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In the USA, AFAIK, "secret service" always refers to the United States Secret Service. I think we may need some kind of disambiguation here.
The United States Secret Service is not a secret service.
According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, a secret service is: "1. Intelligence-gathering activities conducted secretly by a government agency. 2. A government agency engaged in intelligence-gathering activities."
According to United States Secret Service: The Secret Service has primary jurisdiction over the prevention of counterfeiting of currency and U.S. treasury bonds and notes, and protection of the President, Vice President, their immediate families, other high ranking government officials, past presidents and their spouses, certain candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, and visiting foreign heads of state and government (all called "protectees").
Presumably, two of the criteria of a secret service are that such an organization should: (i) be a service (i.e. a body in government employ) and (ii) be "secret".
Question: what is it in terms of secrecy that defines a secret service ? Not wanting to be difficult, but genuinely seeking info on this, let's take the USSS as an example, as opposed to "secret services" in general. What is it about the USSS that is "secret" ? For example, is it that members are not allowed to have their faces photographed for the press, as in the British SAS ?
I'm hoping to work on a series of linked articles about secret operations during the US Civil War. During the Civil War the term secret service meant spies and saboteurs, not secret police. the Secret Service article really needs to be cleaned up. If the term relates to too many thigns, maybe this should just be a portal to "see also" secret police (domestic); spies and saboteurs, the USSS, etc.
I propose that secret service be merged into secret police. I think that the content in this article is more or less identical to the secret police article (though, admittedly, both could stand to be improved), and the secret police article is of a reasonable size that the merging of will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. -- 50.53.112.55 ( talk) 08:20, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Secret service article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
In the USA, AFAIK, "secret service" always refers to the United States Secret Service. I think we may need some kind of disambiguation here.
The United States Secret Service is not a secret service.
According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, a secret service is: "1. Intelligence-gathering activities conducted secretly by a government agency. 2. A government agency engaged in intelligence-gathering activities."
According to United States Secret Service: The Secret Service has primary jurisdiction over the prevention of counterfeiting of currency and U.S. treasury bonds and notes, and protection of the President, Vice President, their immediate families, other high ranking government officials, past presidents and their spouses, certain candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, and visiting foreign heads of state and government (all called "protectees").
Presumably, two of the criteria of a secret service are that such an organization should: (i) be a service (i.e. a body in government employ) and (ii) be "secret".
Question: what is it in terms of secrecy that defines a secret service ? Not wanting to be difficult, but genuinely seeking info on this, let's take the USSS as an example, as opposed to "secret services" in general. What is it about the USSS that is "secret" ? For example, is it that members are not allowed to have their faces photographed for the press, as in the British SAS ?
I'm hoping to work on a series of linked articles about secret operations during the US Civil War. During the Civil War the term secret service meant spies and saboteurs, not secret police. the Secret Service article really needs to be cleaned up. If the term relates to too many thigns, maybe this should just be a portal to "see also" secret police (domestic); spies and saboteurs, the USSS, etc.
I propose that secret service be merged into secret police. I think that the content in this article is more or less identical to the secret police article (though, admittedly, both could stand to be improved), and the secret police article is of a reasonable size that the merging of will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. -- 50.53.112.55 ( talk) 08:20, 4 November 2015 (UTC)