This article consists of a critical response from a scholar to a journal article and reply from the paper's authors.

Response from Sania Ismailee

(Assistant Professor, School of Law, BML Munjal University)

Daniele Santoro and Manohar Kumar's "Liberty, Secrecy, and the Right of Assessment" argues that government secrecy is a form of interference with individuals' rights. Their argument is twofold. First, under ideal conditions, individuals should be aware of obstacles preventing the exercise of their rights; this is the "epistemic entitlement" of rights. Second, under non-ideal conditions where secrecy is justified, the government must provide ex-post justifications for any limitations placed on fundamental freedoms. This "Right of Assessment" serves to prevent unrestrained secrecy.

There are three points of critical engagement: the definition of secrecy as interference, the valuation of individual autonomy, and the Right of Assessment as an ex-post justification.

1. The authors argue that hiding information interferes with life planning. For example, if the government secretly cancels a scholarship you count on, they interfere with your life plan before you even know it. However, not knowing is not always the same as being stopped. If the government keeps a secret regarding a project in a city you never visit, your freedom has not actually changed. By treating almost all secrecy as a violation, the definition of interference becomes too broad.
   

2. The authors contend that the state wrongs you by hiding facts, treating you like a child. For example, hiding a minor health risk to prevent panic is seen as an insult to adult dignity. Yet, secrecy can be helpful; citizens might prefer the state to manage a complex crisis quietly to maintain daily peace. The authors prioritize the process of choosing, but safety or stability may sometimes be more important than knowing everything.
   

3. Courts often defer to national security claims. A strong right requires independent oversight. Imagine a teacher punishing a student for a secret reason. If the student's Right of Assessment only allows the teacher to review the evidence, the teacher is essentially grading their own homework. Because the state holds all secret information, the Right of Assessment relies entirely on the state's honesty.

Reply from Daniele Santoro and Manohar Kumar

(Director, Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society, University of Minho; Assistant Professor, Department of SSH, IIIT Delhi)

We thank Sania for her thoughtful review of our paper and raising some critical concerns with our arguments or the implications of it. We have tried to address it one by one below.

• Response to (1): It is correct to state that not all kinds of secrecy qualify for a violation. For instance the first case you mention in your response does but not the second one. The second example would qualify, if for instance, my plan has been thwarted due to an interference by the state. It may also qualify for the doyens of that city if the nature of the information is such that has any bearing on the rights. Restrictions of liberty we argue in the paper, unless justified, amounts to threat to the overall structure of rights and would constitute an arbitrary intervention.
  

• Response to (2): Our contention is that the state may on reasons of safety and security hide some information (say to not cause panic). It is perfectly legitimate under our account. What we though claim is that when extenuating circumstances of emergency are over then it is the right of the citizens' to assess whether those circumstances demanded such a withdrawal absent which the rights of the citizens have been violated. Here the right of assessment has both forward looking and backward looking function.
  

• Response to (3): Right of Assessment is a normative claim that provides citizens with reasons to demand accountability from the state when their rights have been curtailed. We agree that it is not a sufficient guarantee and would require constant vigilance from the courts and the citizens, including skepticism towards judicial deference on matters of state security. It would require that judicial deference cross a high threshold for it to be justified and be subjected to timely reviews (as is the case with classified documents) to ensure proper oversight.