The Era of Dangerous Information: Part 1, The Psychology of Secrecy

[dagoski]

Preface

I keep threatening to do a essay on the concept of nationalism and how it relates to current events. I've got more reading to do yet. In the meantime, I'm going to run a series of essays on information security and risk. This series of essays is actually a term paper from my Informationn Ethics class that I've split into several parts.

PS: UCLA admission's committee.  If you're reading this, you have discovered a certain applicant's pseudonym.  Feel free to wander.  It's up to you to decide if I'm the real deal, or what Andy Warhol once called a Honky Bullshitter.

Introduction

Information specialists today practice their profession in a world of dangerous information. Currently, there are overlapping trends to control information both for perceived security and for reasons of privacy. At the same time, modern commerce possesses an insatiable thirst for personal information. The collection and aggregation of personal information can also be used for purposes of epidemiology and to provide better service in both the commercial and the government realms. Information professionals must strike a balance between protecting information and facilitating its retrieval.

The professional codes of most information organizations stress public service, intellectual freedom, and respect for individual privacy. The ethical code for the Association of Record Managers and Administrators(ARMA) goes as far to state that the free flow of information is necessary for a democratic society. Meanwhile, the American Library Association's code of ethics opposes censorship and emphasizes a commitment to intellectual freedom. However, information professionals now face strong pressure to suppress information or to closely follow their patrons' consumption of information. Since 2001, concern for security has become pervasive in the realms of government and technology R&D. At the same time, the proliferation of fraud using personal information has led to increased concern over personal records in many industries. All this concern rests on the concept of dangerous information. The question, though, it what makes information dangerous? Under what circumstances can information harm through disclosure?

Psychological and Social Aspects of Secrecy

What constitutes dangerous information? To ask that question is to ask what role secrecy plays in society. On a personal level, secrecy is bound up with concepts of trust and group membership. The sharing of secrets serves as a social glue that holds groups together. Keeping secrets establishes the trustworthiness of a group's members Secrets also constitute part of the body of information that establishes a group identity(Akerstrom 1991). Shared secrets often serve to distinguish to group from the outside world. Subcultural groups living within a larger culture often keep their ways hidden behind a wall of silence fenced in with their native tongue. Even when a group shares the same language as the larger mainstream, they adopt a distinct register for conducting business among themselves. African-Americans have long used employed such a strategy to protect themselves from an often hostile White culture using language with dual meanings and conducting their business primarily with trusted insiders(Hurston 1935). Beyond this, religions such as Voodoo conduct their rituals behind a veil and teach rituals only to insiders. In fact, Voodoo uses Catholic iconography to encode the symbols of deities and heroes alien to Christianity(Hurston 1938). Professional cultures are likewise often defined by the secrets they keep. The police have the Thin Blue Line that separates them from from the rest of society. Revelatory information rarely crosses that line; cops generally do not share their working experiences with spouses or other family members unless they themselves are cops(Fletcher 1995). Keeping secrets can be stressful since the act of withholding is a deliberate labor. Creating and maintaining a facade requires planning and constant vigilance lest it be pierced. This effort tends to create stress with both psychological and physiological consequences(Lane 1995). Thus, confidences shared among a group offer an important safety valve to release the pressure of secrecy. Shared secrecy offers the confidants a chance to drop their facades and speak openly. Patient doctor confidentiality, for instance, offers the promise of a shield, granting the patient the freedom to fully disclose the nature of their ailment and general quality of their health. In larger groups, the privacy of confidences held, allow members a degree of flexibility they would not otherwise have; within the confines of the group, they can hold positions that their public facades would not permit(Akerstrom 1991). More importantly for the group identity, secrecy protects its core values and practices, keeping them distinct from from the outside world. In other words, secrecy endows the group with a sacred quality(Akerstrom 1991).

In this light, public disclosure of secrets betrays the group by breaking it open and blurring its boundaries with the larger culture. However, confidences are not generally held absolutely. Rather they are shared as a way of establishing intimacy. Thus, secrets travel vertically from associates to intimates. Sharing a secret shows the confider's faith in the confidant and helps to build the trust necessary to develop intimacy(Yovetich 1999). For this reason, secrets travel up hierarchies of trust. For example, one will share secrets confided by friends with one's spouse. Violating this will cause an individual's peers to revaluate his or her trustworthiness. In fact, confiding secrets too early in a relationship causes an individual to be judged unreliable. Those who violate this unspoken hierarchy are looked on very badly by their peers and may even be shunned(Yovetich 1999).

Meanwhile, those who hold secrets to themselves often have immediate and pragmatic reasons for doing so. In some cases, they refuse to disclose information about health or mental health problems as a way of retaining autonomy; afraid to become a burden to their loved ones. In other cases, they may fear very real consequences of having their secrets revealed. A fundamental drive towards concealment is shame. At it's heart, shame, as feeling of embarrassment and unworthiness, is a fear of rejection. Those who reveal personal traumas are in fact often rejected by their social networks(Yovetich 1996). To some extent this may be due to the fact the members of a disclosers network are unable to bear the burden of the reveled trauma. One study in particular focused on those on the receiving end of a revelation. In this study, undergraduates at university where it was conducted watched video footage of holocaust survivors recounting their experiences. the survivors had been part of an earlier experiment measuring the effects opening up and speaking of trauma. That experiment showed that the confiders relaxed and became less tense as measured by Skin Conductance Level(SCL) and Heart Rate(HR). The students watching these videotaped interviews responded in the opposite direction(Shortt 1992). Those who hear such secrets often begin to avoid the confider and will often blame them for their own trauma. In some case the attempt to dismiss the other's distress is actually a way minimize the distress that one feels upon hearing it(Kelly). Self Image also plays a role in the disclosure of personal secrets. Confiders often use the feedback they receive in building up a sense of self. Thus unhelpful feedback or rejection can damage their self esteem. After a few such encounters the individual becomes reluctant to confide(Yovetich 1996). Beyond psychological consequences, individuals may face punishment for disclosing their secrets. In situations such as familial ones, disclosure may result in denial of financial support. In addition, the threat of aggression is very real. The aggression may take the form of violence or it may be psychological; insults and derision(Afifi 2005).

The paradox of secrecy is that secrets shared bond membership while secrecy itself is a burden. Psychologists from Freud onwards have associated the keeping of secrets with stress. Physiological studies have showed that confiding traumatic life events results in positive health outcomes implying that concealment causes stress(Kelly 1996). Secrecy comes in two forms, concealment by deception and concealment by omission. A deception requires comparatively less cognitive effort because it substitutes one narrative for another. Keeping silent by contrast requires strategic thinking at every turn. The holders of secrets must constantly work to make sure their behaviors do not give them away. This quickly leads to a feedback cycle in which the more tightly a secret is held, the more the holder must think about it and the measures needed for continued concealment. Thus secrecy quickly becomes an obsession(Lane 1995).