Table of Contents
Issue #4 as well as supplement added at the end.
Communication Research Trends:
Secrecy, Privacy and the Right to Information
vol. 3 no. 4 1982
Research Trends in Religious Communication:
The Church and the Right to Information
vol. 3 no. 4 1982
Abstract
George Orwell's 1984 is the vision of the ultimate totalitarian state. The citizens ruled by Big Brother surrender all control over their lives, their personal privacy is abolished, and government surveillance is ubiquitous and inescapable. Meanwhile, impenetrable secrecy protects and enhances the power of the rulers and their agents.
Many people find disturbing echoes of Orwell's nightmare in present-day democratic societies. They point to growing control of all aspects of everyday life by governments and large corporations, to the storage of more and more sensitive personal information in ever larger data banks, and to continuing 'Watergate type' revelations of abuse of power and corruption in high places. There is growing public pressure for measures to protect privacy and to give the people a legal right to know what is being done in their name.
But how justified are such fears? Are computer data banks the real threats to privacy? Is more open government necessary or desirable? Can secrecy be limited by passing freedom of information legislation? Will the right to information conflict with the right of privacy? This issue looks at these and other key questions posed by researchers in this complex and important debate.
Recommended Citation
(1982)
"Secrecy, Privacy and the Right to Information,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 3:
No.
4, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol3/iss4/1
