Secret police (sometimes political police) are a police organization which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state. Police are agents or agencies usually of the executive, empowered to enforce the law and to effect public and social order through the legitimatized use of force National security is the entire scope of measures undertaken by the Governments of Nation-states in providing assurance of national Sovereignty A state is a political association with effective Sovereignty over a geographic Area and representing a Population. Secret police forces are typically associated with totalitarian regimes, as they are often used to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the rule of law. Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe Political systems where a State regulates nearly every aspect of public and private Political power ( Imperium in Latin is a type of power held by a group in a Society which allows administration of some or all of The rule of law, in its most basic form is the principle that no one is above the law Secret police are law enforcement organizations officially endowed with authority superior to civil police forces, operating outside the normal boundaries of the law, and they are often accountable only to the executive branch of the government. In Political science and Constitutional law, the executive is the branch of government responsible for the day-to-day management of the State. They operate entirely or partially in secrecy; i. e. , most or all of their operations are obscure and hidden from the general public and from all government officials, except for the topmost executive officials^[1]. Secret police organizations have often been used as an instrument of political repression. Political repression is the Persecution of an individual or group for political reasons particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part States where the secret police wield significant power are sometimes referred to as police states. The term police state describes a State in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social economic and political Secret police differ from the domestic security agencies in modern liberal democracies, because domestic security agencies are generally subject to government regulation, reporting requirements, and other accountability measures. A security agency is an organization which conducts intelligence activities for the internal Security of a Nation, State or Organization The term "liberal" in "liberal democracy" does not imply that the government of such a democracy must follow the political ideology of This article is for the legal term For regulation of genes see Regulation of gene expression. Accountability is a concept in Ethics with several meanings It is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability enforcement responsibility, blameworthiness Despite such oversight, there still exists the possibility of domestic-security agencies acting unlawfully and taking on some characteristics of secret police. Which government agencies may be classed or characterised, in whole or part, as "secret police" is disputed by political scientists.

Methods and history

Secret police not only have the traditional police authority to arrest and detain, but in some cases they are given unsupervised control of the length of detention, assigned to implement punishments independent of the public judiciary, and allowed to administer those punishments without external review. An arrest is the act of depriving a person of his or her liberty usually in relation to the investigation and prevention of crime Detention generally refers to a State or Government holding a person in a particular area (generally called a Detention centre) either for Interrogation In Law, the judiciary or judicial system is the system of Courts which administer Justice in the name of the sovereign or State The tactics of investigation and intimidation used by secret police enable them to accrue so much power that they usually operate with little or no practical restraint^[2]. Intimidation (also called cowing) is intentional behavior "which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities" fear of Injury or Harm. Secret-police organizations employ internal spies and civilian informants to find protest leaders or dissidents, and they may also employ agents provocateurs to incite political opponents to perform illegal acts against the government, whereupon such opponents may be arrested^[3]. Protest expresses relatively overt reaction to events or situations sometimes in favor though more often opposed Traditionally an agent provocateur ( Plural: agents provocateurs, French for "inciting agent" is a person employed by the police or Secret police may open mail, tap telephone lines, use various techniques to trick, blackmail, or coerce relatives or friends of a suspect into providing information. Wiretap redirects here For the radio program see WireTap (radio program Telephone tapping (or wire tapping / wiretapping in Deception (also called beguilement or subterfuge) is the act of convincing another to believe Information that is not true or not the whole truth as in Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal substantially true information about a person to the public a family member or associates unless a demand made upon the Coercion (co-er-shion is the practice of compelling a person or manipulating them to behave in an involuntary way (whether through action or inaction by use of threats In the Parlance of Criminal justice, a suspect is a known person suspected of committing a Crime. The secret police are renowned for raiding homes between midnight and dawn, to apprehend people suspected of dissent^[4][5][6]. Dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or Opposition to an Idea (eg

People apprehended by the secret police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. Arbitrary arrest and detention, or ( AAD) is the Arrest and detention of an individual in a case in which there is no likelihood or Evidence While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment^[7]. Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is intentionally Suspects may not receive a public trial, and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court-style show trial, or by a secret tribunal. Public trial or open trial is a trial open to public as opposed to the Secret trial. A kangaroo court or kangaroo trial, sometimes likened to a Drumhead court-martial or Drumhead trial, is a sham Legal proceeding or Court The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly Public trial. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history include the secret police of East Germany (the Ministry for State Security or Stasi) and Portugal (PIDE)^[8]. The German Democratic Republic ( GDR; Deutsche Demokratische Republik DDR; commonly known in English as East Germany) was a Socialist state For the regular police in East Germany see Volkspolizei. The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit ( Ministry for State Security Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (República Portuguesa is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Pide can mean several things Pita, a type of flatbread typical of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines

Secret police have been used by many types of governments. Secret police forces in dictatorships and totalitarian states usually use violence and acts of terror to suppress political opposition and dissent, and may use death squads to carry out assassinations and "disappearances". A dictatorship is usually defined as an autocratic Form of government in which the Government is ruled by a Dictator. Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe Political systems where a State regulates nearly every aspect of public and private A death squad is an armed Squad that kills civilians terrorists or guerillas AssassiNation is the sixth album by Krisiun, released in 2006 on Century Media. A forced disappearance occurs when an organization forces a person to vanish from Public view either by Murder or by simple Sequestration. Although secret police normally do not exist in democratic states, there are different varieties of democracy and, in times of emergency or war, a democracy may lawfully grant its policing and security services additional or sweeping powers, which may be seen or construed as a secret police. Here is a partial list of varieties of democracy. The types of Democracy listed here are not mutually exclusive A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend certain normal functions of government alert citizens to alter their normal behaviors or order government agencies War is an international relations Dispute, characterized by organized Violence between National Military units

Secret police in fiction

The concept of secret police is also popular in fiction, usually portraying such an institution at its most extreme. A well-known example is the Thought Police from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-four, who used psychology and omnipresent surveillance to eliminate dissent. In George Orwell 's Dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four the Government attempts to control not only the speech and actions but also the Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950 who used the Pseudonym George Orwell, was an English writer Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984) by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) is a 1949 English Novel Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and In the graphic novel V for Vendetta and the movie based on the novel, the secret police were used to capture and silence dissenters. V for Vendetta is a ten-issue Comic book The Public Security Section 9 from the Ghost in the Shell series uses information gathering, cybernetic communication, and hacking. Public Security Section 9 ( Japanese: 公安9課 Kōan Kyūka) also referred to as Public Safety Section 9 in some translations is a fictional intelligence is a Japanese Cyberpunk Manga created by Masamune Shirow, and first published in 1989 in Young Intelligence (abbreviated int or intel) is not Information, but the product of evaluated information valued for its currency and relevance rather than A cyborg is a Cybernetic Organism ( ie, an organism that has both artificial and natural systems Hack has several meanings in the technology and computer science fields The Civil Protection in Half Life 2 were notable for their use of intimidation and murder to keep citizens in line. Half-Life 2 is a Science fiction First-person shooter computer game and the sequel to the highly acclaimed Half-Life In Return of the Pink Panther the Lugash secret police hunt down Sir Charles Lytton. The Return of the Pink Panther is the fourth film in the Pink Panther series released in. In Star Trek, there is the Tal Shiar, Section 31 and the Obsidian Orders

See also

• CIA
• Death squad
• Gestapo
• High policing
• Intelligence agency
• KGB
• List of intelligence agencies
• List of secret police organizations
• Mass surveillance
• Law enforcement agency
• Police
• Reichstag Fire Decree
• Secret service
• Stalinism
• Surveillance
• Frumentarii
• Agentes in rebus
• Secret Court of 1920

References

External links

• High Policing: The Protection of National Security
• MSNBC - Domestic spying vs. secret police
• Proposal for a Privacy Protection Guideline on Secret Personal Data Gathering and Transborder Flows of Such Data in the Fight against Terrorism and Serious Crime by Marcel Stuessi