Blog #15

Luc Sante gives three reasons for the breakdown of secrecy: the fall of the Soviet Union and the KGB, the internet, and what he calls "confessional culture." Bascially, each of these three key points have lead to the breakdown of secrecy in our society today.

The fall of the Soviet Union "opened a tremendous number of lead-lined rooms," leading to a plethora of Soviet State secrets to be revealed, so that everyone knew who was shooting at who, when they were doing this and why. This also lead to a drop in public support for government's keeping secrets from its own people. Now that there was no Cold War, there was less of a need for many state secrets.

The internet also causes many secrets to be leaked every day. Recently, there was a huge uproar when the website WikiLeak leaked thousands and thousands of government documents on the day to day activities of troops in Iraq and Afghanistand. While there were no huge secrets revealed (the American public actually knew about much of this beforehand), this huge leak in security established a disturbing precedent where anyone can leak anything on the Internet.

Confessional culture, as Sante defines it, encourages people to spill our most sacred secrets to others because they are like money burning a hole in our pockets, we have to get them off of our chests. The pressure secrets put on us can only be relieved by telling our secrets to trusted friends, or by posting it on the internet.

I don't agree with Sante's idea that the internet is the nemesis to secrecy. The internet is merely a tool everyone can used to exchange ideas and information, and, while sometimes this tool can be used badly, like the WikiLeak mass leak, the internet is a good thing. The internet is only bad if used badly, and while confessional culture can lead to many secrets being revealed on the internet, it is the people who reveal the secrets' fault.