Secrets

It is said a secret is only a secret if more than one person knows it.
I would agree.
In my experience, when someone tells someone a secret...
and the person sharing the secret says "don't tell anyone else..."
that's simply an invitation  for the person keeping the secret to tell someone else.

I believe "information is power"
That's why Elizabeth Roosevelt Longworth said, many moons ago,
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me."

The theory is quite simple:
If you have info no one else has...
and you use it against a person...
or you use it to control a person...
or you use it to impress a person...
or you use it to betray, enhance or entrance a person...
you are using information as power.

That's why attorneys, private investigators, police agencies, medical providers are now going to the extreme to protect the power of privacy when it is to the public's, or the law's, advantage.
Thus, all the paperwork involved in medical and legal proceedings designed to keep private information safe.
There's the HIPPA Privacy Act.
Countless releases and authorizations.
Attorney/Client confidentiality.Attorney/Investigator Work Product privilege.

However, there's also a counter balance, the FOIA -- Freedom of Information Act.
And the Public Disclosure Act which is also called the Public Records Act.

So on the one hand, information...which is power... is protected via privacy laws.
And that same information,... which is power... is released via  public disclosure laws.
It is a most precarious balance.