Download or read book State Secrecy and Security written by William Walters and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In State Secrecy and Security: Refiguring the Covert Imaginary, William Walters calls for secrecy to be given a more central place in critical security studies and elevated to become a core concept when theorising power in liberal democracies. Through investigations into such themes as the mobility of cryptographic secrets, the power of public inquiries, the connection between secrecy and place-making, and the aesthetics of secrecy within immigration enforcement, Walters challenges commonplace understandings of the covert and develops new concepts, methods and themes for secrecy and security research. Walters identifies the covert imaginary as both a limit on our ability to think politics differently and a ground to develop a richer understanding of power. State Secrecy and Security offers readers a set of thinking tools to better understand the strange powers that hiding, revealing, lying, confessing, professing ignorance and many other operations of secrecy put in motion. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of security, secrecy and politics more broadly.
Download or read book Secrets and Leaks written by Rahul Sagar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Deep State written by Marc Ambinder and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a hidden country within the United States. It was formed from the astonishing number of secrets held by the government and the growing ranks of secret-keepers given charge over them. The government secrecy industry speaks in a private language of codes and acronyms, and follows an arcane set of rules and customs designed to perpetuate itself, repel penetration, and deflect oversight. It justifies itself with the assertion that the American values worth preserving are often best sustained by subterfuge and deception. Deep State, written by two of the country's most respected national security journalists, disassembles the secrecy apparatus of the United States and examines real-world trends that ought to trouble everyone from the most aggressive hawk to the fiercest civil libertarian. The book: - Provides the fullest account to date of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program first spun up in the dark days after 9/11. - Examines President Obama's attempt to reconcile his instincts as a liberal with the realities of executive power, and his use of the state secrets doctrine. - Exposes how the public’s ubiquitous access to information has been the secrecy industry's toughest opponent to date, and provides a full account of how WikiLeaks and other “sunlight” organizations are changing the government's approach to handling sensitive information, for better and worse. - Explains how the increased exposure of secrets affects everything from Congressional budgets to Area 51, from SEAL Team Six and Delta Force to the FBI, CIA, and NSA. - Assesses whether the formal and informal mechanisms put in place to protect citizens from abuses by the American deep state work, and how they might be reformed.
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 Secrecy National Security and the Vindication of Constitutional Law written by D. Cole and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔThis is an important collection of scholarly essays that will illuminate positive legal developments and normative constitutionalist concerns in the expanding arena of secret government decisions. This book is indispensable reading for those concerned with constitutionalism, the rule of law and democracy as they bear on the tensions between secrecy and disclosure in government responses to terrorism.Õ Ð Vicki C. Jackson, Harvard University Law School, US ÔThis book contains the broadest and deepest analysis of the legal and policy issues that relate to secrecy and national security on one hand, and the imperatives of a functioning democracy on the other. The broadest because it brings to bear materials from many countries, the deepest because it brilliantly explores a core problem of constitutional government.Õ Ð Norman Dorsen, New York University, US and President, American Civil Liberties Union, 1976Ð1991 Virtually every nation has had to confront tensions between the rule-of-law demands for transparency and accountability and the need for confidentiality with respect to terrorism and national security. This book provides a global and comparative overview of the implications of governmental secrecy in a variety of contexts. Expert contributors from around the world discuss the dilemmas posed by the necessity for Ð and evils of Ð secrecy, and assess constitutional mechanisms for checking the abuse of secrecy by national and international institutions in the field of counter-terrorism. In recent years, nations have relied on secret evidence to detain suspected terrorists and freeze their assets, have barred lawsuits alleging human rights violations by invoking Ôstate secretsÕ, and have implemented secret surveillance and targeted killing programs. The book begins by addressing the issue of secrecy at the institutional level, examining the role of courts and legislatures in regulating the use of secrecy claims by the executive branch of government. From there, the focus shifts to the three most vital areas of anti-terrorism law: preventive detention, criminal trials and administrative measures (notably, targeted economic sanctions). The contributors explore how assertions of secrecy and national security in each of these areas affect the functioning of the legal system and the application of procedural justice and fairness. Students, professors and researchers interested in constitutional law, international law, comparative law and issues of terrorism and security will find this an invaluable addition to the literature. Judges, lawyers and policymakers will also find much of use in this critical volume.
Download or read book Lords of Secrecy written by Scott Horton and published by Nation Books. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horton argues that the rise of the National Security State is stabbing at the heart of American democracy.
Download or read book A State of Secrecy written by Alison Lewis and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of five interlaced, in-depth biographical studies from across the spectrum of writers-turned-spies recruited by the Stasi.
Download or read book Top Secret America written by Dana Priest and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger. In Top Secret America, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission, and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors; and more than 850,000 people granted "Top Secret" security clearance. A landmark exposé of a new, secret "Fourth Branch" of American government, Top Secret America is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm.
Download or read book Secrecy and Methods in Security Research written by Marieke De Goede and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the challenges of secrecy in security research, and develops a set of methods to navigate, encircle and work with secrecy. How can researchers navigate secrecy in their fieldwork, when they encounter confidential material, closed-off quarters or bureaucratic rebuffs? This is a particular challenge for researchers in the security field, which is by nature secretive and difficult to access. This book creatively assesses and analyses the ways in which secrecies operate in security research. The collection sets out new understandings of secrecy, and shows how secrecy itself can be made productive to research analysis. It offers students, PhD researchers and senior scholars a rich toolkit of methods and best-practice examples for ethically appropriate ways of navigating secrecy. It pays attention to the balance between confidentiality, and academic freedom and integrity. The chapters draw on the rich qualitative fieldwork experiences of the contributors, who did research at a diversity of sites, for example at a former atomic weapons research facility, inside deportation units, in conflict zones, in everyday security landscapes, in virtual spaces and at borders, bureaucracies and banks. The book will be of interest to students of research methods, critical security studies and International Relations in general. 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 National Security Secrecy written by Sudha Setty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how excessive national security secrecy undercuts democracy and the rule of law, necessitating comparative and critical analysis toward potential reforms.
Download or read book In the Name of Security Secrecy Surveillance and Journalism written by Johan Lidberg and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 saw the start of the so-called war on terror. The aim of ‘In the Name of Security – Secrecy, Surveillance and Journalism’ is to assess the impact of surveillance and other security measures on in-depth public interest journalism. How has the global fear-driven security paradigm sparked by 11 September affected journalism? At the core of the book sits what the authors have labeled the ‘trust us dilemma’. Governments justify passing, at times, oppressive and far-reaching anti-terror laws to keep citizens safe from terror. By doing so governments are asking the public to trust their good intentions and the integrity of the security agencies. But how can the public decide to trust the government and its agencies if it does not have access to information on which to base its decision? ‘In the Name of Security – Secrecy, Surveillance and Journalism’ takes an internationally comparative approach using case studies from the powerful intelligence-sharing group known as the Five Eyes consisting of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Chapters assessing a selection of EU countries and some of the BRICS countries provide additional and important points of comparison to the English-speaking countries that make up the Five Eyes.
Download or read book Examining the State Secrets Privilege written by Blair S. Fermin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a democracy, the public should have the right to know what the government is doing. Secrecy should be the rare exception, reserved for a few cases in which the national security is truly at stake. This book is the hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate that took place on February 13th 2008. While considering the state secrets privileges, assertions of the privilege by the executive branch were examined as well.The state secrets privilege is a common law evidentiary privilege that shields sensitive national security information from disclosure in litigation. The government is the only party that can assert the privilege, and application of the privilege can result in dismissal of civil litigation. The United States Senate, in this book, discuss the importance that courts act as an independent check on the government when it asserts the state secret privilege. It proposes a policy designed to promote a meaningful, independent review.
Download or read book The National Security Sublime written by Matthew Potolsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do recent depictions of government secrecy and surveillance so often use images suggesting massive size and scale: gigantic warehouses, remote black sites, numberless security cameras? Drawing on post-War American art, film, television, and fiction, Matthew Potolsky argues that the aesthetic of the sublime provides a privileged window into the nature of modern intelligence, a way of describing the curiously open secret of covert operations. The book tracks the development of the national security sublime from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and places it in a long history of efforts by artists and writers to represent political secrecy.
Download or read book Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy written by United States. Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Covert Sphere written by Timothy Melley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series 24. According to an embassy spokesperson, Eagle Four was part of a strategy aimed at transforming public suspicion of security forces into something like awed respect. Why would a wartime government spend valuable resources on a melodrama of covert operations? The answer, according to Timothy Melley, is not simply that fiction has real political effects but that, since the Cold War, fiction has become integral to the growth of national security as a concept and a transformation of democracy. In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation’s foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since—and, Melley argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The Covert Sphere traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture. Melley interweaves Cold War history with political theory and original readings of films, television dramas, and popular entertainments—from The Manchurian Candidate through 24—as well as influential writing by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Michael Herr, Denis Johnson, Norman Mailer, Tim O’Brien, and many others.
Download or read book Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc written by Valentina Glajar and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays exploring the tension between the versions of the past in secret police files and the subjects' own personal memories-and creative workings-through-of events.
Download or read book Who Guards the Guardians Secrecy in Government written by Rahul Sagar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-13 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. However, the public should treat such disclosures skeptically and subject irresponsible journalism to concerted criticism.
