Secrecy

Secrecy (also called clandestinity or furtiveness) 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; excessive revelation of information on individuals can conflict with virtues of privacy and confidentiality. It is often contrasted with social transparency.

Secrecy in sociology and zoology

Animals conceal the location of their den or nest from predators. Squirrels bury nuts, hiding them, and they try to remember their locations later.

Humans attempt to consciously conceal aspects of themselves from others due to shame, or from fear of violence, rejection, harassment, loss of acceptance, or loss of employment. Humans may also attempt to conceal aspects of their own self which they are not capable of incorporating psychologically into their conscious being. Families sometimes maintain "family secrets", obliging family members never to discuss disagreeable issues concerning the family with outsiders or sometimes even within the family. Many "family secrets" are maintained by using a mutually agreed-upon construct (an official family story) when speaking with outside members. Agreement to maintain the secret is often coerced through "shaming" and reference to family honor. The information may even be something as trivial as a recipe.

Secrecy (film)

Secrecy is a 2008 documentary film directed by Harvard University professors Peter Galison and Robb Moss. According to its website, it "is a film about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy," and features interviews with a variety of people on all sides of the secrecy issue, including Steven Aftergood (of Federation of American Scientists), Tom Blanton (of the National Security Archive), James B. Bruce (who was a senior staff member to the Iraq Intelligence Commission), Barton Gellman (a Washington Post journalist), Melissa Boyle Mahle (a former CIA officer), the plaintiffs in United States v. Reynolds (1953) (the case which established the State Secrets Privilege in the United States), Siegfried Hecker (former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory), Mike Levin (a former member of the National Security Agency), and Neal Katyal and Charles Swift (the lawyers for the defendant in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld).

It competed in the Documentary Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and at the Berlin Film Festival, among many other venues.

Sociological aspects of secrecy

The sociological aspects of secrecy were first studied by Georg Simmel in the early-1900s. Simmel describes secrecy as the ability or habit of keeping secrets. He defines the secret as the ultimate sociological form for the regulation of the flow and distribution of information. Simmel put it best by saying if human interaction is "conditioned by the capacity to speak, it is shaped by the capacity to be silent." It also can control the very essence of social relations though manipulations of the ratio of "knowledge" to "ignorance".

The secrecy "concept"

Simmel defines the secret society as an interactional unit characterized in its total by the fact that reciprocal relations among its members are governed by the protective function of secrecy. This central feature is established on a dual contingency:

Drive (Béla Fleck album)

Drive is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. The album was produced toward the end of Fleck's New Grass Revival career and before the Flecktones were formed and included an all-star list of bluegrass performers.

Track listing

All tracks written by Béla Fleck

Bonus track on the SACD version*

Personnel

References

Glossary of baseball (D)

D

daisy cutter

dance

dark one

dead arm

dead ball

Dead Ball Era

dead pull hitter

dead red

deal

decided in the last at bat

deep in the count

defensive efficiency rating

defensive indifference

deliver

designated hitter

deuce

deuces wild

Melanie Blatt

Melanie Blatt (born 25 March 1975) is an English singer-songwriter and actress. She is also the daughter of author and travel expert David Blatt. She rose to fame in 1997 as a member of the BRIT Award-winning girl group All Saints. The group have gained five number one singles, two multi-platinum albums, two BRIT Awards and have sold over 10 million records worldwide making them one of the best-selling girl groups of all time, and the second best-selling girl group in the UK. Melanie Blatt began recording a solo album in 2003, working with numerous producers including Xenomania and released her debut solo single "Do Me Wrong" in 2003. Blatt was later dropped by her record label, and her solo album was cancelled. In 2005, she made a return to music with her single "See Me", and began recording another album independently which was later shelved and cancelled in favour of the All Saints reunion. Starting in 2013, she was a judge on the television series The X Factor NZ.

Early life