studies

This page offers points of entry to the literature on secrecy, confidentiality and accountability. 

It covers -

• introduction
• secrecy in the digital age
• bibliographies
• security regimes
• Bans, leaks and whistles
• the war on terror

     introduction

For background to openness and restrictions on information access see Sisela Bok's Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment & Revelation (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1985), Russell Stevenson's Corporations & Information: Secrecy, Access & Disclosure (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1980) and John Baxter's State Security, Privacy & Information (New York: St Martins 1990). David Brin's thoughtful The Transparent Society (Reading: Perseus Books 1998) is somewhat idealistic but highlights the notion of reciprocal transparency, ie government and business sharing with citizens the information collected about them: 'they' know a lot about you, you may know very little about 'them'.

Writing about access to information as a fundamental human right - a good in itself and a foundation of civil society - is highlighted in the Human Rights profile elsewhere on this site.

     bibliographies

Ralph McCoy's online Freedom of the Press: An Annotated Bibliography is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to several thousand books and articles on freedom of the press. 

Among comparative studies Kenneth Robertson's Public Secrets: A Study In The Development Of Government Secrecy (London: Macmillan 1982) examines the UK, US and Sweden but should be used with caution because of the pace of change. It for example does not include the Ponting and Tisdall cases in the UK or the 1989 UK Official Secrets Act. Administrative Secrecy in Developed Countries (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1979) edited by Donald Rowat is also of value.

     cabinet secrecy and responsibility

For UK Cabinet secrecy see Peter Fraser's brief 'Cabinet Secrecy and War Memoirs' in History (1985) and the 2004 UK House of Commons Library research paper The collective responsibility of Ministers: an outline of the issues (PDF).

The evolution of the UK regime is highlighted in John Naylor's A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the custody of Cabinet Secrecy (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1984), David Reynolds's 2005 'Official history: how Churchill and the cabinet office wrote The Second World War' and Peter Hennessy's superb Whitehall (London: Secker & Warburg 1989) and The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Allen Lane 2002)

     UK

The detailed Espionage & Secrecy: The Official Secrets Act 1911-1989 of the United Kingdom (London: Routledge 1991) by Rosamund Thomas and Secrecy & Power in the British State: A History of the Official Secrets Acts (London: Pluto 1997) by Ann Rogers are studies of the UK experience. 

David Vincent's The Culture of Secrecy: Britain 1832-1998 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2000) is a more nuanced and comprehensive study. Patrick Birkinshaw's Freedom of Information: The Law, the Practice & the Ideal (London: Butterworth 1996) is a definitive study of UK law and practice. There is a more caustic account in Tom Cornford's 2001 paper The Freedom of Information Act 2000: Genuine or Sham?

David Hooper's Official Secrets: The Use & Abuse of the Act (London: Secker & Warburg 1987) is an anecdotal - and entertaining - treatment. Hugo Young's The Crossman Affair (London: Hamilton 1976) retains its status as a major study of changes to UK Cabinet secrecy. Anthony Howard commented

Any back-bench MP is perfectly entitled to record his daily observations and life in parliament and then, if he is lucky enough to find a publisher, to communicate them to a wider public. The problem with Crossman, so far as the Cabinet Office was concerned, arose from his determination to give what Sir John Hunt, the cabinet secretary of the time, described as 'blow-by-blow' accounts of what actually went on within the Wilson cabinet.

The authorities of the period were probably right in regarding this as setting a most disagreeable precedent—a precedent, incidentally, that was soon to be followed by two of his cabinet colleagues, Barbara Castle and Tony Benn (and much later, from within the ranks of the Conservative Party, by the junior minister Alan Clark). Where the guardians of tradition erred was in lacking the nerve to reach for the ultimate Domesday weapon, the then still fully extant Official Secrets Act. Instead, they sought to extend the law of confidentiality (with a rather arcane pedigree reaching back to some Victorian etchings) to cover the content of cabinet discussions.

Judith Cook's The Price Of Freedom (London: NEL 1985) considers application of the British Official Secrets Act to non-defense data. On the Record: Computers, Surveillance & Privacy - The Inside Story (London: Michael Joseph 1986) is another warning by Duncan Campbell & Steve Connor.

     EU

For a perspective on citizen access to EU government information we recommend visiting Statewatch's page tracking implementation of Article 255 of the Amsterdam Treaty to "enshrine" a right of access to documents from the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

A broader perspective's provided by Alasdair Davidson's 2001 Supranational Governance & the Right to Information: Experience in the EU (PDF).

     US

Among the extensive literature on US secrecy legislation and policy we recommend Daniel Moynihan's Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven, Yale Uni Press 1999) and FOI Advocate, an online newsletter covering federal and state developments.

The Torment of Secrecy: The Background & Consequences Of American Security Policies (Chicago: Dee 1996) by sociologist Edward Shils is a classic. The Federation of American Scientists 1998 project on Government Secrecy, covered the CIA's pre-publication review process, cold war documentation, declassification policy, freedom of information, secret government spending, and international relations. 

A Culture Of Secrecy: The Government Versus The People's Right To Know (Lawrence: Uni of Kansas Press 1998) is a useful collection of essays edited by Athan Theoharis. Charles Davis & Sigman Splichal edited the broader Access Denied: Freedom of Information in the Information Age (Ames: Iowa State Uni Press 2000).  

The National FOI Coalition (NFOIC) is an alliance of nonprofit state FOI and First Amendment organizations and academic centers.

     Bans, Leaks and Whistles

Later pages of this guide consider whistleblowing, ie disclosure of information by public/private sector employees in the public interest, despite contract, copyright or secrecy restrictions. Unauthorised release of restricted official information - or strategic leaking - is a feature of recent Western intelligence history, explored in our profile on surveillance and the 'security state'.

In 1986 Mordecai Vanunu provided the London Sunday Times with information about alleged nuclear weapon development activity at Dimona, subsequently being abstracted from Sydney and imprisoned in Israel. An account is provided by Seymour Hersh's The Samson Option: Israel, America & the Bomb (London: Faber 1997).

Disgruntled UK agent Peter Wright divulged information in 1986 through his book Spycatcher, published in Australia despite legal action in Australia and the UK. That fiasco features in Malcolm Turnbull's The Spycatcher Trial (London: Heinemann 1988), Molehunt: Searching for Spies in MI5 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1987) by Nigel West and A Web of Deception: The Spycatcher Affair (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1987) by Chapman Pincher. A decade later former MI5 operative David Shayler provided information to the Mail on Sunday in breach of the Official Secrets Act, fled to France and was arrested on his return to the UK in 2000.

Genevieve Knezo's 2003 report for the Congressional Research Service on 'Sensitive But Unclassified' and Other Federal Security Controls on Scientific & Technical Information: History & Current Controversy (PDF) offers an outstanding introduction to past US legislation and practice.





  next page  (official secrecy)