design across the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada and South Africa, it provides readers with resources to carry out FOI requests and considers the influence such requests can have on debates within multiple disciplines. In addition to exploring how scholars can use FOI disclosures in conjunction with interview data, archival data and other datasets, this collection explains how researchers can systematically analyse FOI disclosures. Considering the challenges and dilemmas in using FOI processes in research, it examines the reasons why many scholars continue to rely on more easily accessible data, when much of the real work of governance, the more clandestine but consequential decisions and policy moves made by government officials, can only be accessed using FOI requests.
Download or read book The Policy State written by Karen Orren and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policy is government’s response to changing times, the key to its successful adaptation. It tackles problems as they arise, from foreign relations and economic affairs to race relations and family affairs. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek take a close look at this well-known reality of modern governance: the expanded domain of the “policy state.”
Download or read book Trust and Transparency in an Age of Surveillance written by Lora Anne Viola and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust—rather than trust—can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book The Walled Garden written by Lawrence M. Friedman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-11 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privacy, in human history, is a relatively recent concept. Nobody had much privacy in the Middle Ages. Even kings and queens lacked privacy: it was an age when crowds watched a queen give birth, and the king received visitors while on the chamber pot. Technology and concepts of privacy grew up together—as both friends and enemies. For example, the late 19th century invention of the candid camera made it possible, for the first time, to take someone’s picture without that person’s consent. This fact was in the background of the classic article by Warren and Brandeis that launched the right of privacy. Today, we have smart phones with cameras, selfies, the Internet, surveillance cameras, and tools that can look through walls, smell through walls, see through walls. Dangers to privacy have multiplied enormously, and we have only just begin figuring how to handle the change. This book is timely as our basic understandings of privacy are challenged by modern technology, changing social mores, and evolving legal understandings that both reflect and reinforce underlying changes in society. It is likely to be of interest to graduate and undergraduate students, scholars, and potentially other professionals with an interest in law and social norms.
