The UK Government could be about to provide more infrastructure to prevent the population accessing information. This time the infrastructure is a legal frame work.
The Intelligence and Security Committee has recommended that the government create legislation to stop media outlets producing news that government does not want to.
The headline sales pitch of this is that its in the interests of “national security”, i.e aimed at military operations. But the recommendations are also that reporting on police operations can also be prohibited.
There is already the “D-Notice” in place in the UK, and despite scouring the news papers recently I have not seen any evidence of the battle plans for Afghanistan, the MI5 Org Chart, or the internal plans of GCHQ. The occasions that the news papers have got hold of “priority” police operations is because is been leaked – that means that the police have called the news papers, to make some money or to further a political agenda, and the papers have printed it. Is it right to create new laws as the police have not got their house in order? Also, at least this way we know what’s being leaked, better this way than directly to the suspects!
The question that needs to be asked is: Do we need more laws to give the government greater secrecy?
In a different time there would have been more trust over the government, and the law in itself is not dangerous, if its well used, but with examples of misuse of data and data collection methods by the government, there is a concern that more there is greater control and monitoring of the population.
Death by a thousand cuts? Or totalitarianism through a 1,000 laws and a million CCTV cameras?