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Source: Sputnik
July 27, 2021
The original Official Secrets Acts was created in 1911 and was reformed in 1920 and 1939 with an entirely new version in 1989. But the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, says the legislation has not kept pace with the digital age and needs to be updated.
Source: Sputnik
The original Official Secrets Acts was created in 1911 and was reformed in 1920 and 1939 with an entirely new version in 1989. But the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, says the legislation has not kept pace with the digital age and needs to be updated.
A Home Office consultation on changes to the Official Secrets Act closes at midnight on Thursday, 22 July, and journalists up and down the country are warning it could be used to prevent matters of "public interest" from being disclosed.
Under the proposals journalists who publish information based on leaked documents or data could be jailed for up to 14 years.
Veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson is among dozens of prominent journalists who have warned of the dangers of the changes, which he claimed would put reporters in the same category as spies.
Netflix is currently airing a film, Official Secrets, in which Kiera Knightley stars as Katharine Gun, an employee at GCHQ who faced jail after she leaked an email in which her and her colleagues were asked to find incriminating material which could be used to blackmail members of the UN Security Council to force them to vote for a second resolution on invading Iraq in 2003.
Gun leaked the email to peace campaigner Yvonne Ridley, who then passed it on to Observer journalist Martin Bright, who wrote a front-page article which embarrassed Tony Blair’s government.
Ultimately, the second resolution was not passed but Britain and the United States invaded Iraq anyway, on the spurious pretext of searching for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Gun, who intended to claim she had acted in the "public interest", was never prosecuted because to do so would have been too embarrassing for GCHQ and the government.
Daniel Cuthbert, co-author of the Open Web Application Security Project, said: "What is being proposed is incredibly dangerous and is a direct attack against the free press. The official secrets act has a place but classifying journalists as spies to stem whistleblowing."
The News Media Association's legal policy and regulatory affairs director Sayra Tekin said: "As part of any thriving democracy, the public and a responsible press must be free to shed light on the state’s injustices.
"The proposed measures will deter whistleblowers from coming forward with vital information which the public have a right to know and place a chill on investigative journalism which holds power to account."
She urged the government to "reconsider these measures."
Please go to Sputnik to read more.
Under the proposals journalists who publish information based on leaked documents or data could be jailed for up to 14 years.
Priti Patel’s Home Office wants to make it a crime for journalists to embarrass the govt by publishing leaked official documents. The maximum penalty would be 14 years in prison. This would put British journalists on a par with foreign spies.
— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) July 21, 2021
Veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson is among dozens of prominent journalists who have warned of the dangers of the changes, which he claimed would put reporters in the same category as spies.
Netflix is currently airing a film, Official Secrets, in which Kiera Knightley stars as Katharine Gun, an employee at GCHQ who faced jail after she leaked an email in which her and her colleagues were asked to find incriminating material which could be used to blackmail members of the UN Security Council to force them to vote for a second resolution on invading Iraq in 2003.
Gun leaked the email to peace campaigner Yvonne Ridley, who then passed it on to Observer journalist Martin Bright, who wrote a front-page article which embarrassed Tony Blair’s government.
Ultimately, the second resolution was not passed but Britain and the United States invaded Iraq anyway, on the spurious pretext of searching for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Gun, who intended to claim she had acted in the "public interest", was never prosecuted because to do so would have been too embarrassing for GCHQ and the government.
Daniel Cuthbert, co-author of the Open Web Application Security Project, said: "What is being proposed is incredibly dangerous and is a direct attack against the free press. The official secrets act has a place but classifying journalists as spies to stem whistleblowing."
Journalists could face 14 years in prison after reforms to Official Secrets Act
— Bella Wallersteiner (@BellaWallerstei) July 20, 2021
Britain must not become a police state. Journalists shouldn’t be cowed
Free press is vital especially now when the state seeks to force its prescriptive language and views on all the rest of us.
The News Media Association's legal policy and regulatory affairs director Sayra Tekin said: "As part of any thriving democracy, the public and a responsible press must be free to shed light on the state’s injustices.
"The proposed measures will deter whistleblowers from coming forward with vital information which the public have a right to know and place a chill on investigative journalism which holds power to account."
She urged the government to "reconsider these measures."
Please go to Sputnik to read more.
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Related:
Official Secrets Act: UK government has a long history of suppressing journalism to hide its misdeeds
Boris Johnson launches Secrets Act, to imprison Journalists who dare question government
This is how the plutocrats in the UK think. They get Harry to do a book with all the dirt in it to run cover for the plutocrats who are now panicking because they have rolled out these Covid injections and this global "Great Reset" being run by Schwab over in Switzerland at the WEF with his Davos elitists too fast. No such thing will happen like "destabilizing the monarchy" when Harry has a book ghost written for him by UK intelligence. More pablum to irritate us even more from our perpetual antagonists.
The global Covid fake pandemic is collapsing. Now comes the fun part: going after the criminals who did this. This ultimately is what the plutocrats in the UK are terrified of happening. There is a world-wide backlash coming and it is not going to be pleasant.
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