The Orc who knew too much

[Formendacil]

It's worth pointing out, I think, just how LITTLE we know about Mordor--other than Sauron himself and the Nazgûl, almost none of its history is covered in the Appendices, and other than Grishnákh, Shagrat, and Gorbag, we don't see any of its citizens interacting. The fact that Grishnákh seems to know more than the other two tells us something, but we don't want to overinterpret it: we don't know if it means he has knowledge that's as shocking as a random Guardsman knowing Denethor is using a palantír or if it's more on the level of Sam being more aware of the Elves than Ted Sandyman.

I think there's a tendency to think of Mordor as a secretive society, partly because we know so little about it and partly because to the good guys the Ring (and what they're doing with it) is a great and terrible secret, but we don't actually know what is secret and what is public in Mordor. In a "panopticon" sort of way, I wonder if things might have been more dreadfully public than we think.