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Secrecy and National Security Whistleblowing
The promise to keep "secrets of state," once demanded and given, becomes virtually part of one's core identity. In the national security apparatus, one's pride and self-respect is founded in particular in the fact that one has been trusted to keep secrets in general and trusted with these particular secrets. I suggest that there are psycho-social aspects of promises made under these circumstanc…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010,Pp. 773 - 804
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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The Freedom of Information Act and the Press : Obstruction or Transparency?
When government officials can look you in the eye and invoke the Federal Freedom of Information Act, they know full well that they have donned a cloak of invisibility. They are saying, in effect, "You can't touch me," and they are calculating that you will get the message and go away. Worse yet, they are putting a premium on "access" journalism—they are elevating the importance of access, of au…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010,Pp. 805 - 810
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Afterburn : Knowledge and Wartime
If Americans had to select a single symbol of their country's military might, they would do well to choose the fighter jet-a carefully constructed instrument of destruction, simultaneously powerful and nimble, stealthy and loud. This essay begins with a hunch-that if American culture illuminates the social significance of a fighter jet, then learning a little about jet propulsion might reveal s…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, pp. 811 - 826
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Limiting Democracy : The American Media's World View, and Ours
Many people assume that the topic of this paper -- namely, what the media does to ensure that knowledge is limited in a democracy -- is almost an obsolete topic, because with the internet and the proliferation of multiple other sources, it is really no longer the case that we are forced to rely upon a very small and homogenous set of sources. There's no denying that, theoretically at least, we …
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 827 - 838
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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National Security Secrecy : How the Limits Change
As a nation, we seem to be of two minds about secrecy. We know that government secrecy is incompatible with democratic decision-making in obvious ways. Yet there is a near-universal consensus that some measure of secrecy is justified and necessary to protect authorized national security activities. Reconciling these conflicting interests is an ongoing challenge. In recent years, a large and gro…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, pp. 839 - 852
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Introduction : Arguments for and against Limits on Knowledge in a Democracy
The papers in this section are all devoted to arguments for and against limits on knowledge in a democracy. They are all taken up, in one way or another, with questions of privacy; of the transparency (or lack of it) of powerful institutions and consequential decision procedures; of the costs and demands of national security; and so on—questions that are very much at the heart of this volume an…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 855 - 856
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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The Mosaic Theory
Over the last decade, many of the legal disputes that have arisen in the context of national security have concerned information - the withholding of it, the suppression of it, the collection of it, or the safeguarding of it. Frequently, these disputes have involved an argument known as the "mosaic" theory. The theory is straightforward: Seemingly insignificant information may become significan…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 873 - 882
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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The Inverse Relationship between Secrecy and Privacy
In civil libertarian discourse, the inverse relationship between government secrecy and privacy is well recognized and widely acknowledged - so widely, in fact, that it can come to seem as though we might regain sufficient privacy simply by cabining official secrecy. But regimes of secrecy that insulate private-sector data processing practices also contribute materially to the decline of privac…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 883 - 898
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Introduction : Limits to Knowledge? No Easy Answer
On the question before us - are there conditions that call for limiting knowledge in a democracy? - principles of unfettered scientific inquiry and of a free press were more than a half-century ago challenged by the restrictive "need-to-know" policies of the security state. Today we continue the hard intellectual work initiated by our predecessors faced with the unprecedented destructive power …
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 901 - 904
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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When Worlds Collide : Health Surveillance, Privacy, and Public Policy
Surveillance serves as the eyes of public health. It has provided the foundation for planning, intervention, and disease prevention and has been critical for epidemiology research into patterns of morbidity and mortality for a wide variety of disease and conditions. Registries have been essential for tracking individuals and their conditions over time. Surveillance has also served to trigger th…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 905 - 928
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Introduction : Points of Control
Who deserves to know what? What are the mechanisms for limiting knowledge in the United States today? When does the public have a right to know? The concern about what should be deemed confidential weaces through all four papers in this section. The overdeveloped world celebrates the rule of new social media, which allows for more speech by more people while also making them more vulnerable to …
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 931 - 940
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Secrecy in Three Acts
In June 1979, Congress passed the Espionage Act, the first act of the three secrecy-defining statutes that have shaped so much of the last hundred years of modern American secrecy doctrine. Together with two other statutes that followed in later decades-the Atomic Energy Acts of 1946 and 1954, and the Patriot Act of 2001-these three Acts picked out inflection points in the great ratcheting proc…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 941 - 974
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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The Obama Administration's Commitment to Transparency : A Progress Report
Transparency isn't the answer to everything, but one lesson I've learned in more than 20 years as an investigative reporter is that it is one critical step in keeping the public a key part of our democratic system and ensuring checks and balances in government. This is a principle shared not only by gadfly journalists themselves, but also by some government officials on the other side of the fi…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 975 - 980
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Four Phases of Internet Regulation
The four phases of Internet regulation are the "open Internet" period, from the network's birth through about 2000; "access denied," through about 2005; "access controlled," through the present day (2010); and "access contested," the phase into which we are entering.
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 981 - 996
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Normal Science and Limits on Knowledge : What We Seek to Know, What We Choose…
We can't know everything; in fact, compared to the vast expanses of our ignorance, we can't really know very much. So the problem of "limiting knowledge" is not just one of the conflict between efforts to make knowledge available and efforts to keep knowledge locked up. There is also the often-invisible problem of how we decide what it is we are going to try to know, and what, as a consequence,…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 997 - 1010
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy
Aryeh Neier: The topic of this session is "What We Have Learned about Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy," and it says we should discuss "how should we proceed and where should lines be drawn?" I'm going to conduct a conversation in which I will focus on this question of limits. The panel is very distinguished, very diverse, and I think we ought to be able to anticipate a diversity of views. All…
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- Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, Pp. 1013 - 1051
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Democracy, Political Power, and Authority
This article explores the conditions of possibility for democracy through the analysis of power and authority. Political power, as distinct from coercion, is the key to democracy, as a set of institutions for managing conflict. These institutions presuppose authority, which constitutes a performative act that is validated relative to local perceptions of reasonableness. Democratic power constit…
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- Volume 77, Number 4 / Winter 2010, Pp. 1049 - 1074
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Democratic Accountability in Development : The Double Standard
Aid agencies and European and American development professionals, with occasional exceptions, have a double standard on political and civil liberties in the world. While this group would never countenance major violations of liberties in their home countries, they appear largely indifferent to whether such liberties exist in developing countries. Some in this group would go further and welcome …
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- Volume 77, Number 4 / Winter 2010, Pp. 1075 - 1104
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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The Political Economy of Natural Resources
The rise in world prices of natural resources, coupled with the resource discoveries induced by high prices, is transforming Africa's opportunities. The economic future of Africa will be determined by whether this opportunity is seized or missed. The history of resource extraction in Africa is not encouraging. This paper reviews and develops the political economy of natural resources as a guide…
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- Volume 77, Number 4 / Winter 2010, Pp. 1105 - 1132
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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Democracy in Africa : A Very Short History
When discussing governance in Africa, one must be circumspect when applying the term "democracy." One reason for doing so is because the term is imprecise. However, while differing in the attributes they posit and the qualifications they impose, those who write of democracy join in emphasizing its essential property: that it is a form of government in which political power is employed to serve …
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- Volume 77, Number 4 / Winter 2010, Pp. 1133 - 1148
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- 0037783X
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- Social Research An International Quarterly
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