Secrecy and Accountability

     If you operate in secret, out of the spotlight of an overseer or authority, you can effectively escape accountability for your actions. Governments, agencies, institutions and ideological groups have known this for a long time.

        

        It allows a government or institution to escape consequences for actions of questionable ethics or ones that can raise moral objections from the public. 

       If there is no accountability for a government or agency then operations that can violate human rights or criminal activities or even more egregious affronts like crimes against humanity or war crimes may never even see the light of day, let alone have any of the perpetrators answer for them.

       Rampant secrecy and lack of accountability allows systems that once were morally and ethically sound to be subverted and undermined by a few individuals who operate in secrecy and avoid accountability and consequences for their actions and operations.

       Things as egregious as human experimentation, false witnessing of opponents or dissenters such as framing for wrongdoings that never happened, or outright murder can occur and the subversive perpetrators may never be held accountable for their crimes because of their cloak of secrecy.

         Countries as complex and mulifaceted as the United States can have a difficult time exercising oversight over certain factions of society and holding them accountable. There are a lot of agencies and a lot of individuals, many of which have the potential to commit crimes or human rights violations. 

          Because of the confusion of the media coupled with the secrecy of governments and government agencies, the American people are often left overwhelmed by the sheer volume of happenings in the country and the world, and the truth gets so mixed in with deception that it can be exceedingly difficult to sort through. 

        If you hold the keys to the secrets, you hold the keys to the kingdom. Any country shrouded in secrecy and soaked in confusion to such a degree that accountability is all but impossible, that country probably can't lay claim to being a bastion of liberty. 

There are a few reasons for secrets. Strategic secrets are kept to prevent our enemies from knowing or strengths and weakness to an extent that could compromise our strategic advantage. 

     Another reason for a secret is to conceal a crime or violation from authorities that can hold you accountable. This type of secrecy subverts liberty, subverts ethics, subverts morality, and subverts justice.

          If you are good enough at keeping a secret and covering your tracks, you can get away with anything. Even things as egregious, heinous, or atrocious as crimes against humanity, and crimes against humanity can take many forms.