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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @12:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the connect-the-dots dept.

Campaigners have expressed outrage at new proposals that could lead to journalists being jailed for up to 14 years for obtaining leaked official documents. The major overhaul of the Official Secrets Act – to be replaced by an updated Espionage Act – would give courts the power to increase jail terms against journalists receiving official material. The new law, should it get approval, would see documents containing "sensitive information" about the economy fall foul of national security laws for the first time.

In theory a journalist leaked Brexit documents deemed harmful to the UK economy could be jailed as a consequence.

[...] John Cooper QC, a leading criminal and human rights barrister who has served on two law commission working parties, added: "These reforms would potentially undermine some of the most important principles of an open democracy."

[...] "It is shocking that so few organisations were consulted on these proposed changes given the huge implications for public interest journalism in this country," said Ms Ginsberg.

The Law Commission sought advice from media groups including Guardian Media as well as civil liberties groups including Liberty and Open Rights Group. Other groups consulted included the intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 as well as several government departments and senior politicians and lawyers.

[...] The Law Commission recommendations state that there should be "no restriction on who can commit the offence," including hackers, politicians and journalists.

[...] A Law Commission spokesman said it was "both misleading and incorrect" to suggest journalists were at any greater risk under the planned law changes.

Source: The Telegraph


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:40AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:40AM (#466820) Journal

    The UK continues it's steady march to the police state. The state will always be right, the state can never be wrong, and if you get in the way, your ass is grass.

    I might find this all humourous, but the US is on the same march, just several steps behind.

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  • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:13AM (#466831)

    You sound like a remoaner. She lost! Get over it!

    Brexit! Brexit! Brexit! Trump! Trump! Trump!

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:33PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @02:33PM (#466952) Journal

      You really don't keep up with who's who on this forum, do you? I'm the guy who has been mocking and making fun of the snowflakes who wanted Hitlery to win. I didn't very much want Trump to win, either, but he WAS the lesser of two evils, by orders of magnitude.

      I suppose that you mostly stay under your rock, and only venture out every few weeks to make asinine posts apropos of nothing.

      Oh well, have a nice day anyway!!

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 14 2017, @04:13PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @04:13PM (#466979)

        I didn't very much want Trump to win, either, but he WAS the lesser of two evils, by orders of magnitude.

        That of course remains an open question, one that will be answered solely by alternate history buffs. I think what we can agree that what 2016 really highlighted more than anything else was the utter failure of the 2-party system to produce general election candidates that would actually be good for the country. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein also did not do well either for themselves or their parties with very public moments of idiocy. A Bernie Sanders versus Rand Paul general election would have been far better for the country, regardless of which one of them had won.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bootsy on Tuesday February 14 2017, @10:46AM

    by bootsy (3440) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @10:46AM (#466916)

    The whole freedom of press thing in the UK is actually an accident. It was never planned. Parliament was busy back in the Georgian days and "forgot" to renew a statute. When the UK trumpets its freedoms we often don't mention this and act like it was all part of the constitution.

    The link between the UK government and press is dubious and the case of the Hillsborough disaster is particularly sick. The authorities actually contrived with a newspaper to discredit the victims in order to suppress their incompetence.

    Courting the right wing tabloid press has long been a successful approach to winning UK general elections.

    Whistle blowing is important but there is precious little protection in the UK.

    The recent leak about the non working submarines would fall into this.

    • (Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:48PM

      by purple_cobra (1435) on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:48PM (#467800)

      It's also worth looking at the treatment of NHS whistle-blowers and what protection there is for blowing the whistle while training to be a doctor (none at all! [drphilhammond.com]). People have had successful careers ruined for daring to highlight management intransigence/incompetence (see any number of articles in that author's Private Eye section (he writes for that publication under the pseudonym MD)). Patient safety is the one issue the NHS should be able to get behind as a whole, but if doing so would reveal just how incompetently a hospital - or the entire health service - is managed, then woe betide you; gagging orders, at huge cost to the taxpayer, are commonplace, as are whispering campaigns and manufactured charges of professional misconduct.

      The Tories are as much authoritarian statists as the Labour Party, though the Tories have that whole "kill the poor" ethic that seems so prevalent amongst corporatists (the real alt-Right, espousing right wing ideology and venal money-grubbing in one attractive package).

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @01:58PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @01:58PM (#466941) Journal

    Governments, bureaucrats, politicians, and the corrupt will take away rights that are not defended.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:01PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:01PM (#467756) Journal

    It's all part and parcel of the Red, White and Blue Brexit of the great patriot (and human rights opposer) Theresa Mayhem.