It then analyzed those communication tools on seven factors, like their encryption capabilities, whether users can verify contacts' identities even if the service provider is compromised, whether past communications are secured if your keys are stolen (forward-secrecy), whether the code is open to independent review or has been audited, and more.
The chief executive of BBC Worldwide has been lambasted by a committee of MPs for maintaining a "shroud of secrecy" over whether Alan Yentob has a lucrative commercial deal for global sales of the BBC1 TV series Imagine he presents.
Whether these efforts toward more transparency absolved ACTA's original sin of secrecy, and whether the improvements to its text are enough to mollify all concerns is an open question that some nations may answer differently.
This lodge sought to promote liberal ideas; its secrecy hides whether it was a real Masonic lodge, or a lodge with political goals.
The government announced plans for "special courts" sitting in secrecy to decide whether extended detention without charge could be applied, using evidence inadmissible in a normal court.
Whether this is enough to carry a movie, or whether the secrecy of the saga lent it a weight it doesn't altogether deserve, is hard to decide.
Lawmakers have also begun to question whether the secrecy about the Iraqi contracts is justified by the need for speed and the pressures of war, as the agencies say.
Asked whether secrecy clauses in the settlement agreements were intended to cover up the problem, Mr. Crigger said, "I don't know about the status" of such clauses.
In 1953, five years after the crash, the Supreme Court reversed, in a murky decision that seemed to tell judges to forgo making their own determinations about whether secrecy is warranted, in at least some cases.
Twelve criteria were then selected as key indicators of opacity, varying from whether there was formal banking secrecy or not, to whether accounts were required to be on public record, to how many tax information exchange agreements the jurisdictions had.
He also questioned whether the Pentagon's secrecy about the spacecraft's orbit had any practical consequences other than keeping the public in the dark.
