WIKILEAKS Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy
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The Public Life of Secrets: Deception, Disclosure, and Discursive Framing in the Policy Process
STXXXX10.1177/0735275115587388Sociological TheoryBail 587388research-article2015 Original Article Sociological Theory 2015, Vol. 33(2) 97 –124 The Public Life of Secrets: © American Sociological Association 2015 DOI: 10.1177/0735275115587388 Deception, Disclosure, and stx.sagepub.com Discursive Framing in the Policy Process Christopher A. Bail1 Abstract While secrecy enables policy makers to escape public scrutiny, leaks of classified information reveal the social construction of reality by the state. I develop a theory that explains how leaks shape the discursive frames states create to communicate the causes of social problems to the public and corresponding solutions to redress them. Synthesizing cultural sociology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology, I argue that leaks enable non– state actors to amplify contradictions between the public and secret behavior of the state. States respond by “ad hoc–ing” new frames that normalize their secret transgressions as logical extensions of other policy agendas. While these syncretic responses resolve contradictions exposed by leaks, they gradually detach discursive frames from reality and therefore increase states’ need for secrecy—as well as the probability of future leaks—in turn. I illustrate this downward spiral of deception and disclosure via a case study of the British government’s discourse about terrorism between 2000 and 2008. Keywords cultural sociology, political sociology, secrecy, symbolic interactionism, comparative- historical sociology “For in the order of things it is found that one never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into another.” —Machiavelli (The Prince, chapter 21) A vast literature explains how policy makers shape public understandings of social problems in order to accomplish their agenda (e.g., Alexander and Smith 1993; Berezin 1997; Jacobs and Sobieraj 2007; Reed 2013; Skrentny 2004; Somers and Block 2005; Spillman 1997; Steensland 2007; Wagner-Pacifici 1994). -
Writing About Espionage Secrets
Secrecy and Society ISSN: 2377-6188 Volume 2 Number 1 Secrecy and Intelligence Article 7 September 2018 Writing About Espionage Secrets Kristie Macrakis Georgia Tech, Atlanta, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/secrecyandsociety Part of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, and the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Macrakis, Kristie. 2018. "Writing About Espionage Secrets." Secrecy and Society 2(1). https://doi.org/10.31979/2377-6188.2018.020107 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ secrecyandsociety/vol2/iss1/7 This Special Issue Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Secrecy and Society by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Writing About Espionage Secrets Abstract This article describes the author’s experiences researching three books on espionage history in three different countries and on three different topics. The article describes the foreign intelligence arm of the Ministry for State Security; a global history of secret writing from ancient to modern times; and finally, my current project on U.S. intelligence and technology from the Cold War to the War on Terror. The article also discusses the tensions between national security and openness and reflects on the results of this research and its implications for history and for national security. Keywords Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, -
National Security Secrecy: How the Limits Change
Steven Aftergood 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. By definition, secrecy limits access to official information, thereby impeding public participation in the deliberative process and inhibiting or preventing the accountability of government officials for their actions. Yet there is a near universal consensus that some measure of secrecy is justified and necessary to protect authorized national security activities, such as intelligence gathering and military operations, to permit confidential deliberations in the course of policy development, to secure personal privacy, and for other reasons. Reconciling these conflicting interests is an ongoing challenge. A stable secrecy policy is hard to achieve since the proper boundaries of offi- cial secrecy cannot be clearly articulated in the abstract and tend to shift over time. In practice, decisions to restrict information seem to depend on prevailing security considerations (secrecy is more pronounced in time of war), official predispositions (some political leaders favor secrecy more than others), and public attitudes and expectations. 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. In fact, there are at least two entire coalitions of organiza- tions devoted to combating secrecy: Openthegovernment.org and the Research for this paper was supported by grants from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the HKH Foundation, the CS Fund, the Stewart R. Mott Foundation, and the Rockefeller Family Fund. -
Wikileaks and the Institutional Framework for National Security Disclosures
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL PATRICIA L. BELLIA WikiLeaks and the Institutional Framework for National Security Disclosures ABSTRACT. WikiLeaks' successive disclosures of classified U.S. documents throughout 2010 and 2011 invite comparison to publishers' decisions forty years ago to release portions of the Pentagon Papers, the classified analytic history of U.S. policy in Vietnam. The analogy is a powerful weapon for WikiLeaks' defenders. The Supreme Court's decision in the Pentagon Papers case signaled that the task of weighing whether to publicly disclose leaked national security information would fall to publishers, not the executive or the courts, at least in the absence of an exceedingly grave threat of harm. The lessons of the PentagonPapers case for WikiLeaks, however, are more complicated than they may first appear. The Court's per curiam opinion masks areas of substantial disagreement as well as a number of shared assumptions among the Court's members. Specifically, the Pentagon Papers case reflects an institutional framework for downstream disclosure of leaked national security information, under which publishers within the reach of U.S. law would weigh the potential harms and benefits of disclosure against the backdrop of potential criminal penalties and recognized journalistic norms. The WikiLeaks disclosures show the instability of this framework by revealing new challenges for controlling the downstream disclosure of leaked information and the corresponding likelihood of "unintermediated" disclosure by an insider; the risks of non-media intermediaries attempting to curtail such disclosures, in response to government pressure or otherwise; and the pressing need to prevent and respond to leaks at the source. AUTHOR. -
Signature Redacted Certified By: William Fjricchio Professor of Compa Ive Media Studies Thesis Supervisor Signature Redacted Accepted By
Manufacturing Dissent: Assessing the Methods and Impact of RT (Russia Today) by Matthew G. Graydon B.A. Film University of California, Berkeley, 2008 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JUNE 2019 C2019 Matthew G. Graydon. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. S~ri' t A Signature red acted Department of Comparative 6/ledia Studies May 10, 2019 _____Signature redacted Certified by: William fJricchio Professor of Compa ive Media Studies Thesis Supervisor Signature redacted Accepted by: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE Professor of Comparative Media Studies _OF TECHNOLOGY Director of Graduate Studies JUN 1 12019 LIBRARIES ARCHIVES I I Manufacturing Dissent: Assessing the Methods and Impact of RT (Russia Today) by Matthew G. Graydon Submitted to the Department of Comparative Media Studies on May 10, 2019 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies ABSTRACT The state-sponsored news network RT (formerly Russia Today) was launched in 2005 as a platform for improving Russia's global image. Fourteen years later, RT has become a self- described tool for information warfare and is under increasing scrutiny from the United States government for allegedly fomenting unrest and undermining democracy. It has also grown far beyond its television roots, achieving a broad diffusion across a variety of digital platforms. -
How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss
The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss A Special Report presented by The Interpreter, a project of the Institute of Modern Russia imrussia.org interpretermag.com The Institute of Modern Russia (IMR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization—a think tank based in New York. IMR’s mission is to foster democratic and economic development in Russia through research, advocacy, public events, and grant-making. We are committed to strengthening respect for human rights, the rule of law, and civil society in Russia. Our goal is to promote a principles- based approach to US-Russia relations and Russia’s integration into the community of democracies. The Interpreter is a daily online journal dedicated primarily to translating media from the Russian press and blogosphere into English and reporting on events inside Russia and in countries directly impacted by Russia’s foreign policy. Conceived as a kind of “Inopressa in reverse,” The Interpreter aspires to dismantle the language barrier that separates journalists, Russia analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from the debates, scandals, intrigues and political developments taking place in the Russian Federation. CONTENTS Introductions ...................................................................... 4 Executive Summary ........................................................... 6 Background ........................................................................ -
ASD-Covert-Foreign-Money.Pdf
overt C Foreign Covert Money Financial loopholes exploited by AUGUST 2020 authoritarians to fund political interference in democracies AUTHORS: Josh Rudolph and Thomas Morley © 2020 The Alliance for Securing Democracy Please direct inquiries to The Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States 1700 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 T 1 202 683 2650 E [email protected] This publication can be downloaded for free at https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/covert-foreign-money/. The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the authors alone. Cover and map design: Kenny Nguyen Formatting design: Rachael Worthington Alliance for Securing Democracy The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a bipartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, develops comprehensive strategies to deter, defend against, and raise the costs on authoritarian efforts to undermine and interfere in democratic institutions. ASD brings together experts on disinformation, malign finance, emerging technologies, elections integrity, economic coercion, and cybersecurity, as well as regional experts, to collaborate across traditional stovepipes and develop cross-cutting frame- works. Authors Josh Rudolph Fellow for Malign Finance Thomas Morley Research Assistant Contents Executive Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Introduction and Methodology �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� -
The Authorised History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (Book Review)
Lobster 58 The Defence of the Realm The Authorised History of MI5 Christopher Andrew Page 134 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 London: Allen Lane, 2009, £30 Covering the same area as the Hennessy/Thomas book but with access to more recent MI5 documents, Andrew does at least refer to the dissenters named in the preceding paragraph. This is a thousand pages long and will be of major interest to academic students of British intelligence and political history for years to come. Discounted from sellers like Amazon, this is a seriously good buy. But I’m not an academic and my interests are political. I looked initially at two areas: what it said about MI5’s relationship with the British left since WW2, and particularly the role of the CPGB in British politics; and the so-called Wilson plots. Let’s take the left first. Elsewhere in this issue is my contribution to the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom’s book on the 1984 miners’ strike. In that I repeat for the umpteenth time Peter Wright’s story in Spycatcher that MI5 knew about the covert Soviet funding of the CPGB in the 1950s and neither exposed it nor tried to stop it. Wright is rubbished repeatedly by Andrew and he does not refer to this claim of Wright’s. However on p. 403 he writes this: ‘The Security Service had “good coverage” of the secret Soviet funding of the CPGB, monitoring by surveillance and telecheck the regular collection of Moscow’s cash subsidies by two members of the Party’s International Department, Eileen Palmer and Bob Stewart, from the north London address of two ex-trainees of the Moscow Radio School.’ This isn’t dated but from the context it is the early 1950s. -
INTERVENTION of STATE SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH RELEASING STATE SECRECY by WIKILEAKS Engla Puspita Haria, S.H.,M.H
INTERVENTION OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH RELEASING STATE SECRECY BY WIKILEAKS Engla Puspita Haria, S.H.,M.H. ABSTRACT The increasing number of disclosure of state secrecy in this age create by Wikileaks make the impact for state sovereignty such as stability of state, disturb the relationship between the state, dysfunction of government and political and economic instance. This number happened because of some factors:1) insufficiency of sophisticated technological support provided by related state, advancement and introducing new technology, collision between staff members. corruptions, and international criminal syndicated:2)the inconstancy law regulated the criminal act about secrecy state;3)technological advances while the human resources that are not reliable. But in other hand, people have right to know and it remarkable in Declaration of Human Right article 19 But there is no regulation at national and international level for Wikileaks. In this research, the study will investigate two problems: 1) what the impact for state sovereignty because of disclosure state secrecy; and 2) what is the legal action to protect state secrecy and study will find the problem of this research and create some offered solution and use the ultimate value in of all part the research with use the existence of legal theory, legal practice, norm or regulations, legal fact and indicated the conflict either. So this research will use normative type of research. In fact, in this research, study has analyze the case of Wikileaks and found that wikileaks already disclosure the data that very important for state sovereignty. Most of their documents are from the people who steal from diplomatic cable of state. -
Understanding Self-Deception Through Theory, Evidence and Application
Secrecy and Society ISSN: 2377-6188 Volume 2 Number 2 Teaching Secrecy Article 2 January 2021 Keeping Secrets from Ourselves: Understanding Self-deception Through Theory, Evidence and Application Mathew J. Creighton University College Dublin, Ireland, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/secrecyandsociety Part of the Other Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Creighton, Mathew J.. 2021. "Keeping Secrets from Ourselves: Understanding Self- deception Through Theory, Evidence and Application." Secrecy and Society 2(2). https://doi.org/10.31979/2377-6188.2021.020202 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ secrecyandsociety/vol2/iss2/2 This Special Issue Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Secrecy and Society by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Keeping Secrets from Ourselves: Understanding Self-deception Through Theory, Evidence and Application Abstract Self-deception is a difficult concept to share with students. Although few students find it implausible that they are capable of keeping secrets from themselves, the social theory, application, and practical demonstration of self-deception is far from straightforward. This work offers a three-step approach to teach a theoretically-grounded, evidence-based, and application-reinforced understanding of self-deception. Rooted in work on identity by Mead (1934), the approach outlined here engages with interdisciplinary case studies derived from social psychology (Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz 1998) and behavioral economics (Ariely 2012). -
S:\FULLCO~1\HEARIN~1\Committee Print 2018\Henry\Jan. 9 Report
Embargoed for Media Publication / Coverage until 6:00AM EST Wednesday, January 10. 1 115TH CONGRESS " ! S. PRT. 2d Session COMMITTEE PRINT 115–21 PUTIN’S ASYMMETRIC ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA AND EUROPE: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY A MINORITY STAFF REPORT PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION JANUARY 10, 2018 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations Available via World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 28–110 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5012 Sfmt 5012 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER seneagle Embargoed for Media Publication / Coverage until 6:00AM EST Wednesday, January 10. COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS BOB CORKER, Tennessee, Chairman JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland MARCO RUBIO, Florida ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JEFF FLAKE, Arizona CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware CORY GARDNER, Colorado TOM UDALL, New Mexico TODD YOUNG, Indiana CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TIM KAINE, Virginia JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts ROB PORTMAN, Ohio JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon RAND PAUL, Kentucky CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey TODD WOMACK, Staff Director JESSICA LEWIS, Democratic Staff Director JOHN DUTTON, Chief Clerk (II) VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. -
Secrecy, Coercion and Deception in Research on 'Terrorism'
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Aston Publications Explorer Contemporary Social Science Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences ISSN: 2158-2041 (Print) 2158-205X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsoc21 Secrecy, coercion and deception in research on ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills & David Miller To cite this article: Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills & David Miller (2019): Secrecy, coercion and deception in research on ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’, Contemporary Social Science, DOI: 10.1080/21582041.2019.1616107 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2019.1616107 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 19 May 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 551 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rsoc21 CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL SCIENCE https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2019.1616107 Secrecy, coercion and deception in research on ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ Narzanin Massoumi a, Tom Mills b and David Miller c aSociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK; bSchool of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK; cSchool of Policy Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This article calls for more understanding of the ethical challenges and Received 16 November 2018 dilemmas that arise as a result of state involvement in academic Accepted 26 April 2019 research on ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’.Itsuggeststhatresearchers KEYWORDS and research institutions need to be more attentive to the fl Research ethics; terrorism; possibilities of co-option, compromise, con ict of interests and other secret research; academic ethical issues.