Official Secrecy and British Libertarianism

By Duncan Campbell

Year: 1979 | Pub: Merlin Press

Passage

"British official secrecy legislation has provided much of the Anglo-Saxon world with a legacy of fundamental state secrecy, supported by the potential criminalisation of persons inside or outside the civil service who indulge in disclosure.

The argument is not fundamentally about the provisions made by states for
bona fide foreign espionage, if that is the correct term... It is
about subsidiary provisions - specifically those made under Section 2 of the British Official Secrets Act-which crimininalize any unauthorized transaction in official information."