Product Code Database
Secrecy 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 can exist in a number of different ways: encoding or encryption (where mathematical and technical strategies are used to hide messages), true secrecy (where restrictions are put upon those who take part of the message, such as through government security classification) and obfuscation, where secrets are hidden in plain sight behind complex idiosyncratic language (jargon) or steganography.
Another classification proposed by Claude Shannon in 1948 reads that there are three systems of secrecy within communication:
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 Consciousness being. Family sometimes maintain "", 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. Secrets are sometimes kept to provide the pleasure of surprise. This includes keeping secret about a surprise party, not telling spoilers of a story, and avoiding exposure of a magic trick.
Keeping one’s Strategy secret– is important in many aspects of Game theory.
In Anthropology secret sharing is one way for people to establish traditional relations with other people. A commonly used narrative that describes this kind of behavior is Joseph Conrad's short story "The Secret Sharer".
Few people dispute the desirability of keeping Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information secret, but many believe government secrecy to be excessive and too often employed for political purposes. Many countries have laws that attempt to limit government secrecy, such as the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and . Government officials sometimes political leak information they are supposed to keep secret. ( For a recent (2005) example, see Plame affair.)
Secrecy in elections is a growing issue, particularly secrecy of vote counts on computerized vote counting machines. While voting, citizens are acting in a unique sovereign or "owner" capacity (instead of being a subject of the laws, as is true outside of elections) in selecting their government servants. It is argued that secrecy is impermissible as against the public in the area of elections where the government gets all of its power and taxing authority. In any event, permissible secrecy varies significantly with the context involved.
Research on corporate secrecy has studied the factors supporting secret organizations. In particular, scholars in economics and management have paid attention to the way firms participating in cartels work together to maintain secrecy and conceal their activities from antitrust authorities. The diversity of the participants (in terms of age and size of the firms) influences their ability to coordinate to avoid being detected.
The patent system encourages inventors to publish information in exchange for a limited time monopoly on its use, though patent applications are initially secret. Secret society use secrecy as a way to attract members by creating a sense of importance.
Shell companies may be used to launder money from criminal activity, to finance terrorism, or to evade taxes. Registers of beneficial ownership aim at fighting corporate secrecy in that sense.
Other laws require organizations to keep certain information secret, such as (HIPAA in the U.S.), or that are under preparation (to limit insider trading). Europe has particularly strict laws about database privacy.
Information hiding is a design principle in much software engineering. It is considered easier to verify software reliability if one can be sure that different parts of the program can only access (and therefore depend on) a known limited amount of information.
US Government rights in regard to military secrecy were uphold in the landmark case of United States v. Reynolds, decided by the Supreme Court in 1953.US Supreme Court, United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), decided 8 March 1953, accessed 5 April 2023
Nearly 2500 years ago, Sophocles wrote: 'Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.'. Gautama Siddhartha said: "Three things cannot long stay hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.".
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