The Age of Secrecy

The Age of Secrecy PDF Author: Daniel Jütte
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190980
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were truly an Age of Secrecy in Europe, when arcane knowledge was widely believed to be positive knowledge which extended into all areas of daily life. So asserts Daniel Jütte in this engrossing, vivid, and award-winning work. He maintains that the widespread acceptance and even reverence for this “economy of secrets” in premodern Europe created a highly complex and sometimes perilous space for mutual contact between Jews and Christians. Surveying the interactions between the two religious groups in a wide array of secret sciences and practices, the author relates true stories of colorful “professors of secrets” and clandestine encounters. In the process Jütte examines how our current notion of secrecy is radically different in this era of WikiLeaks, Snowden, etc., as opposed to centuries earlier when the truest, most important knowledge was generally considered to be secret by definition.

The Age of Secrecy

The Age of Secrecy PDF Author: Daniel Jütte
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190980
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
The fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were truly an Age of Secrecy in Europe, when arcane knowledge was widely believed to be positive knowledge which extended into all areas of daily life. So asserts Daniel Jütte in this engrossing, vivid, and award-winning work. He maintains that the widespread acceptance and even reverence for this “economy of secrets” in premodern Europe created a highly complex and sometimes perilous space for mutual contact between Jews and Christians. Surveying the interactions between the two religious groups in a wide array of secret sciences and practices, the author relates true stories of colorful “professors of secrets” and clandestine encounters. In the process Jütte examines how our current notion of secrecy is radically different in this era of WikiLeaks, Snowden, etc., as opposed to centuries earlier when the truest, most important knowledge was generally considered to be secret by definition.

Restricted Data

Restricted Data PDF Author: Alex Wellerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

After Snowden

After Snowden PDF Author: Ronald Goldfarb
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466876050
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Was Edward Snowden a patriot or a traitor? Just how far do American privacy rights extend? And how far is too far when it comes to government secrecy in the name of security? These are just a few of the questions that have dominated American consciousness since Edward Snowden exposed the breath of the NSA's domestic surveillance program. In these seven previously unpublished essays, a group of prominent legal and political experts delve in to life After Snowden, examining the ramifications of the infamous leak from multiple angles: • Washington lawyer and literary agent RONALD GOLDFARB acts as the book's editor and provides an introduction outlining the many debates sparked by the Snowden leaks. • Pulitzer Prize winning journalist BARRY SIEGEL analyses the role of the state secrets provision in the judicial system. • Former Assistant Secretary of State HODDING CARTER explores whether the press is justified in unearthing and publishing classified information. • Ethics expert and dean of the UC Berkley School of Journalism EDWARD WASSERMAN discusses the uneven relationship between journalists and whistleblowers. • Georgetown Law Professor DAVID COLE addresses the motives and complicated legacy of Snowden and other leakers. • Director of the National Security Archive THOMAS BLANTON looks at the impact of the Snowden leaks on the classification of government documents. • Dean of the University of Florida Law School JON MILLS addresses the constitutional right to privacy and the difficulties of applying it in the digital age.

Imagined Communities

Imagined Communities PDF Author: Benedict Anderson
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178168359X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship PDF Author: Pamela O. Long
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801872820
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
A history of the book and intellectual property that includes military technology and military secrets. Winner of The Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas In today's world of intellectual property disputes, industrial espionage, and book signings by famous authors, one easily loses sight of the historical nature of the attribution and ownership of texts. In Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Pamela Long combines intellectual history with the history of science and technology to explore the culture of authorship. Using classical Greek as well as medieval and Renaissance European examples, Long traces the definitions, limitations, and traditions of intellectual and scientific creation and attribution. She examines these attitudes as they pertain to the technical and the practical. Although Long's study follows a chronological development, this is not merely a general work. Long is able to examine events and sources within their historical context and locale. By looking at Aristotelian ideas of Praxis, Techne, and Episteme. She explains the tension between craft and ideas, authors and producers. She discusses, with solid research and clear prose, the rise, wane, and resurgence of priority in the crediting and lionizing of authors. Long illuminates the creation and re-creation of ideas like "trade secrets," "plagiarism," "mechanical arts," and "scribal culture." Her historical study complicates prevailing assumptions while inviting a closer look at issues that define so much of our society and thought to this day. She argues that "a useful working definition of authorship permits a gradation of meaning between the poles of authority and originality," and guides us through the term's nuances with clarity rarely matched in a historical study.

Veil of Secrecy

Veil of Secrecy PDF Author: Margaret Franceschini
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1645440818
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
An ambitious young woman who dreams of leaving her small town to follow her dreams learns the heartbreak of reckless love. As a young woman trapped in the confines of her small Newfoundland fishing village, sixteen-year-old Julie dreams of someday making her way out into the world and becoming a journalist. The daughter she gave up at birth must learn the same lesson, but will she follow in her mother's footsteps and give up her dreams? What happens when a daughter, given up at birth, makes the same tragic mistake as the mother she never knew? In 1950 Julie was deceived in love and had to give up not only the child of that union, but her dreams of escaping her small fishing village to become a journalist. Twenty years later, Marina, too, is deceived in love and has to forfeit her child, but dreams are not to be thwarted the second time around. The only refuge for young teen girls at that time was an old plantation pavilion called The Fold located in Nova Scotia. Hidden away on acres of lush green grass and surrounded by the wonder of the sea, The Fold holds the mystery and secrets of those who suffered emotions of forfeiting their infant and the suffering that remains within their veil of secrecy.

Radical Secrecy

Radical Secrecy PDF Author: Clare Birchall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781517910426
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Reimagining transparency and secrecy in the era of digital data When total data surveillance delimits agency and revelations of political wrongdoing fail to have consequences, is transparency the social panacea liberal democracies purport it to be? This book sets forth the provocative argument that progressive social goals would be better served by a radical form of secrecy, at least while state and corporate forces hold an asymmetrical advantage over the less powerful in data control. Clare Birchall asks: How might transparency actually serve agendas that are far from transparent? Can we imagine a secrecy that could act in the service of, rather than against, a progressive politics? To move beyond atomizing calls for privacy and to interrupt the perennial tension between state security and the public's right to know, Birchall adapts Édouard Glissant's thinking to propose a digital "right to opacity." As a crucial element of radical secrecy, she argues, this would eventually give rise to a "postsecret" society, offering an understanding and experience of the political that is free from the false choice between secrecy and transparency. She grounds her arresting story in case studies including the varied presidential styles of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump; the Snowden revelations; conspiracy theories espoused or endorsed by Trump; WikiLeaks and guerrilla transparency; and the opening of the state through data portals. Postsecrecy is the necessary condition for imagining, finally, an alternative vision of "the good," of equality, as neither shaped by neoliberal incarnations of transparency nor undermined by secret state surveillance. Not least, postsecrecy reimagines collective resistance in the era of digital data.

Secrecy

Secrecy PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674678X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The powers of political secrecy and social spectacle have been taken to surreal extremes recently. Witness the twin terrors of a president who refuses to disclose dealings with foreign powers while the private data of ordinary citizens is stolen and marketed in order to manipulate consumer preferences and voting outcomes. We have become accustomed to thinking about secrecy in political terms and personal privacy terms. In this bracing, new work, Hugh Urban wants us to focus these same powers of observation on the role of secrecy in religion. With Secrecy, Urban investigates several revealing instances of the power of secrecy in religion, including nineteenth-century Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the sexual magic of a Russian-born Parisian mystic; the white supremacist BrüderSchweigen or “Silent Brotherhood” movement of the 1980s, the Five Percenters, and the Church of Scientology. An electrifying read, Secrecy is the culmination of decades of Urban’s reflections on a vexed, ever-present subject.

Blacked Out

Blacked Out PDF Author: Alasdair Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139448925
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Nearly forty years ago the US Congress passed the landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) giving the public the right to government documents. This 'right to know' has been used over the past decades to challenge overreaching Presidents and secretive government agencies. The example of transparency in government has served as an example to nations around the world spawning similar statutes in fifty-nine countries. This 2006 book examines the evolution of the move toward openness in government. It looks at how technology has aided the disclosure and dissemination of information. The author tackles the question of whether the drive for transparency has stemmed the desire for government secrecy and discusses how many governments ignore or frustrate the legal requirements for the release of key documents. Blacked Out is an important contribution during a time where profound changes in the structure of government are changing access to government documents.

Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe

Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Jon R. Snyder
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520274636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
"A major scholarly achievement, which speaks to multiple disciplines and national traditions...Snyder offers an elegant introduction to the discourse of dissimulation in the courtly world of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, then moves beyond to make an important, original intervention on a topic that stands at the center of current debates about modernity."—Albert Ascoli, author of Dante and the Making of a Modern Author "The Baroque is the time of 'Machiavellianism' in politics, ethics, and religion. It is the time of esthetics of ostentation, chiaroscuros, and monumental theatricality. Paradoxically, it is also the time when freedom of thought, the value of dissidence, questions of authenticity, debates about virtues, and practices of confessions come to the fore. Snyder brings all these issues to new life in this deft and powerful book."—Giuseppe Mazzotta, author of The New Map of the World: the Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico