‘Delayed Disclosure’: National Security, Whistle-Blowers and the Nature of Secrecy
| Author | Christopher R Moran,Richard J Aldrich |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718764990 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718764990
Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(2) 291 –306
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718764990
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‘Delayed Disclosure’: National
Security, Whistle-Blowers and
the Nature of Secrecy
Richard J Aldrich
and Christopher R Moran
Abstract
The significance of Edward Snowden’s revelations has been viewed primarily through the prism of
threats to citizen privacy. Instead, we argue that the most dramatic change has been a decline of
government secrecy, especially around national security. While the ethical aspects of state secrets
and ‘whistle-blowing’ have received recent attention, few have attempted to explain the dynamics
of this growing climate of exposure. Our argument is largely technological and we ground our
analysis in the changing nature of intelligence work, which is increasingly merging with ‘big data’.
But we also identify a related cultural change: many intelligence contractors are at best agnostic
about the national security state. Meanwhile, the Internet itself provides the perfect medium for
the anonymous degradation of secrets. Because the main driver is technology, we suggest this
trend is likely to accelerate, presenting national security chiefs with one of their biggest future
challenges.
Keywords
intelligence, Internet, privacy, secrecy, whistle-blowers
Accepted: 22 February 2018
Introduction
Open societies are increasingly defended by secret means. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
spending on intelligence, security, counterterrorism and cyber security has doubled and
redoubled again, creating a vast secret empire. The English-speaking world spends over
US$100b a year on intelligence alone. The defence of democracy by furtive intelligence
and security services that resist democratic control has long presented us with a profound
paradox (Born and Leigh, 2005: 16). However, in the United States, over five million
people enjoy security clearances. The idea of sustaining a ring of secrecy that is populated
Department of Politics and International Studies (PaIS), University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Corresponding author:
Richard J Aldrich, Department of Politics and International Studies (PaIS), University of Warwick, Coventry
CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: r.j.aldrich@warwick.ac.uk
764990PSX0010.1177/0032321718764990Political StudiesAldrich and Moran
research-article2018
Article
292 Political Studies 67(2)
by millions of people has arguably transformed something that is puzzling into something
that is increasingly improbable.
This article explores the changing nature of secrecy. It reinterprets recent revelations
by surveillance whistle-blowers to suggest that the most significant developments are not
about privacy for the individual, but instead about the declining ability of states to keep
secrets. We develop this argument in four stages. First, we consider the shifting concep-
tion of secrecy, focusing on the increasing tendency to valorize and even publicize the
‘covert sphere’ (Melley, 2012). Second, we suggest that the hitherto closed world of
secret intelligence is merging with big data – and that states have sought to leverage this
by over-sharing. Third, we suggest that not only do leakers now enjoy access to new
facilitating technologies but also that technicians represent a counter-culture that is liber-
tarian and antithetical to secrecy. Accordingly, the compartmentalized realm of state secu-
rity is now merging with what some have described as the ‘accidental megastructure’ of
planetary-scale computing, with profound consequences for the nature of secrecy and the
security state (Bratton, 2016).
Advanced liberal democracies are committed to keeping their secrets. In the United
States, an estimated US$11b is spent every year on security classification, double the
amount expended at the turn of the century (Shane, 2012). In Australia, the government’s
programme of security vetting costs the taxpayer an annual US$350m, with clearances
required for even the most innocuous of public service jobs far removed from the national
security realm, including librarians and veterinarians (Thomson, 2015). Meanwhile, gov-
ernments are now more energetic than ever in using the courts to punish ‘whistle-blowers’
as well as the journalists who work with them.
The Obama administration arrived at the White House in Washington, promising to
run the most transparent administration in history. Despite some early gestures towards
transparency – for example, an Executive Order in December 2009 banning indefinite
classification – in reality, it pursued the path of silence and censorship whenever it was
confronted by challenge. To the dismay of human rights activists, Obama used the 1917
Espionage Act to prosecute more whistle-blowers than all his predecessors combined.
Many of these issues were not related to national security but instead related to waste,
corruption and fraud within government. His successor in the White House, Donald J.
Trump, could well break this record. Less than a year into office, he has already made
bold promises on Twitter to root out ‘low-life leakers’ in the government (Moran and
Aldrich, 2017; Van Buren, 2012).
However, while the appetite for secrecy remains strong, the ability to achieve it has
never looked weaker, largely due to new electronic platforms. Since 2010 and the publica-
tion by WikiLeaks of 250,000 diplomatic cables from US embassies and consulates around
the world, plus some half a million records from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,
‘document dumps’ of sensitive information have become part of a new media landscape.
Known as ‘Cablegate’, the leaking of US embassy cables by WikiLeaks was said by the
State Department to have put the lives of US informants at risk, while foreign leaders
embarrassed by the leaked material sent angry private letters to Washington demanding
apologies. On 29 October 2013, at a Goldman Sachs summit in Arizona, former US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the audience of bankers that she was forced to go on
a ‘global apology tour’ after Cablegate, adding that she witnessed statesmen in tears. More
recently, Clinton herself was caught in the tidal wave of disclosure, with some 30,000 of
her private emails while Secretary of State being published by WikiLeaks at a critical
moment in the 2016 presidential election campaign (Friedman, 2015).
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