The opening of the family courts to reporters would appear to be a welcome development. But already, some are querying whether any significant progress has in fact been made at all. The newly-resurrected Press Gazette reports the difficulties faced...
The government's climbdown on a central communications database is welcome, says Ian Brown. But plans are still afoot to gather more and more Internet users' details Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has announced she is stepping back from plans for a...
Clearcast, the company that regulates television advertising on behalf of Ofcom, has requested that violent scenes be removed from an anti-domestic violence advert featuring actress Keira Knightley. Read more here
The British government has said it will not now go ahead with plans to create a cenrtal communications database. Read more here
Writing in today's Times, Index on Censorship trustee Sir Ken Macdonald QC makes a compelling argument against privacy laws, which he sees as a tool of the rich, powerful and famous: '[I]f privacy protection were ever to chill our press as it has...
This is a guest post by Chris Ames
Earlier this month I pointed out the acute double standard that the government applies to disclosing ‘confidential’ information. By way of a quick update, I can report that it is actually worse than it looked.
The gist of the story then was that the Cabinet Office had succeeded in censoring part of a document that it was forced to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act, even though Jack Straw had already published the document in full when he was Foreign Secretary. The missing part of the document revealed that former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had commented on an early draft of the September 2002 Iraq dossier and Straw used it to divert attention from the withdrawal of the notorious 45 minutes claim.
I have since obtained the letter that Straw’s private secretary sent Blix before Straw published the document. It shows that Straw did not actually obtain permission to publish Blix’s comments in the way that he did. Instead, he warned him that he might have to refer to one comment — that the dossier ‘did not exaggerate the facts, nor revert to rhetoric’ –– and sought to ‘check’ that he would have no objection.
In a http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/27/iraq-dossier-straw-blix piece yesterday for Comment is Free, I quoted from the letter that Blix sent Straw’s private secretary in response. I show how Straw ignored Blix’s clear statement that he had not seen the intelligence on which the dossier based its claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and so ‘obviously’ was not endorsing those claims. In spite of this, Straw told parliament that:
‘The evidence that we put forward was a view that was widely shared at the time by other foreign intelligence agencies, as well, as it happened, by Dr Blix.’
The net effect of what Straw did here is probably worse than what the Cabinet Office warned against when censoring Blix’s comments. Anyone planning to trust the British government with confidential information is likely to assume not only that the information may be disclosed at some future date but that it might also be seriously misrepresented.
What the government will not do of course is to disclose ‘confidential’ information –– unless it suits its purposes to do so.
Advertising software company Phorm’s legality is being questioned by the European Commission. Bill Thompson explains. The law obliging Internet service providers to keep records of email exchanges and website visits so that the police and other...
Family courts across England and Wales are to open up access to the media for the first time, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has announced. However, many cases will remain unreportable. Read more here
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Zubeida Mustafa examines the Pakistani media's response to the arrests of eleven Pakistani students now facing deportation from the UK At a time when the media in Pakistan has its hands full with a heated controversy raging on the government’s...