Week 9 – Secrecy and Privacy

Cohen’s introduction to secrecy, which is regularly practiced by governments and corporations, and the existence of an inverse relationship among secrecy and civilian privacy, is quite thought provoking. Cohen feels that increasing awareness of this relationship could restrain secrecy and restore privacy to an extent. However, I believe that government secrecy has always been practiced and will continue to occur regardless of our awareness of its prevalence.

I was surprised to learn about the existence of data firms whose sole purpose is to impinge upon people’s privacy and organize their personal information in ways that will provide governments and corporations the greatest benefits. A big question I feel we must address is whether or not governments should be permitted to acquire our personal information from these data brokers without any restrictions. While I support the government in monitoring some forms of information and activities of citizens to ensure public safety, shouldn’t the government be restricted from accessing certain forms of personal information?  

Something else that really sparked my interest was Cohen’s discussion of openness as being the solution to secrecy. This was interesting to me particularly because I don’t believe that anyone would be happy with the world having easy access to their information, especially the very personal information normally collected by governments and corporations.

References

Cohen, Julie E. (2010). The inverse relationship between secrecy and privacy. Social Research 77(3): 883-898.

- Alicja