LSAT 151 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Any government practice that might facilitate the…

QUESTION TYPE: Must be True

FACTS:

1. If a government practice might help abuse power, you should only do it if there is a good reason.
2. Sometimes government officials should keep secrets.
3. But often governments keep secrets for poor reasons and this helps people abuse power.
4. There are often more opportunities for abuse when the government keeps secret the very fact that it is keeping a secret.

ANALYSIS: There are layers to this. There are:

• Secrets
• Telling people whether there is a secret or not
• Whether the first two points can be justified with a compelling reason

The first two points will always increase the risk of an abuse of power. The question is whether it’s justified. Let’s look at a couple examples.

So, if you caught a spy, you may want to keep it secret for security reasons. You may also want to keep secret the fact that you caught the spy: if you announced that there was a secret to do with spies, it might tip off the opposition.

Both of these actions increase the risk of abuse of power….for instance, the government might one day decide just to disappear anybody it didn’t like, for reasons beyond national security. But, in the case of the spy, there is at least a plausibly compelling reason for keeping the two secrets: it protects national security.

In a lot of other cases, the government will keep a secret, but not keep secret the fact that it has a secret. For example, in witness protection, you know that a witness has gotten a secret identity. You just don’t know what it is.

We know from the stimulus that keeping either type secret will increase the risk of an abuse of power. And the first sentence says that we should not do anything to increase the risk of an abuse of power unless we have a compelling reason. So, we can conclude: Don’t keep secrets unless there is a compelling reason.

___________

1. We don’t know this. The only quantities the argument mentions are that it is “sometimes” justified to keep secrets, but that “often” the reasons are insubstantial.
    
   This allows for a wide range of possibilities. It could be 10% justified, 90% insubstantial, but it could also be 70% justified, 30% insubstantial. The words are vague and don’t let us know.
2. This doesn’t follow. The stimulus clearly said in the first two sentences that any act of keeping a secret by the government may help abuses of power happen. This might be true even in some cases where there is a compelling reason. 
3. CORRECT. This is the “secret within a secret” aspect of the stimulus. E.g. capturing a spy, keeping the spy’s identity secret, and also keeping secret the fact that you’re keeping this secret.
    
   The first two sentences combined let you make the following deduction: We should not keep secrets unless there is a compelling reason. The first sentence says do nothing that allows an abuse of power without good reason, and the second sentence says that secrets allow an abuse of power.
4. This mixes up two concepts from the stimulus. Secrets aren’t the abuse of power. Instead, secrets might facilitate the abuse of power. E.g. If you keep torture secret, it’s still torture that is the abuse. The secret merely enables abuse.
5. This isn’t what the stimulus said. Instead, the first two sentences said not to keep secrets without a compelling reason.
    
   Keeping a secret generally increases the ability to abuse power. But having the opportunity to abuse power doesn’t mean you will abuse power. So, it could be sensible for officials to keep a secret if they had a good reason, and if they weren’t the types to abuse power even if the opportunity was there.