Latest news with #secrecy
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
I've fought the secret state for decades. Afghan scandal is no surprise
One of the things that struck me most noticeably when moving to the UK from the US in 1997 was the secrecy of the state toward its citizens. Having worked as a crime reporter in America, I discovered that most of the public records and information I used to do my job were actually illegal to access in the UK. I found the secrecy wasn't unique to law enforcement but rather a default attitude among officials. It didn't matter if I were asking for details of food hygiene inspections, parliamentary expenses or police reports, the attitude was the same. A kind of disbelief and then a patronising disdain, by which I was meant to understand that it was not my 'place' as a mere citizen — or subject as I learnt was the UK term — to ask for a full accounting from agents of the state. Instead, I should silently let officials get on with the important business of making decisions in my name and with my money. 'Put up, shut up' seemed to be the norm. This didn't strike me as particularly democratic. I remember battling in 2004 with the Highways Agency, now known as Highways England, just to get contact information for its new freedom of information officer. I was putting together a book, Your Right to Know, about people's new rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000 that was coming into force in 2005. I thought it would be a game-changer for British democracy and I wanted to include contact details for the new FOI units in public agencies. I was used to naming public officials. In America it was no big deal; anonymity was only used if there was a valid reason. But you would have thought I'd asked for nuclear codes such was the shock and pushback I received to this simple request. The idea of providing actual names was anathema and I began to wonder who was the master here, and who the servant. The more I researched my book, the angrier I became. With all the idealism and arrogance of youth, I set out on behalf of the beleaguered British citizen to bring transparency to this secretive and feudal country, training hundreds of journalists to use the FOI Act and making requests myself. The result is probably one you know, when a five-year legal battle culminated in a High Court victory in 2008. I'm talking, of course, about MPs' expenses. Yet even after the court ruling, MPs still refused to publish their full expenses, arguing the public couldn't be trusted with the raw data and so it had to be 'redacted' at great expense and time. • MPs demand to know why they were kept in the dark over Afghan leak The months dragged on while MPs tried to find ways to exempt themselves from their own FOI law. It wasn't until a year later that full details were finally revealed, after an insider who worked in the room where the data was being redacted leaked the full list to the highest bidder on Fleet Street. The civilian employee said he leaked details of the claims because he was angry that, at the same time MPs were secretively claiming for plasma televisions and duck houses, Britain's armed forces in Afghanistan were having to work two jobs just to buy body armour and other vital equipment. A lot has changed since then but not, it seems, the British state's penchant for secrecy. Or the military's supercilious way of dealing with people in Afghanistan. Last week it was revealed that for two years the government used wide-ranging powers to prevent UK media reporting on a data leak of the names of 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the UK after the Taliban seized power in 2021. These included interpreters and military assistants who trusted the Ministry of Defence with their personal details and those of their families. Instead of those people being notified they were on a 'kill list', the MoD opted instead to try to lock down all knowledge of the leak. This is how authoritarian states are used to controlling information, but it's become much harder in the digital age. And indeed, while the MoD was successful in gagging the press, the information continued to flow online. As one of the Afghans, a woman known as Person A, told The Times: 'Lives could have been saved if everyone had been told about the leak back in August 2023. It would have enabled them to flee into Iran or Pakistan, which would have bought them some time. These families trusted the MoD and sat waiting for evacuation.' • Larisa Brown: I investigated the Afghan data leak. Ministers were gambling with death The MoD did eventually relocate 7,000 Afghan nationals to the UK, which cost about £850 million of taxpayer money. These were not always the Afghans most in danger, however, but rather those most likely to spread awareness of the leak. The privacy injunction, initially granted for only four months on September 1, 2023, meant there could be no public scrutiny or parliamentary oversight of this decision. The MoD claimed it needed this unprecedented secrecy to get those most in danger out of Afghanistan. But this did not happen, and instead it sought longer and longer extensions. In fact, it was only later, after media court action, that the MoD began relocating Afghans in large numbers. The superinjunction was lifted only on July 15 this year. Secrecy, in the hands of the powerful, is too easy a tool to abuse. The distance from protection to cover-up is short, and a tool initially intended to help can quickly morph into causing harm. That's why it should never be a default for anyone in power, but rather an exception. When I was appointed to the Independent Surveillance Review panel, a group convened in 2014 by the deputy prime minister at the time, Nick Clegg, to look at the legality, effectiveness and privacy implications of mass government surveillance, I saw how the former heads of the intelligence agencies were often blind to the dangers of secrecy. They had a faith in officialdom that I didn't share. Where they saw officials using secrecy only for the good of the people, I saw a tool easily abused to hide mistakes, cover up embarrassments and accrue power that corrodes democracy. Such an abuse of secrecy is clear from the Afghan data leak. Instead of owning the mistake and fixing it, the MoD wasted considerable public money to hide the breach for two years, putting many Afghans in harm's way. Secrecy used in this way is not for the protection of the people, but the protection of the powerful. It's about preserving the reputations of officials at all costs. The MoD's use of a worldwide gagging order to cover up its mistake makes it clear that such injunctions have no place in a democracy. The press has a hard enough time getting basic information out of the British state, it shouldn't have to fight battles in secret courts as well. Heather Brooke is an investigative journalist and the author of The Revolution Will Be Digitised
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Jane Street's Trading Secrets Spill Into Open and Face Rivals' Scrutiny
A poster with the WWII slogan 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' long adorned the interior of Jane Street Group's offices — an unsubtle reminder to staff of the secrecy prized by one of Wall Street's most profitable firms. Now the 25-year-old trading powerhouse is in the glare of a global spotlight.
The Sun
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Britain has opened its arms to the Afghans who served with our soldiers – we must not betray them
LABOUR and the Conservatives have abused draconian secrecy laws to conceal an epic email cock-up that put 100,000 lives at risk. For the first time in history the government used a super-injunction to gag the UK press – and did so for almost two years. 2 2 Keeping secrets to save lives is justified. Keeping secrets to spare blushes is disgraceful. It is how dictatorships behave. This government and its predecessor both concealed an email leak which put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of Taliban death squads. They claimed it was out of concern for the Afghans. But if the really cared about those Afghans they would have informed them about the leak immediately, in 2022. Yet most of the 19,000 people whose names were leaked only found out yesterday – after all the schemes to save from the Taliban have already been closed down. It is yet another betrayal. The governments' real fear was riots and unrest at home – protests over more refugees. They underestimate people. This country has opened its arms, quite rightly, to the Afghans who served with our soldiers during our 20 year campaign. We must not betray them again.
Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Did the risk ever justify the secrecy in this Kafkaesque calamity?
Railing against plans for greater secrecy in courts, the human rights barrister spoke out in frustration about the Kafkaesque nature of many closed hearings. Terrorism defendants were being asked to rebut cases against them even though they were blocked from knowing the evidence on grounds of national security. It was contrary to the principles of fairness at the heart of the British legal system, and wider use of such closed procedures would 'start to erode respect for our courts', he said. This was in 2012 and Martin Chamberlain, who was protesting against the Conservatives' controversial measures to expand the number of closed courts, was not yet a High Court judge. His words were nothing short of prescient, though, when it came to the key issues he would grapple with years later while overseeing the Afghan data leak case in a secret courtroom. This time, the Kafkaesque calamity applied to journalists rather than to terrorism defendants. The press were gagged from asking crucial questions of the Ministry of Defence to understand how seriously its blunder would endanger people's lives. And, although they could ask some questions through special advocates appointed by the court, they were prevented from knowing the answers. The Times and other media challenging the superinjunction were operating — as the late head of the judiciary, Lord Bingham, had put it about closed-evidence procedures — as if 'taking blind shots at a hidden target'. A tool that was once used mostly to protect celebrities' privacy had been used to suppress official information. And although concerns about potential misuse of superinjunctions had prompted assurances in the past that they would be applied for only to cover very short periods, that approach had been abandoned under the guise of national security. • Afghan data breach: minister apologises Parliament was also blinded, prevented from examining an issue of great public importance. The result was a lack of scrutiny that shut down the ordinary mechanisms of democracy. Chamberlain acknowledged this, and emphasised his unease about it. He concluded at first that the superinjunction, a mechanism so secret that not even its existence could be reported, was necessary because of the potential risk to thousands of people and the government's need for time to safeguard them. But he resiled from that view a year ago, concerned that it was stopping those at risk from protecting themselves. He also emphasised the need for public scrutiny of a multibillion-pound evacuation programme. It is the MoD's continued insistence that a superinjunction was still necessary, an argument that succeeded at the Court of Appeal, that requires careful scrutiny. The MoD claimed for two years that the security risk to Afghans implicated in the breach justified the unprecedented gagging order, but it was able to abandon its injunction at short notice — a complete U-turn, apparently at the flourish of a pen. It now cites a risk review concluding the Taliban probably already have the information or is unlikely to target the subjects of the leak. But it gives scant explanation of why this so drastically contradicts its long-held position that there was serious risk. This raises the question: did the risk ever truly justify the secrecy? That question gives rise in turn to many uncomfortable follow-ups. What exactly prompted this extraordinary change of heart? Where is the intelligence? Did political pressure over asylum hotels, where thousands of Afghan interpreters would surely have had to be housed, play any part in the MoD's speedy abandonment of its risk argument and in the closure of the evacuation scheme? Most uncomfortable of all: as time went on, is it possible that a legal tool put in place to protect life became a mechanism to spare the government's blushes? Even now, journalists remain gagged. A new injunction blocks the reporting of key aspects of the database leak. But until all these questions are properly addressed, accountability is severely lacking and trust is at stake. As Chamberlain himself noted back in 2012, the public have confidence in the courts only when fairness and transparency is at their heart.
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
As three submarine captains are stripped of their OBEs... How one brave woman – with the Mail's help – exposed a culture of sexual abuse, vile misogyny and bullying among the Royal Navy's top rank
For more than a century, the Royal Navy's submarine service has operated behind a thick curtain of secrecy – a shadowy world of steel corridors and sonar silence, where power is absolute, scrutiny seemingly minimal and those in command are lionised as guardians of our country's deadliest weapons. But now, that carefully curated image is unravelling as the elite service faces perhaps its most damning reckoning yet.
