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Book part
Publication date: 26 January 2011

Hamilton Bean

This chapter configures resources from the fields of communication studies, intelligence ethics, and organization studies in order to explore whether the collection and analysis…

Abstract

This chapter configures resources from the fields of communication studies, intelligence ethics, and organization studies in order to explore whether the collection and analysis of open source information and subsequent production of open source intelligence constitute an ethical issue. Using an “ethics as practice” perspective, the author finds that tensions surrounding open source collection vis-à-vis U.S. Persons and the “outsourcing” of open source activities among commercial firms create ethical dilemmas and the space for moral agency.

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Government Secrecy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-390-4

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Book part
Publication date: 20 December 2013

Susan Maret

In this chapter, I suggest three conceptual tools developed by William R. Freudenburg and colleagues that characterize the failure of institutions to carry out their duties …

Abstract

In this chapter, I suggest three conceptual tools developed by William R. Freudenburg and colleagues that characterize the failure of institutions to carry out their duties – recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage – are of use beyond environmental sociology in the framing of the September 11, 2001 disaster. Using testimony and findings from primary materials such as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Joint Inquiry hearings and report (2002, 2004a, 2004b) and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004) alongside insider accounts, I discuss how Freudenburg’s tools have the potential to theorize institutional failures that occur in national security decision making. I also suggest these tools may be of particular interest to the U.S. intelligence community in its own investigation of various types of risk and failures.

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2003

W.A.C Adie MA

Roots of global Terrorism are in ‘failed’ states carved out of multiracial empires after World Wars I and II in name of ‘national self‐determination’. Both sides in the Cold War…

Abstract

Roots of global Terrorism are in ‘failed’ states carved out of multiracial empires after World Wars I and II in name of ‘national self‐determination’. Both sides in the Cold War competed to exploit the process of disintegration with armed and covert interventions. In effect, they were colluding at the expense of the ‘liberated’ peoples. The ‘Vietnam Trauma’ prevented effective action against the resulting terrorist buildup and blowback until 9/11. As those vultures come home to roost, the war broadens to en vision overdue but coercive reforms to the postwar system of nation states, first in the Middle East. Mirages of Vietnam blur the vision; can the sole Superpower finish the job before fiscal and/or imperial overstretch implode it?

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International Journal of Commerce and Management, vol. 13 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1056-9219

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Book part
Publication date: 3 December 2018

Frederic Lemieux

Abstract

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Intelligence and State Surveillance in Modern Societies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-171-1

Book part
Publication date: 3 December 2005

Paul Paolucci, Micah Holland and Shannon Williams

Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to…

Abstract

Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation” (Machiavelli, 1977, p. 44), his approach is a realist one. In this text, Machiavelli (1977, p. 3) endeavors to “discuss the rule of princes” and to “lay down principles for them.” Taking his lead, Foucault (1978, p. 97) argued that “if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few…who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince, and decipher mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force relationships.” He believed that we should “investigate…how mechanisms of power have been able to function…how these mechanisms…have begun to become economically advantageous and politically useful…in a given context for specific reasons,” and, therefore, “we should…base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault, 1980, pp. 100–102). Conceptualizing such techniques and tactics as the “art of governance”, Foucault (1991), examined power as strategies geared toward managing civic populations through shaping people's dispositions and behaviors.

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Social Theory as Politics in Knowledge
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-363-1

Book part
Publication date: 24 October 2003

Brent K. Marshall, J.Steven Picou and Duane A. Gill

The purpose of this article is to apply what social scientists have learned from decades of research on natural and technological disasters to better understand the short-term and…

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to apply what social scientists have learned from decades of research on natural and technological disasters to better understand the short-term and potential long-term human impacts of the 9/11 attacks. The short-term response to the 9/11 attacks was similar to how people and communities typically respond to natural disasters. One year after the attacks, news reports suggest that factors identified in technological disaster research as causing collective trauma, rather than recovery, are beginning to surface. We identify three patterns typically present in (but not restricted to) the aftermath of technological disasters that contribute to slow recovery and ongoing collective trauma and evaluate the likelihood that these factors will impact the recovery process for those impacted by the 9/11 attacks. We conclude that due to perceptions of governmental failure, the likelihood of protracted litigation, and uncertainty regarding the mental and physical health of victims, the social and psychological impacts of the 9/11 attacks will likely be severe and long-term. As such, the concluding section recommends the implementation of a long-term clinical intervention program for mitigating these potential chronic impacts and facilitating the timely recovery of survivors.

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Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-227-6

Book part
Publication date: 26 January 2011

Thomas C. Ellington

Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the…

Abstract

Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the foundations of U.S. information policy were being set after World War II, wartime practices were remade and made permanent in a crisis atmosphere, with the establishment of a classification system (essentially the same one used to this day) by executive order, as well, as the passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and the National Security Act in 1947. However, even as the practice of official secrecy took root, the United States took the lead in formalizing standards of openness by statute, beginning with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act and culminating in the passage (and 1974 strengthening) of the Freedom of Information Act. This article traces the development of U.S. information policy since World War II and describes the impact of official secrecy on decision making and democratic practice more generally.

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Government Secrecy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-390-4

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Book part
Publication date: 24 October 2017

Maria A. Moore, John Huxford and Jennifer B. Bethmann

At a time when governmental corruption seems rife and administrations grow ever more secretive, the whistleblower is a crucial resource in journalism’s attempts to make…

Abstract

At a time when governmental corruption seems rife and administrations grow ever more secretive, the whistleblower is a crucial resource in journalism’s attempts to make accountable those who wield power. Yet despite legislation that is meant to protect employees and officials who expose wrongdoing, a governmental “war on whistleblowers” has made the hazards faced by many whistleblowers increasingly grim. This chapter explores the role of the journalist/whistleblower collaboration in disclosing important, but sensitive, information involving national security. In discussing case studies of those who have braved the government’s anger, we examine not only the circumstances of these breaches, but also their political and legal repercussions.

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Corruption, Accountability and Discretion
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-556-8

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Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2006

Richard A. Posner

This project of derivation that I have just described may seem strange, but is not. In this as in many respects Plato set the fashion for the millennia to come. The ideal state…

Abstract

This project of derivation that I have just described may seem strange, but is not. In this as in many respects Plato set the fashion for the millennia to come. The ideal state sketched in the Republic is not only an analogy to the soul (though it is that too); it is an implication of Plato's conception of human mental capacity, a conception that is ontological as well as epistemological. It was Plato who, according to Aristotle, first separated a universal (i.e., a concept) from particulars (i.e., a concept's physical embodiments or expressions). There are a multitude of chairs, very different in size, shape, color, and design, yet there is also a concept of the “chair,” in which all the physical chairs participate. The concept has no physical body and therefore in a sense exists outside time and space – it is immaterial and eternal. But Plato believed, reasonably as it seems to me, that it is real. It is real in the same way that a line or circle in Euclidean geometry is real even though it is not identical to any physical line or circle and cannot be – the Euclidean line has only one dimension, and the Euclidean circle only two, and there are no one-or two-dimensional objects in the physical world (although electrons are dimensionless), as far as we know.

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Cognition and Economics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-465-2

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2003

Melvin J. Dubnick

While a relationship between accountability and ethics has long been assumed and debated in Public Administration, the nature of that relationship has not been examined or clearly…

Abstract

While a relationship between accountability and ethics has long been assumed and debated in Public Administration, the nature of that relationship has not been examined or clearly articulated. This article makes such an effort by positing four major forms of accountability (answerability, blameworthiness, liability and attributability) and focusing on the ethical strategies developed in response to each of these forms

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International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, vol. 6 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1093-4537

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