The sphere of secrecy:

"Each individual has a sphere of secrecy about him, small or large, that includes, I suggest, all those items he believes it would be detrimental to him (and sometimes to his relatives and friends) for others to know about."

"a circle of secrecy that each person builds around himself - including those items of information about himself, or goals or intentions, that cannot be revealed to others without detrimental effects on the individual's interests."

[In China] "there has been a continual and powerful effort to reduce to some kind of minimum the circle of secrecy that each person is allowed to hold."

"As a biologist I believe that if I were going to try to establish a society in which everyone came as close as possible to the philosophers' ideal of indiscriminate altruism - and to do this independent of external threats or world events - then I would also begin by trying to minimize the individual's >circle of secrecy<."

Richard D. Alexander (1987)