XPost: uk.politics.misc
From: the_todal@icloud.com
On 15/07/2019 18:26, Pamela wrote:
> On 17:01 15 Jul 2019, Ian Jackson
> wrote:
>
>> In message , The Marquis Saint
>> Evremonde writes
>>> Ian Jackson posted
>>>>
>>>> Why do you think that the fact that a meeting took place would not be
>>>> covered by the OSA? The fact that people are not routinely taken to
>>>> 'The Tower' does not mean that what they leak or reveal is not an OSA
>>>> issue. Even to reveal that the latest delivery of paper clips was not
>>>> up to the usual standard could be an offence -
>>>
>>> No, it couldn't. That criticism used to be made of the 1911 Act, but
>>> the Act was rewritten in 1989 to make disclosures actionable only if
>>> they are 'damaging'. This means approximately that they endanger the
>>> interests of the UK or its citizens abroad, or the work of its
>>> intelligence services or armed forces.
>>
>> I did say 'COULD be an offence'. Even the apparently innocuous leak of
>> information might have unimagined and unforeseen consequences. As the
>> WW2 slogan said, "Tittle tattle lost the battle".
>>>
>>>> and its not up to ordinary mortals to take it upon themselves to
>>>> decide whether it is or not.
>>>
>>> It is, in the sense that a citizen can decide for themselves whether to
>>> disclose information, and wait to see their decision is backed by a
>>> court whose job it will ultimately be decide whether an offence has
>>> been committed. That was true even before the 1989 rewrite and is even
>>> more true now.
>>
>> I suppose it's always a personal decision as to whether what you do
>> breaks the law. In many cases, it's bleedin' obvious (so you don't need
>> to think about it for long), but in others it's not. You could certainly
>> argue that leaking something about what a malign government is doing
>> might be 'in the public interest' - especially if it gets them to change
>> their ways, or even leads to a change of administration.
>>
>> But while the publication of confidential diplomatic memos might be
>> 'interesting to the public', on this occasion whether they are 'in the
>> public interest' is highly questionable - especially having regard to
>> the potentially serious damage to the UK. Who would deny that the
>> leaking of the present frank criticism of Trump has been extremely
>> damaging?
>>
>> This morning, I noted that LBC's Nick Ferrari was in his petulant
>> pompous prat mode - condemning the police (in the form of Neil Basu, the
>> head of the Metropolitan Police's specialist operations) for having the
>> audacity to warn the media that they should not be publishing
>> OSA-sensitive information - and inviting his callers to do the same
>> (which most did). "It's not the job of the police to tell the newspapers
>> what they can and can't publish." Apparently, Basu was forced to
>> partially back down (which I think he never should have been). If the
>> police cannot point out that a certain course of action might be
>> breaking the law, who can?
>
> Publishing Darroch's messages was scurrilous muck-raking. The messages
> had no serious news value nor were they in the "public interest".
>
> The newspaper story was only an attempt embarrass, from beginning to end,
> including the second week's even more worthless story.
>
> Weakling Boris made it all the worse by not standing up for Darroch.
>
I agree.
The attitude of our editors and many of our politicians is that all
secret documents can be published by the press with impunity, so long as
they have persuaded some insider to leak the documents. In other words,
it's not permissible for journalists to hack into computers or break
into offices but it's absolutely fine if a government employee or
politician can be persuaded to leak the documents.
I wonder how this logic would apply to foreign agents (eg the Russians)
persuading civil servants or security servies employees to leak documents.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
