The article enacts a questioning of the aprioris of contemporary “surveillance society”, a notion made famous by Michel Foucault, and a reflection on “secrecy”. The present image of the politics of surveillance is conceived as a function of the opposition visibility/invisibility : the powerful demand the visibility of the people, so that every gesture on its part can be registered to counter any manifestation of resistance. We seldom notice that the democratic counter-power proposes the very same idea : that power makes itself ever more transparent. Between the power and counter-power of vision, we propose a reflection on hearing, taking as our point of departure the propositions of Jacques Derrida on the secret or secrecy. Derridean undecidables like différance and shibboleth, as well as the figure of the Marrano, are rearticulated to rethink a certain unpower of secrecy, a secret without a code for our time.