Abstract

The talk will take place in the Sociology Department (Seminar Room), Free School Lane

http://map.cam.ac.uk/Department+of+Sociology

The U.S. government and much of the American news media have responded to the disclosures of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden as liabilities to national security. Even those who concede the moral and legal value of these leaks often tend to see these benefits in antagonistic tension with the need for security. But this framework ignores the heavy costs–in blood, money and risk–of American state secrecy and dragnet surveillance. This talk aims to restore perspective on and reevaluate what is a threat and what is a security asset, what is extreme and what is moderate, what is utopian and what is pragmatic.