Secrecy
Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret.
Secrecy is often controversial, depending on the content or nature of the secret, the group or people keeping the secret, and the motivation for secrecy.
Secrecy by government entities is often decried as excessive or in promotion of poor operation[
Secrecy can exist in a number of different ways: encoding or encryption (where mathematical and technical strategies are used to hide messages), true secrecy (where restrictions are put upon those who take part of the message, such as through government security classification)[citation needed] and obfuscation, where secrets are hidden in plain sight behind complex idiosyncratic language (jargon) or steganography.
Another classification proposed by Claude Shannon in 1948 reads that there are three systems of secrecy within communication:[1]
- Concealment systems, including such methods as invisible ink, concealing a message in a harmless text in a fake covering cryptogram, or other methods in which the existence of the message is concealed from the enemy.
- Privacy systems, for example, voice inversion, is a special equipment required to recover the message.
- "True" secrecy systems where the meaning of the message is concealed by the cypher, code, etc. Although, its existence is not hidden. The enemy is assumed to have any special equipment necessary to intercept and record the transmitted signal.
Sociology
Animals conceal the location of their den or nest from predators. Squirrels bury nuts, hiding them, and they try to remember their locations later.[2]
Secrets are sometimes kept to provide the pleasure of surprise. This includes keeping secret about a surprise party, not telling spoilers of a story, and avoiding exposure of a magic trick.[citation needed]
Keeping one’s strategy secret – is important in many aspects of game theory.[citation needed]
In anthropology secret sharing is one way for people to establish traditional relations with other people.[3] A commonly used[citation needed] narrative that describes this kind of behavior is Joseph Conrad's short story "The Secret Sharer".[citation needed]
Government
Few people dispute the desirability of keeping
Secrecy in elections is a growing issue, particularly secrecy of vote counts on computerized vote counting machines. While voting, citizens are acting in a unique sovereign or "owner" capacity (instead of being a subject of the laws, as is true outside of elections) in selecting their government servants. It is argued that secrecy is impermissible as against the public in the area of elections where the government gets all of its power and taxing authority. In any event, permissible secrecy varies significantly with the context involved.[citation needed]
Corporations
Organizations, ranging from multi-national for profit
Research on corporate secrecy has studied the factors supporting secret organizations.[6] In particular, scholars in economics and management have paid attention to the way firms participating in cartels work together to maintain secrecy and conceal their activities from antitrust authorities.[7] The diversity of the participants (in terms of age and size of the firms) influences their ability to coordinate to avoid being detected.
The patent system encourages inventors to publish information in exchange for a limited time monopoly on its use, though patent applications are initially secret. Secret societies use secrecy as a way to attract members by creating a sense of importance.[citation needed]
Shell companies may be used to launder money from criminal activity, to finance terrorism, or to evade taxes. Registers of beneficial ownership aim at fighting corporate secrecy in that sense.[8]
Other laws require organizations to keep certain information secret, such as
In many countries,
Computing
Preservation of secrets is one of the goals of information security. Techniques used include physical security and cryptography. The latter depends on the secrecy of cryptographic keys. Many believe that security technology can be more effective if it itself is not kept secret.[10]
Information hiding is a design principle in much software engineering. It is considered easier to verify software reliability if one can be sure that different parts of the program can only access (and therefore depend on) a known limited amount of information.[citation needed]
Military
Military secrecy is the concealing of information about martial affairs that is purposely not made available to the general public and hence to any enemy, in order to gain an advantage or to not reveal a weakness, to avoid
Views
Excessive secrecy is often cited[13] as a source of much human conflict. One may have to lie in order to hold a secret, which might lead to psychological repercussions.[original research?] The alternative, declining to answer when asked something, may suggest the answer and may therefore not always be suitable for keeping a secret. Also, the other may insist that one answer the question.[improper synthesis?]
Nearly 2500 years ago,
.".See also
- Ambiguity
- Banking secrecy
- Black project
- Clandestine cell system
- Classified information
- Concealment device
- Confidentiality
- Conspiracy theory
- Covert operation
- Cover-up
- Deception
- Don't ask, don't tell
- Espionage
- Freedom of information legislation
- Media transparency
- Need to know
- Open secret
- Secrecy (sociology)
- Secret passage
- Secret sharing
- Self-concealment
- Somebody Else's Problem
- Smuggling
- State Secrets Privilege
- Sub rosa
- WikiLeaks
References
- ^ Shannon, C.E. (1946–1948). "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" (PDF): 1.
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(help) - ^ November 2018, Emma Bryce-Live Science Contributor 17 (17 November 2018). "How Do Squirrels Remember Where They Buried Their Nuts?". livescience.com. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - S2CID 147148098.
- ^ Government of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada (2017-12-12). "Chapter 5: Handling and safeguarding of classified and protected information and assets – Industrial Security Manual – Security requirements for contracting with the Government of Canada – Canada.ca". www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
- ^ "- THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT: ENSURING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE". www.govinfo.gov. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
- JSTOR 2095954.
- ISSN 1745-9125.
- ^ "How Anonymous Shell Companies Finance Insurgents, Criminals, and Dictators". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
- ^ "Data protection in the EU". European Commission - European Commission. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
- ISBN 978-0-309-04388-5.
- ^ "Digital Open Source Intelligence and International Security: A Primer". edam.org.tr. 17 July 2018. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
- ^ US Supreme Court, United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), decided 8 March 1953, accessed 5 April 2023
- ^ Lightfoot, Geoffrey; Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr (2014). "Information asymmetry and power in a surveillance society". Information and Organization. 24 (4): 214–235.
- Arnold, Jason Ross (2014). Secrecy in the Sunshine Era: The Promise and Failures of U.S. Open Government Laws. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700619924.*
- Birchall, Clare (March 2011). ""There's been too much secrecy in this City": The false choice between secrecy and transparency in US politics". Cultural Politics. 7 (1): 133–156. .
- Birchall, Clare (December 2011). "Introduction to secrecy and transparency: the politics of opacity and openness". S2CID 145098295.
- Birchall, Clare (December 2011). "Transparency interrupted: secrets of the left". S2CID 144862855.
- Bok, Sissela (1989). Secrets: on the ethics of concealment and revelation. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 9780679724735.
- Canal, Vicente Aceituno (April 2006). "How secret is a secret?". ISSA Journal.
- Gidiere III, P. Stephen (2006). The federal information manual: how the government collects, manages, and discloses information under FOIA and other statutes. Chicago: ISBN 9781590315798.
- Maret, Susan, ed. (2014). "Government secrecy, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, vol. 19". Research in Social Problems and Public Policy. Bingley, UK: Emerald. ISSN 0196-1152.
- Plunkett, Geoff (2014). Death by mustard gas: how military secrecy and lost weapons can kill. Newport, New South Wales: Big Sky Publishing. ISBN 9781922132918.
- ISBN 9780521858700.
- ISBN 9780471453802.
- "Secrecy Legal News and Research". JURIST.
- ISBN 9780192141859.
- Also available as:
Further reading
- Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2018). Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Dey Street Books. ISBN 978-0062390868.