ABSTRACT
Access to and diffusion of information relating to the Terrorism Financing Tracking Programme (TFTP) has become a focal point for discussions about secrecy and democracy in the European Union. This chapter analyses the dynamics of secrecy and publicity in the context of post-9/11 security programmes, in particular the TFTP. Far from a binary between secrecy and transparency, the TFTP involves complex and modulating dynamics of knowledge and limited information distribution. The purpose of the chapter is threefold. First, we contribute to the debates on EU secrecy and democratic oversight, by advancing an understanding of secrecy as practice. Second, we document and discuss the longer trajectory of the contested secrecy and publicity of the TFTP programme to shed light on the current European debates on it. Third, we ask whether the logics of secrecy in the EU are being revised and challenged in the context of transatlantic security cooperation? The rationales of secrecy deployed in security practice hinge on particular notions of potential future harm that, we argue, are shifting in the face of current understandings of the terrorist threat.
