Private Eyes in the Sky: Emerging Technology and the Political Consequences of Eroding Government Secrecy

Abstract

How do emerging technologies that erode governments’ near-monopolies on intelligence information affect public support for leaders and their foreign policies? Technologies—like imagery satellites—that were once the domain of state governments are now increasingly available to commercial and private actors. As a result, non-government entities can now exercise the disclosure decision, publicly divulging information whose release was once controlled by states. We argue that non-government entities with access to these technologies serve as alternative information sources that can verify government claims or reveal activities governments have not previously acknowledged. Using original survey experiments we find that commercial satellite imagery can serve as an informational cue that shifts public opinion, and, depending on its content, either attenuates or bolsters the effect of similar cues from government sources. The findings advance debates over secrecy in international relations and on the effect of emerging technologies in the security domain.

Do Proxies Provide Plausible Deniability? Evidence From Experiments on Three Surveys

“…Sometimes, both government and private sources tread cautiously in how they attribute responsibility. At other times, they release detailed reports along with evidence such as satellite imagery that are capable of shifting public opinion effectively (Lin-Greenberg and Milonopoulos 2021). It seems plausible that public opinion would respond differently based on the kinds of language and arguments used by private and public actors to shape perceptions of responsibility for covert action, and future research could explore this variation.…”

Committed sponsors: external support overtness and civilian targeting in civil wars

“…Finally, the findings raise questions that resonate with the current debates around “post-truth politics” (Adler and Drieschova, 2021; Crilley, 2018). As states “control over both information collection and the disclosure decision” is likely to decrease in the coming years (Lin-Greenberg and Milonopoulos, 2021: 5), it appears crucial to study how the truthfulness of discourses in international politics may have concrete implications on the battlefields in civil wars.…”

Who Punishes Leaders for Lying About the Use of Force? Evaluating The Microfoundations of Domestic Deception Costs

“…We focus explicitly on lying, defined as a positive action designed to deceive the target audience via a statement that the speaker knows or suspects to be false (making it distinct from behaviors like breaking commitments or reneging on threats, as well as from other forms of deception such as strategic concealment or spinning). This form of deception has not received sufficient attention in the literature, and might be even more relevant today than before: as Lin-Greenberg and Milonopolous (2021) note, advances in information-gathering technologies make it more likely that governmental lies could be revealed to the public by a third party whistleblower, as is the case in our vignette. In addition to the Lie treatment itself, in each survey experiment we manipulate a host of conditions pertaining to the president and the lie – including a threat-deflating scenario, in which an American president either lies or tells the truth to avoid the use of force, and a threat-inflating scenario in which the president either lies or tells the truth to justify the use of force.…”