‘Active Whistleblower Crackdown’: UK Gov’t Plan to Jail Journalists as Spies

Monday, February 13, 2017
By Paul Martin

SputnikNews.com
13.02.2017

The UK Law Commission has proposed an “Espionage Act” that would see leakers, whistleblowers and journalists, who break the Official Secrets Act, jailed as spies – and a charity that offers support to whistleblowers has told Sputnik it marks the first active crackdown on leakers by the UK government for some time.

The proposals are buried in a 326-page consultation paper, Protection of Official Data, and are claimed to be motivated by a desire to protect UK national security — although the term itself is never defined. In practice, the proposals — if adopted — would categorize leaking and whistleblowing as on a par with spying for foreign powers. Sentences would even apply if a leaker or whistleblower was not British, or in Britain.

Furthermore, overseas British embassies, intelligence and security offices, as well as data centers would be designated “prohibited places,” making it an offense to publish information about them.

Under the proposals, espionage would be defined as “committed by someone who not only communicates information, but also by someone who obtains or gathers it,” and there will be “no restriction on who can commit the offense.”

If the proposed law had been effective in 2013, all journalists involved in the Edward Snowden exposures — even those who merely handled copies of secret documents — would’ve faced jail.

Sentences for breaking the act should rise from 2 to 14 years imprisonment, the Commission suggests.

The Rest…HERE

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