Table Of ContentRADICAL SECRECY
Electronic Mediations
Series Editors: N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Krapp, Rita Raley,
and Samuel Weber
Founding Editor: Mark Poster
60 Radical Secrecy: The Ends of Transparency in Datafied America
Clare Birchall
59 Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common
Harmony Bench
58 Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games
Alenda Y. Chang
57 Sensations of History: Animation and New Media Art
James J. Hodge
56 Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed
Fenwick McKelvey
55 What Is Information?
Peter Janich, Eric Hayot, and Lea Pao
54 Deconstruction Machines: Writing in the Age of Cyberwar
Justin Joque
53 Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading,
Making, and Breaking Videogames
Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux
52 The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering,
and Scientifiction
Hugo Gernsback
Edited by Grant Wythoff
51 The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age
Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne,
and Tamar Tembeck, Editors
50 Mixed Realism: Videogames and the Violence of Fiction
Timothy J. Welsh
49 Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a
Computational Planet
Jennifer Gabrys
48 On the Existence of Digital Objects
Yuk Hui
(continued on p. 246)
RADICAL
SECRECY
The Ends of Transparency in
Datafied America
CLARE BIRCHALL
Electronic Mediations
University of Minnesota Press | Minneapolis | London
Portions of chapter 2 are adapted from “‘There’s Been Too Much Secrecy in This
City’: The False Choice between Secrecy and Transparency in U.S. Politics,”
Cultural Politics 7, no. 1 (2011): 133– 56; copyright 2011 Cultural Politics and
the present publisher, Duke University Press; reprinted by permission, www
.dukeupress.edu. Portions of chapter 3 are adapted from “Data.gov- in- a- Box:
Delimiting Transparency,” European Journal of Social Theory 18, no. 2 (2015):
185– 202; copyright 2015 European Journal of Social Theory and Sage; reprinted
by permission. Portions of chapter 4 are adapted from Shareveillance: The Dangers
of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2017), published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License. Portions of chapter 4 are adapted from “Shareveillance:
Subjectivity between Open and Closed Data,” Big Data and Society 3, no. 2
(2016); copyright 2016 Sage Publications; reprinted by permission. Portions
of chapter 5 are adapted from “Aesthetics of the Secret,” New Formations 83,
January 2015: 25–46; copyright 2015 New Formations and Lawrence & Wishart;
reprinted by permission. Portions of chapter 6 are adapted from “Transparency,
Interrupted: Secrets of the Left,” Theory, Culture, and Society 28, no. 7– 8 (2011):
60– 84; copyright 2011 Theory, Culture, and Society and Sage Publications;
reprinted by permission.
Copyright 2021 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-
trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978-1-5179-1042-6 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-1043-3 (pb)
A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library
of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
For Christine Clarke and Roger Birchall
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction: Transparent Times, Secret Agency,
and Data Subjects 1
1 The Changing Fortunes of Secrecy and Openness 15
2 Information Imaginaries 39
3 Opaque Openness: The Problem with/of
Transparency 69
4 Shareveillance: Open and Covert Government
Data Practices 93
5 Aesthetics of the Secret 119
6 Secrets of the Left: A Right to Opacity 147
Conclusion: Toward Postsecrecy 175
Acknowledgments 193
Notes 195
Bibliography 209
Index 235
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PREFACE
This book troubles the vectors of secrecy and transparency to make
room for more equitable distributions of power. I completed it just
before the impact of Covid- 19 started to reveal itself in the UK, where
I live. It is now October 2020 as I write this preface, and the inter-
vening period has made me think about the concerns of this book
in new ways. In the early days of the pandemic, watching the virus
topple health care systems and economies like dominoes, I wondered
if aspects of the neoliberal political settlement challenged in this book
would be displaced. There was a small chance that high levels of state
intervention seen in otherwise capitalist democracies would survive
the crisis and normalize socialist solutions and wealth redistribution.
That now seems like wishful thinking. While the pandemic is far from
over, it has become clear that most states are likely to revert to precri-
sis behaviors. The United States, the primary focus of this book, may
even rebound further— embracing aggressive forms of disaster capi-
talism and more intensified marketization and privatization— or shift
toward state monopoly capitalism. The calls to civic duty, altruism,
and collective action could not reverse years of individualism and
atomization or interrupt the logic of competition. Forms of antiglo-
balization, nationalism, and xenophobia are undermining the ideals
and efforts of international cooperation. Right now, the prospects of a
postpandemic progressive covenant in the United States appear to be
less than promising, although much will depend on the (mis)manage-
ment of this crisis over the coming months and on the forthcoming
election.
Radical Secrecy interrogates the state’s claims to transparency and
ix
