The Secrecy and Freedom of Information Debates in Britain

RECENT DEBATES IN BRITAIN ABOUT SECRECY IN CENTRAL government have become immersed in the traditional tension between espionage and secrecy. Espionage concerns spies and others who intend to help an enemy and who deliberately harm the security of the nation. Secrecy means ‘the compulsory withholding of knowledge reinforced by the prospect of sanctions for disclosure’. Leakage of official information may involve persons having no intention of damaging the nation. However, harm to the country may ensue from information getting into the wrong hands, whether by espionage or leakage. Experience of this tension in practice was a major factor leading to the enactment of the Official Secrets Act 1911, with section 1 covering espionage and section 2 unauthorized disclosure of information, with the risk of prosecution for either offence. Journalists in particular are aggrieved that they may be subject to prosecution under the Act used to charge spies and traitors. Jonathan Aitken, one of the journalists prosecuted in 1970 under section 2 of the 1911 Act over extracts from a British diplomat's report leaked to theSunday Telegraphabout the Nigerian civil war, was acquitted and published his own version of the Nigerian case in his bookOfficially Secret(1971), which heavily criticized the Official Secrets Act.