denunciation and informants

This page considers denunciation, undercover investigators and informants.

It covers -

• introduction
• undercover
• workforces
• delation
• witnesses
• studies

A discussion of whistleblowing issues is here, supported by notes on individual cases here.

     introduction

Government and private organisations cannot be present in all social or personal spaces. Public and private regimes have thus sought to coopt surveillance subjects, with self-policing by communities.

That cooption may involve getting the 'observed' to do the observation on behalf of authorities, with reporting being encouraged by -

• monetary rewards
• immunity from prosecution or reduced civil/criminal sanctions
• appeals to honour, professional duty and civic responsibility
• punishment of those who have information but do not provide it, including exile, torture, confiscation of assets or execution

That reporting may be anonymous or feature identification of the reporter. It may include measures such as 'witness protection' schemes.

Public and private regimes have also relied on 'undercover' operatives, for example police or security service personnel who assume a false identity to covertly gain information that would not be available to an overt outsider.

Surveillance by colleagues, friends, family and neighbours poses a range of ethical, legal and administrative questions.

The existence of civil society is predicated on citizens trusting authorities (and authorities not abusing that trust), with people who have witnessed a crime being prepared to assist police by responding to questions - and if necessary providing testimony in court - or actively come forward that might assist investigation of an offence or prevent a future offence. When does an obligation to a ruler or community supersede relations with individuals, particularly an individual close to the informant? Do contractual relationships (eg with business associates and employers) prevent release of information in the public interest? Does civic duty - or duty to god - require an informant to be alert to transgressions and report those transgressions, even if the consequences are that the subject of the report is sent to the Gulag or barbecued on the Inquisition's auto da fe?

Should we respect systems of justice that feature 'tainted evidence', with testimony for example by criminals who have been rewarded for providing that evidence? How easily are professional codes of practice accommodating exceptional problems such as breach of an individual's medical privacy in order to protect third parties who might be unknowingly infected?

     delation

Delation has a bad name.

It is associated with images of fanatical Soviet schoolkids denouncing their parents as enemies of the people or spiteful German housewives reporting neighbours to the Gestapo or denouncing inconvenient partners to enable a quick remarriage or just get rid of someone who snored.

Earlier epochs had seen moralists express disgust at the behaviour of people who denounced others for personal benefit and at regimes which encouraged such delation. Tacitus, for example, condemned professional delators in early imperial Rome, who discovered - or simply invented - another person's disloyalty on a serial basis and were rewarded with much of that victim's estate when the individual was executed or exiled. Such action sundered the bonds of civil society. Contemporaries were more forgiving of unrewarded denunciation on the basis of self-preservation or merely fear, although often applauding examples of resolute silence on the basis of family ties or personal honour.

Moralists have grappled with conflicting claims regarding motivation and circumstance. Is it legitimate, for example, to inform on family members or to put the state ahead of family and colleagues. Is delation more acceptable if the informer receives no benefit (eg does not collect a financial reward or replace the colleague who was denounced)? Is failure to actively assist police reprehensible? Should an oath of loyalty to authorities in a totalitarian state oblige someone to denounce a potential assassin. What of denouncing someone whose crime was merely distributing leaflets, such as the White Rose group in Nazi Germany.

There is an echo of past delation regimes in qui tam whistleblowing schemes, discussed elsewhere in this site, with whistleblowers receiving substantial financial rewards for alerting governments to corruption or other offences.

Is denunciation 'unAustralian'? In 2007 the Australian Taxation Office revealed that in the preceding year over 120 people per day informed on bosses, neighbours and even former partners through the confidential Tax Evasion Hotline. Over three years some 140,600 people had undermined the myth that "Australians don't dob" by accuse others of cheating on tax, with information generally being sufficient to enable follow-up inquiries by tax inspectors.

     witnesses

More detailed pointers to witness protection regimes are here.

     studies

An historical perspective is provided by Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1997) edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick & Robert Gellately, complemented by works such as Timothy Garton Ash's The File: A Personal History (London: HarperCollins 1997), Anna Funder's Stasiland (London: Granta 2003), Catriona Kelly's Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (London: Granta 2005), Vandana Joshi's Gender & Power in the Third Reich: Female Denouncers and the Gestapo, 1933-45 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), Orlando Figes' The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (London: Allen Lane 2007) and Stephanie Abke's Sichtbare Zeichen unsichtbarer Kraefte: Denunziationsmuster und Denunziationsverhalten 1933-1945 (Bingen: edition discord 2003) that illustrate the concept of community policing in Western societies.

As a point of entry to the literature on police informants see papers in Surveillance, Crime & Social Control (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) edited by Clive Norris & Dean Wilson and Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1988) by Gary Marx.

Works on whistleblowing are highlighted here (with a supplementary discussion of specific whistleblowing incidents).





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