Journal Articles

National Security Secrecy : How the Limits Change

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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 growing number of public interest organizations and professional societies have turned their attention to government secrecy, identifying it as an obstacle to achieving their own objectives. These professionally and politically diverse groups are united by the perception that secrecy has escalated to the point of dysfunction. On that point, there is not much disagreement. One basic premise of the critics of government secrecy is that too much information gets classified and withheld from the public in the name of national security, and that this has undesirable effects on public policy and on public discourse. But a second basic premise is that it is possible to do something about that. These organizations, including my own, do not simply want to protest against improper secrecy but to correct it. And to a remarkable extent, the secrecy system lends itself to such corrective efforts through various mechanisms that will be described below.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Social Research An International Quarterly

Call Number

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Publisher

New York : The New School., 2011

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0037783X

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 77, Number 3 / Fall 2010, pp. 839 - 852

Subject(s)

National security secrecy

Specific Detail Info

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