Veil Of Secrecy Research Articles

The afterlife of ISDS awards: post-award settlements and the limits of transparency reforms

Abstract Post-award settlements in investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) remain largely unstudied. One of the reasons for this gap in knowledge is the lack of transparency in the post-award phase of the relationship between investors and host states. The primary objective of this article is to use novel empirical data to explore the transparency gaps and absences in the post-award phase of ISDS. We seek to challenge the prevailing notions of finality of ISDS awards and highlight the need to re-think the end goals of transparency considering the significant public policy implications post-award agreements may engender. The veil of secrecy that continues to shroud the world of post-award settlements raises a number of issues that go to the heart of the ongoing debate about the workings of ISDS, its legitimacy and the role of openness and accountability therein.

O-181 It takes more than genes to build a family

Abstract Sperm donation has been known to mankind possibly for a very long time, although first medical reports come from the late 18th century. Initially, most inseminations in married couples were homologous, involving the husband’s semen. The first publicized breakthrough that came in 1884 would today be considered unethical, as an anesthetized woman was subjected to an injection of semen from a handsome (as duly reported) student of medicine, without any consent of both her and her spouse. The veil of secrecy that covered heterologous insemination was finally lifted when Dr Mary Barton openly acknowledged the practice in her clinic and published the first manual on “artificial insemination.” It set the ethical standards for such procedures—including mutual anonymity of donors and recipients and maintaining absolute secrecy of the fact of donor insemination—for decades to come. The cost was of course the lost identity of the conceived children and the often reported emotional detachment of the fathers from their social, but not genetical, offspring. The grave consequences of the limited pool of donors were yet to be discovered with the advent of DNA testing. In the UK, Barton’s husband and another collaborator were confirmed to father at least 100 children each. In the Netherlands, the country was shaken by the case of Jan Karbaat who used the sperm of an anonymous donor—who probably should not have even passed psychological screening—to bring more than 200 babies to the world. Suddenly, lots of adults learnt of the existence of their never expected siblings. Concomitantly, more and more parents revealed the fact of donor conception to their children motivated by openness. The secrets could not be held any longer and Joanna Rose was the first British woman that won a court case in 2002 against her own country that was wilfully breaking her right to respect for private and family life guaranteed by European Convention on Human Rights. The proponents of open donation found support also in Convention on the Rights of the Child. More and more countries started enforcing either open or at least double-track donation from then on. However, even more legislations blissfully ignore these ethical developments and maintain complete anonymity of the donor insemination procedures. This is where my personal story begins, as a father of twins born in 2012 from in vitro fertilization thanks to the semen of an anonymous donor. At that time, Poland even did not have an actual law on fertility treatment. The ART centres adopted their own policies on anonymous donation and signed contracts with their patients on a case by case basis. The legal status in my country was further cemented with the long overdue adoption in 2015 of Act on Fertility Treatment that forbids non-anonymous donation and even excludes the prospective parents from the decision process on the choice of the donor. The burden of partially lost identity of my kids will be with me possibly my entire life. But I don’t want it to cast a shadow on our family relations. We have to deal with my non-genetic fatherhood one way or another. We maintain our family ties in full knowledge of the fact of the existence of some unnamed benefactor that made this possible. Maybe one day my children will find some unsuspected genetic relatives via increasingly popular public DNA banks if they choose so, thus sticking together parts of their identity. Only time will tell.

The veil of secrecy: Family firms’ approach to ESG transparency and the role of institutional investors

Our analysis explores the relationship between family ownership and ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) transparency in Italian companies from 2016–2020, employing agency theory, stakeholder theory, and Socio Emotional Wealth (SEW). We find that family-owned firms typically exhibit lower ESG transparency, especially in social aspects, due to priorities like privacy and legacy. Institutional investors (IIs), however, play a crucial role in enhancing transparency, mitigating the usual opacity in these firms. This highlights the importance of IIs in advancing ESG disclosures, providing strategic insights for addressing the transparency challenges associated with family ownership and improving governance practices to narrow the corporate transparency gap.

Horizontal Holdings: Untangling the Networks of Corporate Landlords

Since the capitalist and colonial enclosure of land-qua-property, the property parcel has served as the geographic foundation of land ownership. Bounded, self-contained, and mutually exclusive with all surrounding parcels, this geography is taken for granted in our contemporary understandings of property. As the ownership of land, property, and housing has become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in recent years, however, it perhaps makes more sense to think of property not as isolated and individual, but as fundamentally networked and relational. Properties that are quite distant from one another are often connected through tangled webs of corporate property ownership, which are meant to deliberately obscure the true ownership—and concentration—of such property from public view. This article demonstrates the importance of untangling these corporate networks, using a case study of three large corporate landlords operating in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia: Invitation Homes, Pretium Partners, and Amherst Holdings. The article shows how the true extent of these corporate landlords’ holdings is hidden by these networks, and how researchers can untangle that to produce a more complete understanding of concentrated housing ownership. Through this method, we can uncover that these three firms control more than 19,000 single-family homes across the five core counties of Metro Atlanta, using an extensive network of more than 190 corporate aliases—registered to seventy-four different addresses across ten states and one territory—to hide their holdings behind a veil of secrecy and insulate themselves from liability.

Commemorative Volumes in Archaeology and the (Preclassical) Southern Levant

Commemorative Volumes in Archaeology and the (Preclassical) Southern Levant

Can Machine Learning Save Children at Risk?

Abstract The idea that machine learning can improve children's social care is attractive, but fraught with challenges – the veil of secrecy around predictive analytics in public services must be lifted, say Michael Sanders and Vicky Clayton

К истокам психологии гибридных войн: тайные операции и геополитический смысл их пищевого наименования

There are many secret pages in the history, especially concerning the geopolitical confrontation, which only lose their secrecy over time. But even so, the events that unraveled behind the veil of secrecy may continue to play the role of the psychological weapon most in demand in hybrid warfare. It is to this type of psychological means of influencing opponents that not only covert operations themselves, but also their names, in particular, taken from the arsenal of food products, can be attributed.

Pennhurst and the Struggle for Disability Rights

Pennhurst and the Struggle for Disability Rights

Technology and countersurveillance: holding governments accountable for refugee externalization policies

ABSTRACT This paper explores how technology and counter-surveillance can be used to hold governments accountable for the treatment of refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants beyond their borders. Externalization policies rely on secrecy and obfuscation. Carried out far from the public gaze, governments implement a range of measures aimed at ensuring that the precise details of their operations are not made public. Without knowing exactly what governments are doing, it is difficult to demonstrate that states are breaching their international obligations. Drawing on examples from Australia, Europe and the United States, this article examines how refugees, migrants, activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used technology to pierce this veil of secrecy, and how the images and data collected have been used in legal challenges and to influence public opinion. The aim is to learn from past experiences to inform the more effective use of technology in accountability strategies going forward.

К онтологии православного искусства

The art of the Orthodox Christian Church conveys the special thinking intrinsic to believers, which does not fit into standard ideas. This type of thinking is characterized by a deep penetration into all aspects of artistry: icon painting, church singing and church action. Researchers have been paying attention to this for a long time. At the same time, only in the present day with the careful study of the works of St. John of Damascus and the Church Fathers, the veil of secrecy has been lifted. The integrality of this thinking becomes clear, and it is achieved solely in the synthesis of the constituent parts of the rite and its artistic means. The ontology of Orthodox Christian art is revealed in the article by means of approaches to the analysis of the works of St. John of Damascus and examples of the implementation of the synthesis of arts in icon painting and church chants which are close to the content of the icon. The works of Father Pavel Florensky, Yuri Lotman, Alexei Lidov, Sergei Averintsev and Nikolai Mikhaltsov have become the impetus for careful reading of St. John of Damascus’ guidelines on such a concept as perichorisis, which, as it becomes clear, is important for the interpretation not only in the Christological key, but also as the most important ontological basis of the entire artistic heritage that accompanies worship in church. The synthesis of the color scheme of the icon image, the color model of the text of the accompanying chant, the construction of melodic formulas in accordance with the metatext points of the chant – altogether this creates a unique complex of artistic means of Orthodox Christian art.

Ljudski resurs u funkciji prikrivenog kriminalističkog obaveštajnog izvora

The use of covert human resources by criminalistics agencies in the investigation of world crime has always been topical. The work is about the criminalistics human intelligence source which is recruited and led by criminalistics agencies to collect the information's about the criminal activities inside the national states and at the international level. The work is opening the door to the scientists research into the field wrapped by a, veil of secrecy. The work has the methodological approach which applicates the analysis method of content, historical descriptions and comparisons to take a view of conceptual determination of human intelligence source. The research has shown scientific and theoretical approach to date, which a human intelligence source is observing as the covert opening activity. The theoretical research results provide a general perspective which helps to understand the intelligence source, with an explanation of the necessary elements that build it.

Lift the Veil of Secrecy in Sub-Resolved Pores by Xe-Enhanced Computed Tomography

Lift the Veil of Secrecy in Sub-Resolved Pores by Xe-Enhanced Computed Tomography

FAMILY MEMORY OF THE RUSSIA’S CITIZENS IN THE CONTEXT OF ACTUAL SOCIAL CHALLENGES

Applying to the sociological data, the author examines the Russians’ perception of the family memory as a source of historical knowledge and proves that the memory about relatives and friends who have become participants and witnesses of the state’s key events seriously “feeds” the emotional citizens’ attitude towards symbols of the state identity and national pride. The actuality of the article is determinated by the global development of digital communication that seriously influences on the interest towards the reconstruction of family history and allows persons today to lift the veil of secrecy over the history of many families. Contemporary internet resources give wide opportunities for many modernized citizens to receive objective historical knowledge about their families. The purpose of this article is to study the specifics of the preservation and reproduction of family memory by the Russia’s citizens. In order to achieve this goal the author implement some research tasks. The author study as the place of the family memory among a number of various historical sources as the demand for family historical knowledge that the persons from different socio-demographic groups has. The special attention is paid to the study of the social media mechanisms that are using in order to reconstruct and reproduce the family memory.

The End of Factory Farming

The End of Factory Farming

Implementing and Interpreting Refugee Resettlement Through a Veil of Secrecy: A Case of LGBT Resettlement From Africa

In the last decade the number of countries aiming to resettle refugees increased and complementary pathways aiming to relocate humanitarian migrants expanded. Stakeholders in charge of the selection process of candidates and logistical organization of these programs multiplied as a consequence. Because refugee resettlement and complementary pathways are not entrenched in international law, selection processes and logistical organization are at the discretion of stakeholders in charge, sometimes hardly identifiable themselves, and can vary greatly from one scheme to another. For displaced candidates to resettlement and complementary pathways, this opacity can have dramatic consequences in regions of origin. This article will present the case of a group of African lesbian and gay asylum seekers who first sought asylum in a neighboring country, hoping for resettlement to the global North. Because their first country of asylum criminalizes homosexuality, the responsible regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must circumvent the said country’s sovereignty on asylum matters and recognize LGBT asylum seekers as refugees under UN mandate before submitting their cases to resettlement countries. UNHCR agents thus conduct refugee status determination (RSD) and resettlement procedures behind a veil of secrecy, at the risk of antagonizing their local partners and confusing aspiring refugees. Meanwhile, INGOs from the global North cooperate with local LGBT associations to relocate LGBT Africans out of the same African countries. This paper will show African asylum asylum seekers’ efforts to qualify for all these programs simultaneously, unaware of the mutually exclusive aspects of some; to become visible to institutions and “sponsors” they deem more powerful, at the expense of solidarity within their group.

Scientists under Surveillance: The FBI Files

Scientists under Surveillance: The FBI Files

Reading the Human through Robots

Reading the Human through Robots

Medieval nanotechnology: Thickness determination of Zwischgold samples

• Focused study aiming at technological parameters of corroded Mediaeval Zwischgold. • Gold layer in a nanoscale thickness range of 20–50 nm, with the peak at 30 nm. • Full foil thickness (50–260 nm) obtained from EDX derived Ag/Au weight ratio. • Ultra-high-resolution SEM measurements, supported by STEM and RBS. • Scientific evidence for paleness of Zwischgold. A special gilding material called Zwischgold has been frequently observed in medieval gilded artefacts. As a bilayer metal leaf made from gold and silver, it exhibits similar but slightly paler golden colour tone compared to pure gold. Zwischgold surface can be darkened quickly due to the corrosion of its silver base. Despite its frequent mentions in medieval guild statutes, the production of Zwischgold and its important technological parameters have been under a veil of secrecy since the Middle Ages. Here, we examine the thicknesses and materials proportions of medieval Zwischgold, through high-resolution scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (SEM-EDX) on a large number of samples taken from late medieval gilded sculptures. We observe that medieval Zwischgold contains ultra-thin gold layers in a thickness range of ca. 20–50 nm, indicating the employment of high-precision technologies in manufacturing of delicate art materials in the late medieval period. It further clarifies some ambiguity in gilding history, regarding the colour appearance of medieval Zwischgold. As supportive data, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) were applied, in order to confirm the precision and accuracy of the sample preparation and the SEM analysis.

Первые интерпретации «И цзина» на Западе и в России

The Yi-jing易經(Canon of Changes), or Zhou yi周易(All-Encompassing Cyclical Changes of the Zhou [era]), is “the book of books” of Chinese culture, which is also claimed to be the primary source of binary numeration, first described in the West by Leibniz. He was always interested in China, familiar with the binary code of tri and hexagrams (gua) of the Yi-jing and acknowledged its mythical creator, the ancestor emperor Fuxi, as the discoverer of binary arithmetic, and himself – as the one who found it again after four thousand years. At present, historical data do not allow us making an accurate conclusion about the dependence or independence of this outstanding discovery in Europe from the Chinese prototype. The time of the penetration of the initial information about the Yi-jing into Europe is still hidden by a veil of secrecy. The lack of a message about it in the book of Marco Polo is one of its mysteries. At the same time in the Mediterranean area traces of acquaintance with the Yi-jing studies are visible in such cultural phenomena as astrology and alchemy, Kabbalah and the teachings of Ramon Llull, sextine and hexachord. The beginning of the European study of the Yi-jing was laid by Jesuit missionaries who arrived in China at theend of the 16th century. Among them, by the end of the 17 th century, a whole trend of “Yi-jingists” or “figuralists” was formed. They saw Yi-jing as the Chinese Bible, embodying the original Divine Revelation in the form of the kabbalistic “figures” of the gua and being an expression of the common, sacred and antediluvian “hieroglyphic science” of the ancient world, that is, “Metaphysics of numbers, or general scientific method”, “containing all other knowledge”. Apparentlythe first information in Russia about the Yi-jing was published by the first Russiansinologist, German historian and philologist-polyglot G. (Th.) S. Bayer in the two-volume Museum Sinicum (Petersburg, 1730) in Latin. In Russian the primary in -formation about Yi-jing became available to the reader half a century later owing to the coryphaeus of Russian sinology of the 18th century Aleksei L. Leontiev. In 1782 he published an illustrated and commented translation of a fragment from Yi-jing (named Convenient Base) as an appendix to his translation of the Manchu text of the Statutes of the Great Qing (大清會典Dai-Qing hui-dian). Leontiev mentioned the French abbot who visited St. Petersburg in 1769 as the initiator of his appeal to the Yi-jing, but did not indicate his name. Petr E. Skachkov (1892–1964) agreed with Vsevolod S. Kolokolov (1896–1979) that this abbot was the famous French Jesuit missionary and versatile scientist Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759). However, he died ten years earlier. Most likely the interlocutor of Leontiev was a well-known theologian and economist-physiocrat, French abbot Nicolas Baudeau (1730–1792), who held confidential negotiations with Catherine IIin 1769 in St. Petersburg in connection with the situation in Poland. The secrecy of this mission on the eve of the first partition of Poland fully explains the concealment of his name in 1782 when he was still alive and preparing the second partition of Poland. Apparently, a look at the Yi-jing of the French enlighteners184 and physiocrats, expressed by F. Quesnay (1694–1774) and reported by Baudeauto Leontiev prompted him to link the ancient canon with Statutes of the Great Qing. Vasilii P. Vasiliev (1818–1900) expressed a number of original thoughts about the Yi-jing, which may have influenced the creation of his graphic system of Chinese characters and Mendeleev periodic table. Yulian K. Shchutsky (1897–1938), the first Russian researcher who specially studied the Yi-jing and wrote an extensive monograph about it, strangely ignored the statements of his domestic predecessors, but his innovative approach anticipated the neo-mystic Jungian tendency in Western interpretations of the Canon in the 20 th century. Due to the psychologization and aestheticization of the Yi-jing sanctified by world authorities in this field, after the Second World War this neo-mysticism penetrated the mass Western culture which repeated the initial success prepared by figuralists three centuries earlier on a new level and larger scale.

Israel's SIGINT Oversight Ecosystem: COVID-19 Secret Service Location Tracking as a Test Case

By mid March 2020, Israel had experienced the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a fortnight confirmed coronavirus cases surged from half a dozen to 178 cases. The government responded to the challenge of identifying potential carriers by tasking the Israeli Security Agency (the ISA, or Shin Bet) with cellphone location tracking of the routes of confirmed coronavirus patients and the identifications of individuals with whom they had been in close contact. Israel's ISA communications metadata collection measures have been shrouded in veil of secrecy. The debate – in parliament and in court - regarding the use of the country's secret service counterterrorism mass surveillance measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, is a rare opportunity to assess whether the institutional oversight mechanisms on SIGINT collection activities are sufficient and effective. The paper will (1) describe the existing SIGINT oversight regime in Israel; (2) describe its response to COVID-19 location tracking in Israel; and, (3) in light of existing literature, will provide an analysis of that response.