State Secrets Research Articles

The implementation of the situational control concept of information security in automated training systems

The main approaches to ensuring security of information in the automated training systems are considered, need of application of situational management of security of information for the automated training systems is proved, the mathematical model and a problem definition of situational control is offered, the technique of situational control of security of information is developed. The purpose of the study. The aim of the study is to base the application of situational control of information security by subsystem of the control and protection of information in automated learning systems and to develop implementation methods of the situational control concept. Materials and methods. It is assumed that the automated learning system is a fragment of a larger information system that contains several information paths, each of them treats different information in the protection degree from information, containing constituting state secrets, to open access information. It is considered that the technical methods, measures and means of information protection in automated learning systems implement less than half (30%) functions of subsystems of control and protection information. The main part of the functions of this subsystem are organizational measures to protect information. It is obvious that the task of ensuring the security of information in automated learning systems associated with the adoption of decisions on rational selection and proper combination of technical methods and institutional arrangements. Conditions of practical application of automated learning systems change over time and transform the situation of such a decision, and this leads to the use of situational control methods. When situational control is implementing, task of the protection of information in automated learning system is solved by the subsystem control and protection of information by distributing the processes ensuring the security of information and resources of subsystem elements of the automated learning system to meet changing conditions of operation. When the event, associated with the emergence of threats to the information security related to one of the elements of a situation to a variety of destabilizing factors is checked in the system, the formation of the base of alternative control actions sets of situational management is formed, then the sets of the admissible solutions of the situational control options are formed. The best solution provides an extremum of the objective function of situational control of information security. Results. The main approaches to ensuring the information security in automated learning systems are considered, the necessity of the use of situational control of security in automated learning systems is based, mathematical model and problem statement of situational control are offered, the method of situational control of information protection is developed. Conclusion. Developed method of situational control of information security in automated learning systems, involves the participation of the operator in the development and decision-making (dialogue procedures statement of objectives situational control, the formation of the base of alternative sets of control actions, etc.). Another important feature of this technique is the necessity of using previously developed models (models of decision-making situation, a model of coordination and planning of operation of a subsystem of the control and protection of information, models of information processing about the status of the subsystem analysis models and evaluation of results) and the database obtained on the basis of operating experience of information protection systems in the automated learning systems. The implementation of the concept of situational control of information security ensures the timely adaptation of the algorithms and parameters of the information security system to changes in the external environment and the nature of tasks within the education systems and on this basis allows to improve the characteristics of the information protection system in the automated learning systems.

When should state secrets stay secret?: accountability, democratic governance, and intelligence

1. An analytical approach: intelligence, accountability and oversight 2. Organizing secrecy: the CIA and institutional control 3. External accountability: the development of congressional oversight 4. Congress and oppositional oversight 5. An independent judiciary? The domestic implications of intelligence and the politics of secret oversight 6. Conclusions.

Adventure into Peacetime Intra-Alliance Espionage: Assessment of the America-Germany Saga

Abstract Peacetime espionage is often employed by states as a means of acquiring information about competitor states in the international system. However the practice is not limited to competitor states. In a world where security concerns are an ever-present consideration for state action, acts of espionage normally reserved for use against enemies are also used against ally states. The basic premise is that while alliances are able to foster mutual trust and cooperation, they do not conclude that an ally will always be trust-worthy and faithful, most especially, when it involves issues of national interest. The international system and a need to safeguard one’s own interests and population mean that espionage, even against an ally, will remain a necessary state function and all states should therefore remain vigilant against attempts at infiltration of their state secrets. The question of peacetime intra-alliance espionage and the consequences thereof has yet to be answered and it is the purpose of this research to fill that intellectual gap. This research will look at traditionally allied countries, with a long record of cooperation, and not competing states. To achieve this, the case from 2013 of two North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies, Germany and the United States (US), are our main focus. Lessons worth drawing from this, by NATO small states members, shall be discussed.

Katyń

Using the cover of state secrets in order to suppress and conceal the conclusions of the Katyń investigation is a violation of current Russian law. And yet Russian prosecutors have engaged in a cover-up of the documentation involved in the long-standing international investigation into the Katyń Massacres of 1940. The outcome of the investigation is a far cry from a truthful accounting, instead attesting to the prosecutors’ eagerness to avoid any indictment of the USSR’s former top leadership, and more generally to their attempts to sweep the entire affair under the carpet. First, the Katyń Massacres are characterized not as a war crime but merely as an abuse of power by authorities. Second, the scope of culpability has been deliberately circumscribed: both Stalin and the Politburo members who approved the massacres have been absolved of blame. Third, the inquest shows serious lapses, as no complete list of victims has been made public—an essential step for both completeness of the investigation and for the possibility of the victims’ subsequent rehabilitation. This article explains in detail the political and legal logic behind this treatment of Katyń-related documentation by the Russian political establishment since the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Crossing the (watershed) divide: satellite data and the changing politics of international river basins

Acquiring freshwater resources is a necessary component of sustainable human settlement subject to increasing pressure from population and climate changes. This sometimes scarce resource primarily comes from rivers, and international river basins (IRBs), where watersheds and watercourses cross political boundaries, are often spaces of great political tension and conflict worldwide. Such conflict potential has garnered interest from a wide range of research communities, and each emphasises public access to hydrologic data as integral to successful international management of IRBs. However; these hydrologic data, especially measurements of river flow rate, are often closely guarded state secrets. Satellites have been cited as a key technology set to challenge this data monopoly that have yet been unable to calculate river flow rate without some form of guarded ancillary data. Now, at‐many‐stations hydraulic geometry (AMHG) offers a means of circumventing data limitations without any a priori information, and the forthcoming NASA/CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite also promises to estimate flow rates solely from its novel measurements following launch. In this paper, we explore how these newly available estimates of river flow rate could reconfigure water‐management and interstate relations in IRBs, and demonstrate AMHG, for two cases: the Ganges–Brahmaputra and Mekong. For these basins we find that satellite flow rate retrievals will likely reinforce and favour state‐level negotiations of water resource governance. Also, satellite flow retrievals can have the direct, concrete effect of improving hydrologic understanding of the upstream Ganges–Brahmaputra, a sorely needed advance that will positively benefit millions of Bangladeshis and affect state‐level interactions between India, China, and Bangladesh. Finally, we avoid offering prescriptive water management solutions for each case, as local stakeholders will ultimately determine if and how such satellite retrievals will be used.

Examining the contribution of social media in reinforcing political participation in Zimbabwe

Abstract It normally is assumed that new media activism, in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ political protests in the Middle East, has the potential to promote and effectively enable social and political changes in contemporary societies. However, nowhere does the influence of the digital explosion appear somehow exaggerated as in the case of Africa, where lack of empirical evidence has seen policy-makers, commentators and journalists making extraordinary conclusions justifying the Internet’s perceived potential to shape political processes on the continent. This article questions this notion through an online ethnographic assessment of Zimbabwean blogger Baba Jukwa’s Facebook webpage, which became a prominent platform for the anti-Robert Mugabe establishment up until its sudden withdrawal from the web in August 2014. At its peak, the webpage became a meeting point for activists opposed to Zimbabwe’s long-time president as the anonymous blogger shared what he (assuming he was a man) claimed were juicy state secrets with the rest of the world. His pronouncements especially ahead of the 2013 elections gave hope to opposition campaigners that the era of a man, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, was coming to an abrupt end. Calls were then made suggesting that the presence of the historic page was buttressing democratic participation as Zimbabweans from across the world converged on the blog discussing issues of mutual interest. The findings of our research, however, give a different picture, concluding rather that in spite of the page’s ability to encourage Zimbabweans to openly discuss and share thoughts, there simply is no evidence that Baba Jukwa had helped facilitate increased democratic participation in the country.

Civil-Law Structure of Personal Confidential Information Under the Legislation of Uzbekistan

This article deals with issues on the concepts of personal confidential information, variety of confidential information, such as the protection of state secrets, commercial secrets and personal confidential information. In addition, the analysis of the civillaw structure as personal confidential information is conducted together with personal publicly available information, features of their protection. The regard to personal confidential information, civillegal stru cture can be defined as a collection of personal confidential information, based on the civil law and the actual control of the owner, opportunities of implementing certain actions with them: both on confidentiality of the personal information or allowing an access and use of such personal confidential information.

Esoteric Writing between Mysticism and Science

This essay addresses the claim that behind the use of esoteric writing lies an opposition between philosophy and politics. I suggest that esoteric writing, on the reading of it proposed by Melzer, would reveal philosophy to be engaged in its own form of politics, making esoteric writing analogous to the doctrine of “secrets of state.” Similarly, my comments question the claim that behind esoteric writing there needs to be an opposition between philosophy and religion; I here highlight the idea of esotericism found in Goethe, an idea that might support an “Oriental” understanding of “ancient theology” in which religion does not oppose philosophy. Finally, I propose that we should distinguish between truthful and sophistical uses of esoteric writing, where the latter corresponds to philosophy as a political project based on distinguishing between the few wise and the many unwise, while the former corresponds to philosophy's posture as an endless pursuit of truth open to everyone.

Gumbo Ya-Ya or, What Pearson Can’t Hear: Opt-Out, Standardized Testing, and Student Surveillance

Gumbo Ya-Ya or, What Pearson Can’t Hear:Opt-Out, Standardized Testing, and Student Surveillance Zan Crowder and Stephanie Konle As end-of-course and end-of-grade testing season approaches in North Carolina, schools and school districts have been contacting members of the UNC School of Education with requests for aid in proctoring the upcoming tests. Mandates require that test administrators be accompanied by a proctor in order to protect the security of the testing environment. While this practice promotes suspicion about public school teachers who serve as test administrators, the mandate also presents the logistical problem of providing enough adults to serve as proctors for the hundreds of tests taken by students at the end of the school year. The proliferation of state-mandated tests, coupled with requirements for separate setting accommodations, creates a practical dilemma for schools. This ground-level tension between the mandates of standardized testing and the limited availability of resources necessary for compliance is an issue in the debate over opt-out policies that tends to be overlooked. While proponents and opponents see standardized testing as a philosophical, political and ideological battlefield where the stakes include virtues such as freedom and equality, or the existential qualities of epistemology and ontology, or the social factors of race, poverty, cultural capital, and disparity, testing coordinators are desperately looking for warm bodies to pace laps in a classroom for hours on end to ensure that teachers are not helping students fill in bubble sheets. Teachers and administrators are justifiably concerned about testing security lest they be charged with racketeering and suffer criminal sentencing or other disciplinary measures. This elaborate performance of oversight is just one way that the testing apparatus, initially established with good intention, has driven focus away from teaching and learning and has become a force which now operates of its own volition, an automated beast come to life, limited in scope but acting as though its perspective defines the entirety of educational goals. The revelation that Pearson Publishing is spying on schoolchildren’s digital postings (Strauss, 2015b) to keep them from passing along newly aligned Common Core standardized test questions further indicates how much the environment of testing has acceded to its own internal logic. The story, first reported by blogger Bob Braun, recorded a letter sent by Elizabeth C. Jewett, the Superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey (Braun, 2015). In the correspondence, Superintendent Jewett reported that she had been contacted by officials at the New Jersey Department of Education concerning a testing security breach during a PARCC exam. Upon investigation, Jewett discovered that after school hours, a student did indeed tweet content that “referenced a PARCC test question” (Chiaramonte, 2015). Importantly, Jewett revealed that the Department of Education had informed her that Pearson was monitoring all social media for student references to PARCC testing. Pearson Publishing has responded that they are bound by contracts with states to ensure test security. Their statement reads, “Pearson is contractually required by states to monitor public conversations [End Page 285] on social media to ensure that no assessment information (text, photos, etc.) that is secure and not public is improperly disclosed (Pearson, 2015a). In this way, Pearson has situated itself as part of the state enforcement apparatus presumably performing their duties in accordance with the will of the people. However, companies such as Pearson and SAS (whose value-added metrics remain a “proprietary secret” in North Carolina where they have been purchased and used in rating teachers) who defend their lack of transparency as though they were state secrets are refusing to play by the same rules that they insist upon for other participants in public education. They back a tautological argument that displaces accountability ad infinitum. Another illustration of the deceptive logic of the corporate-state actors is visible in the mission statement on Pearson’s website, which also demonstrates the shift in focus from teaching and learning to the self-referential logic of their own business goals. It reads, in part: The learner is at the center of everything we do. Our commitment to them means that we’re continually measuring the impact our products and services make...

보안교육과 보안관리 역량의 상관관계 분석: 인가된 내부자 기밀유출사례를 중심으로

Current leakage of industrial technologies with revealing state secret against nation is gradually increasing and scope of the spill is diversified from technology-oriented leakage to new economic security sector like information and communication, electrical and electronic, defense industry, illegal export of strategic material, economic order disturbance by foreign country, infringement of intellectual property, etc. So the spill damage can affect not only leaked company but also national interests and entire domestic industry. According to statistics from National Industrial Security Center of National Intelligence Service, a major cause of technology leakage is not only by external things about hacking and malignant code, but internal leakage of former and current employees account for about 80%. And technology leakage due to temptation of money and personal interests followed by technology leakage of subcontractor is steadily increased. Most studies in the field of security have tended to focus on measuring security capability of company in order to prevent leakage core assets or developing measurement Indicators for management rather than security activities of the company members that is most important. Therefore, this study analyzes the effect of most underlying security education in security activities on security capabilities of enterprise. As a result, it indicates that security education have a positive(+) correlation with security capabilities.

Extending South Africa's Tentacles of Empire: The Deterritorialisation of Cahora Bassa Dam

In 1969, Portugal and South Africa signed an agreement that enabled the apartheid regime effectively to extend its tentacles of empire over the proposed dam at Cahora Bassa. Located in the heart of central Mozambique, far from the South African frontier, the dam became a security project masked as a development initiative. Cahora Bassa, including the massive lake behind the dam, rather than becoming the multi-purpose dam originally envisaged by Portuguese planners, was transformed into a strategic security project designed to blunt the advance into southern Mozambique of the liberation movement the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo) and, by extension, its ally the African National Congress (ANC). In this way, the colonial regime and its apartheid ally hoped to prevent attacks against Mozambique's major colonial urban areas of Beira and Lourenço Marques. From Pretoria's perspective, it was preferable to fight the ANC in central Mozambique rather than along the Limpopo river – southern Mozambique's frontier with South Africa. The hydro-electric project at Cahora Bassa also ensured South Africa's energy security. The 1969 agreement guaranteed that 82 per cent of the electricity generated there would be exported to South Africa at well below the world price.This article examines the vital role played by South African interests in financing, constructing, and defending the dam site at Songo, which resulted in the dam's deterritorialisation and allowed South Africa to incorporate Cahora Bassa as an outpost of empire. It also explores the ways in which Pretoria held the dam hostage after Mozambique became independent, as part of a broader process of destabilising its socialist neighbour to the north. Even after the dismantling of the apartheid regime in 1994, the new ANC-led government resisted efforts to abrogate the colonial agreement, and Songo remained a foreign enclave. Although Mozambique regained sovereignty over the dam site in 2007, even today, most of the electricity generated by Cahora Bassa is exported to South Africa, at a price that remains a state secret.

La opinión pública ante la vigilancia masiva de datos. El difícil equilibrio entre acceso a la información y seguridad nacional

RESUMEN: La transparencia y el acceso a la información convierten a la sociedad en una participante activa del proceso de rendición de cuentas de los poderes públicos. Pero, esa libertad informativa tiene límites, como lo es el secreto que necesariamente impone, en la mayor parte de las ocasiones, la salvaguarda de la seguridad nacional. El secreto - y por lo tanto, la excepción a la regla general de la publicidad- tiene como misión impedir que se conozcan ciertas actividades de inteligencia, que recaban y tratan información con la finalidad de garantizar el éxito de determinadas acciones de los servicios de inteligencia-defensa o de prevenir riesgos. En este trabajo se aborda la difícil convivencia entre el derecho de acceso a la información y el secreto de Estado en un momento en que se ha hecho pública la existencia de un control masivo de datos de los ciudadanos por parte de los servicios de inteligencia nacionales y extranjeros. El objeto principal de análisis es ese tipo de controles/vigilancia de las comunicaciones y datos personales que se realizan con un carácter general, preventivo y/o prospectivo y que se diferencia de los más comunes controles de comunicaciones dirigidos a aportar pruebas en el marco de un proceso penal.ABSTRACT:Transparency and access to information turn society into an active participant in the accountability process of public authorities. But that freedom of information has limits, as it is the secret that necessarily the safeguarding of national security imposes many times. The secret ⎯and therefore, the exception to the general rule of publicity⎯ is designed to prevent certain intelligence activities were known and to ensure their success. Between others, these activities consist in processing data of citizens to give enough information to the State to adopt strategic decisions. This essay focuses on the difficult coexistence between the right of access to information and the state secret in a moment when it has come to light the existence of a massive surveillance of citizens’ data by national and foreigner intelligence services. The main object of analysis is such control/surveillance of communications and personal data carried out with a general, preventive and/or prospective aim. This type of surveillance differs from the more common controls of communications pointed to provide evidences under criminal proceedings.

Propaganda 1776: secrets, leaks, and revolutionary communications in early America

Acknowledgments Introduction: Printscapes and Propaganda I. State Secrets: Ben Franklin and WikiLeaks II. Memes, Plagiarism, and Revolutionary Drama III. From East India to the Boston Tea Party: Propaganda at the Extremes IV. Epistolary Propaganda: Counterfeits, Stolen Letters, and Transatlantic Revolutions V. Aftermath: The Poetry of the Post-Revolution Coda Bibliography

STATE SECRETS LAW AND NATIONAL SECURITY

AbstractWith the increased awareness of national security concerns associated with unauthorized disclosure of State secrets, the legal protection of State secrets on national security grounds has assumed renewed significance, while raising ever growing concerns about its impact on freedom of information. Between these competing policy concerns lies a discrete area of law that defines and protects State secrets from unauthorized communication or disclosure. This article aims to ascertain the actual State practice concerning State secrets protection on national security grounds across different countries, and examines common challenges to the delimitation of national security grounds for State secrets protection in light of the changing national security environment.

Цензура в БССР: послевоенные годы, 1944–1956 гг by Л. Смиловицкий (review)

Reviewed by: Цензура в БССР: послевоенные годы, 1944–1956 гг by Л. Смиловицкий Arūnas Streikus (bio) Л. Смиловицкий. Цензура в БССР: послевоенные годы, 1944–1956 гг. Иерусалим, 2015. 360 c. ISBN: 978-965-92411-0-1. Soviet censorship is a wellestablished topic in Soviet studies. Its evolution and performance at different stages has received extensive treatment in several works based on rich archival material.1 Much less is known about the regional variations and specificities of the censorship apparatus. The few available articles on the topic discuss Soviet political control over the public sphere in Latvia and Estonia.2 This is why the book under review is a welcome contribution to the field that sheds new light on the functioning of the Soviet censorship under the particular circumstances of post–World War II Belarus. The book consists of seven chapters. Starting with a detailed description of the organization of censorship in the Belarus SSR (chapter 1), it goes on to examine the staff of the local Glavlit (the central censorship office) in chapter 2. Chapter 3 explores a special category of “state [End Page 488] and military secrets” as a pretext for censorship intervention in the most mundane spheres of life (including agriculture and health care) and the manipulation of public opinion and information. The system of comprehensive censorship of publishing is discussed in chapter 4, and the equally tight control over reading (including libraries and secondhand bookstores) in chapter 5. Of special concern in Belarus was the muting of all Jewish themes in the press and the restriction of access to foreign publications. More than one-third of the book is occupied by chapter 6, which is dedicated to censorship over different forms of cultural production: literature, theater, visual arts, galleries, and so on. The last chapter of the monograph (chapter 7) covers the transitional period after Stalin’s death. Changes in censorship were profound in Belarus, although ambivalent: some topics and books were released from the sway of censors, others remain under their control. New categories of banned information appeared – for example, everything that concerned Stalin’s fallen henchman, Lavrentiy Beria. The author does not confine his account to the history of various forms of state control and manipulation of information, but extends it to reconstruct a broader historical and social context of the epoch. In the book, the historical realities of postwar Belarus are juxtaposed to distorted images disseminated by the official propaganda of the time. The ensuing contrast highlights the importance of the ever-expanding catalog of information forbidden for public access that was listed by Glavlit censors in a register nicknamed “Talmud.” Most references to the actual state of affairs had to be kept secret in order to sustain a surrogate image of reality. Language was part of the censorship process, purged of meanings and words that threatened to compromise the normative discourse of reality. Smilovitskii’s discussion of postwar “Newspeak” resonates with the existing body of research that treats censorship as an instrument establishing and guarding the Soviet discursive order.3 It is all the more disappointing therefore to see that only two pages of the book are devoted to this important topic. The study is based on a rich assortment of primary sources from various archives in Belarus and the Russian Federation. The core is constituted by various documents of the Glavlitbel (the General Directorate for the Protection of Military and State Secrets in the Press of the [End Page 489] BSSR): its annual reports, notes on special topics, and correspondence with the Party and state authorities. They are complemented by a broad range of documents produced by other institutions of political control, including different departments of the Central Committee of the Belarus Communist Party and the Belarus branch of the political police (various predecessors of the KGB). There are also materials of local creative unions, arts museums, the state publishing house, and other organizations that had to comply with censorship in their everyday activities. Documents from Russian archives reveal policy considerations and the guidelines for their implementation by the central Soviet authorities. Unfortunately, the author misses the opportunity to use this diversity of sources to study center−periphery relationships in the process of implementing censorship by clarifying the mechanism of decision making and identifying the priorities of different...

The Ethics of Government Whistleblowing

What is wrong with whistleblowing and when can it be justified? In my view, government whistleblowing, that is, the unauthorized acquisition and dis- closure of classified information about the state or government, is a form of political vigilantism, which involves transgressing the boundaries around state secrets, for the purpose of challenging the allocation or use of power. It may nonetheless be justified when it is suitably constrained and exposes some information that the public ought to know and deliberate about. Government whistleblowing should then be viewed, along the lines of civil disobedience, as a collective cognition- and legitimacy-enhancing device.

The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China ed. by Shenggen Fan et al.

Reviewed by: The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China ed. by Shenggen Fan et al. Kent Deng Shenggen Fan, Ravi Kanbur, Shang-Jin Wei, and Xiaobo Zhang (eds.). The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xxi + 622 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-967820-4, $140.00 (cloth). This is a miniencyclopedia on contemporary Chinese economy: its key factors, key players, key institutions, main mechanisms, and distinctive growth patterns and trajectories. This book is, without a doubt, a huge undertaking, containing a total of 98 short articles under 15 sections written by a total of 121 contributors, of whom two-thirds are ethnically Chinese. It would have been impossible in 1978, when China just abandoned the Maoist fundamentalism and opened its door to the outside world, to round up so many qualified Chinese to write about China’s growth and modernity the western way. At that time the Chinese economy was structurally premodern (i.e., predominantly rural) and autarkical (with less external trade than Hong Kong or Taiwan); very few Chinese mainlanders commanded the English language. The lineup of the authors does give the reader the impression that Chinese scholars are catching up quickly in social sciences of the West, which was unthinkable three decades ago. This volume aims to inform readers of China with a wide range instead of a great depth, a necessary tryout perhaps. On the average, each short article is 5.6 pages long. The use of references and citations is kept minimal. Hence, articles reflect authors’ briefings, or assessments and judgements, rather than their original research outputs. In this context, this volume suits the general public instead of specialists. Several characteristics of this volume will catch the reader’s attention. First of all, economic transition, a topic that dominated studies of post-Mao China until a decade ago, has marginalized: only four articles (2, 10, 33, and 74) are devoted to it. So, there seems a consensus among the authors that China has overcome its transitional phase and that the reforms have passed the point of no return. Secondly, the role of the state remained a repertoire topic regarding, for example, choices of growth strategies and policies, and ways to govern the market/economy (13 articles). This certainly reflects China’s reality since 1949. Thirdly, related to the role of the state, there is an acute awareness of socioeconomic and gender inequality and relative poverty in society (10 articles). This discussion of inequality and poverty is a new phenomenon given that the ruling party openly commits to communism and the welfare of one and every citizen in society. Inequality and poverty used to be treated as the state secret. [End Page 223] Fourthly, there is a strong concern about China’s external impact on the world (10 articles). This is new considering that Maoist autarky existed only a few decades ago. Finally, and rather unexpectedly, there are more articles on China’s regional growth and development than any other topic (16 articles). This obviously is an issue for both current and future generations. Generally speaking, this volume is descriptive. Analysis is, at best, tacit. The amount of information on each particular topic is good only for those who want to have a rough idea about China. Specialists will find them inadequate due to the word limit that each article had to comply with. The real issue is, however, the possible shelf life of this volume. China has been changing very fast—for good or bad. Clearly, the golden age of China’s explosive economic growth and development is now over. That type of growth occurred between 1980, when Deng Xiaoping’s reforms gained momentum, and late 2008, when the world financial sector experienced its meltdown. After 2009, the Chinese growth model has been facing very tough challenges. Firstly, the Maoist legacy of super-cheap labor has been a thing of the past. China’s labor market is no longer the most competitive one in the world. Factories have begun to move out of China to other regions where labor is cheaper. Secondly, China’s high dependence on exports at the expense of its domestic consumption has backfired. Overseas orders...

Rules of Evidence and Liability in Contract Litigation: The Efficiency of the General Dynamics Rule

We examine rules of evidence and liability in contract litigation. When a contractor fails to perform, it has a legal defense that the buyer withheld private information relevant to the performance of the contract. Suppose the buyer claims that admitting evidence for the defense would compromise a valuable secret, e.g., a state secret, what should the legal rule be? We show that the evidentiary rules introduced by the Supreme Court in General Dynamics v. U.S. lead to a more efficient outcome than either a strict liability rule or an evidentiary rule requiring the disclosure of the buyer's private information.

State Secrets

If computing is truly a universal technology, we need to disentangle it from national secrets. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/r-kIJQu4iDQ is an audio recording of author David Alan Grier reading his Errant Hashtag column in which he discusses how if computing is truly a universal technology, we need to disentangle it from national secrets.

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, by Kirsten Weld

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, by Kirsten Weld. Durham, Duke University Press, 2014. xvi, 335 pp. $26.95 US (paper). In June 2005, investigators with Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDH) stumbled upon what appeared to be vast quantities of old papers in derelict offices of Guatemala's infamous national police. The human rights workers soon realized they had discovered the largest collection of secret state documents in Latin American history. The incredible story that follows this discovery, along with the gruesome tale that precedes it, is the heart of Kirsten Weld's brilliantly narrated and written first book. The story Weld tells, while engaging in its own right, holds concrete lessons and insights not only for scholars of Guatemala and Latin America, but for anyone interested in the politics of history and memory, the power of archives and state terror, as well as the process of postwar transition and reckoning. While the role of Guatemala's military in the state-sponsored genocide that took place in the Guatemalan countryside during Guatemala's civil war (19601996) is well known, Kirsten Weld takes us into a lesser known, but equally important, history of the national police and Guatemala City. Paper Cadavers is divided into four parts covering the initial of the archive, the history of the police archive and its role in Guatemala's counterinsurgency, the role of the archives in social reconstruction at the ends of war, and finally the institutionalization of the archive and the development of a new culture in Guatemala. The thread tying these parts and chapters together is the national police archive itself and Weld's compelling argument for archival thinking: putting archives--their histories, silences, distortions, and politics--at the centre of our questions. Drawing upon recent works comprising the archival turn, Weld argues that archives must be analyzed as more than the sum of their parts--as instruments of political action, implements of state formation ('technologies of rule'), institutions of liberal democratization, enablers of gaze and desire, and sites of social (p. 19). The heart of Paper Cadavers is thus a story of how this one particular archive was transformed from a weapon of surveillance, social control, and ideological management for a counterinsurgent state to use against its enemies into a weapon of democratic opening in the pursuit of justice for war crimes for a demilitarized Left, victims of state terror and their families. In the first part of the book. Weld narrates the explosive of the archive and the challenges faced by human rights workers as they grappled with what to do with 75-million pages documenting over a century's worth of blood-filled history. The discovery of the archives, however, was not entirely accidental. Beginning in the mid-1980s, family members of those disappeared and killed in Guatemala City organized around the collective demand for information about victims' fates and state transparency and their struggles provided instructive lessons for those involved in the rescue of the national police archive. The second part of the book takes up these state secrets by looking backward into the history of the national police and its practices. …