Proposed UK Official Secrets Legislation

New proposals for Official Secrets legislation in the UK not only make the law more severe, they seek to broaden the definition of "Official Secret" to include almost any information that might embarrass the government. It is no longer a question of information that might be useful to an enemy, but anything that might affect foreign policy, and so on.

The new laws will be more severe because the maximum penalty will be a fourteen year jail term, which is a far more severe sentence than has been passed in an official secrets case for many years, and because it is going to be an offence to have information, whereas at present the offence is to communicate or attempt/conspire to communicate such information.

This is being seen as primarily an attack on The Guardian newspaper, which often runs stories based on leaked Ministry of Defence information. But, in practice, and like David Cameron's Royal Charter making the fascist-owned "Impress" militia the official press regulator, it can be used against any newspaper doing what newspapers normally do, which is gather information. Impress is seen as an attack on the Daily Mail, this official secrets legislation is being seen as an attack on the Guardian, but in reality both are part of the same attack on press freedom in general. All journalists gather information, and they have no way of knowing till they have gathered it, whether it is sensitive or not. Under the new laws, they will already have committed an offence that will earn them fourteen years in jail! 

There is to be no public interest defence, so no matter how bad or even criminal the government conduct that is revealed by a leaked piece of information, possession of that piece of information will be a crime. It also means, for example, that anyone who has accessed Wikileaks online, or has kept a newspaper cutting about Wikileaks, could be prosecuted for possessing an Official Secret, whereas previously they would be committing a crime only if they communicated something hitherto unnoticed from Wikileaks (ie: not already in the public domain) that actually affected UK national security.

This is a major piece of legislation that was drafted before Theresa May became Prime Minister, and may be seen as part of David Cameron's petulant campaign against the press, which started in earnest when he failed to get Lord Rothermere to sack the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, during the campaign for the Brexit referendum.

It should be obvious to everyone that it is futile and wrong to campaign to protect the freedom of the left wing press to the exclusion of freedom for the right wing press or vice versa. Freedom of the press has to be protected unconditionally.