Bradley Manning supporters stage UK events

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

Events are to be held across the UK, and the rest of the world, to mark the 1,000th day spent in prison by alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning.

Pte Manning, 25, was detained in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of passing secret files to the website.

The US Army analyst faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. If convicted, he could be jailed for life.

A series of events will be held across the US and Europe, including in London, Edinburgh, Yorkshire and Cardiff.

"There has never been a more important time to broadcast our message of support for exposing war crimes, international justice, and people's right to know what the government does in our name," said a spokesman for US-based campaign group.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21556107

[struggle4progress]

1. If they learned anything substantial from Manning's releases, it's a good bet they weren't paying

too much attention to the news beforehand

But it's a good thing to be interested in government transparency. Of course, no UK newspaper would ever publish leaked UK government documents the way (say) the NYT published some of Manning's releases, because in the UK folk can be prosecuted for doing that, under the Official Secrets Act. And there's probably no chance these people are actually planning to push for changes to UK secrecy law

[dipsydoodle]

2. UK newspaper would publish leaked UK government documents

and do so often provided a D / DA notice isn't in place.

D for discretion: Can the modern media keep a secret ?

When the UK government wants to prevent the media from reporting something for national security reasons it issues what used to be known as a D-Notice.

Although they are now called Defence Advisory (DA) Notices the mainstream news organisations hardly ever ignore them.

But can this system still work in the age of citizen journalism when the media is so fragmented?

Twice a year, over tea and biscuits at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, senior editors sit down with senior civil servants to discuss what should be kept secret in the military, intelligence and counter-terrorism worlds.

Originally known as the D-Notice Committee, it has been in existence for nearly a century.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14572768

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. the D-Notice Committee, it has been in existence for nearly a century.

Fascinating...I had no idea.
Ideally we would have a real separation between news and the gov't.

[struggle4progress]

4. Journalistic sources and the law: blowing the whistle on truth-tellers

Journalistic sources and the law: blowing the whistle on truth-tellers
Police forces, hospitals and others must be open to scrutiny, giving genuine whistleblowers protection rather than restraint
Editorial
The Guardian, Sunday 17 February 2013 14.50 EST

When this newspaper spent two years uncovering the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, we were faced with a particularly powerful obstacle in the shape of the senior ranks of the Metropolitan police ... In September 2011, only two months after the scandal finally came to a climax, the Met attempted to use the Official Secrets Act to force two Guardian reporters to hand over notebooks and computer records in order to identify sources who had assisted our investigation ... Last week .. the Home Office accepted police arguments that the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act should be amended in two ways: to make it easier for them to seize journalists' notebooks and computer records; and to make it more difficult for journalists to conceal the identity of confidential sources ...

Crispin Aubrey: Journalist convicted under the Official Secrets Act in the 'ABC Trial'
Tuesday 09 October 2012
Peta Steel

Crispin Aubrey, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 66, was a journalist who in 1977 found himself the centre of a news story when he was arrested and accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act ... In February 1977, Aubrey and a freelance science journalist, Duncan Campbell, were sent to interview John Berry, a former member of Signals Intelligence who, angry at the deportations, had contacted the magazine. The two men were arrested as they left Berry's flat ... In November, Aubrey, Berry and Campbell were found guilty of breaking the Official Secrets Act ... In 1989, Section 2 was amended to make it an offence to divulge information only in relation to six specific categories ...

Scott Van Wynsberghe: Britain’s Official Secrets Act has taken a toll on journalists
fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/08/04/scott-van-wynsberghe-britains-official-secrets-act-has-taken-a-toll-on-journalists/
National Post | Aug 4, 2011 4:58 PM ET

There were five OSAs, passed in 1889, 1911, 1920, 1939 and 1989 ... Upon reading them, it becomes apparent that the vague, popular impression of the OSAs as counter-espionage tools is only partly true. The OSAs also were used to control the dissemination of general government information ... In 1998, the reporter and author Tony Geraghty brought out a book on the troubles in Northern Ireland and revealed the scope of computer databases used there by security forces. He was soon charged under the OSA ...

Secrecy across the pond
British journalists feel the chill under the Official Secrets Act, and a bill in the Senate could have similar effects in the United States.
From the Fall 2006 issue of The News Media & The Law, page 9.
By Heather Shoenberger

In November 2005, Britain’s attorney general threatened British newspapers with prosecution if they published the contents of a conversation between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair discussing their disagreements about the Iraq war. They used the threat of the Official Secrets Act, a World War I-era British law that prohibits disclosing government information without “lawful authority” ... James Risen, on of the New York Times reporters who broke stories about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program and the government’s monitoring of overseas banking transactions, said the Official Secrets Act is responsible for the “tabloidization” of the British press because reporters fear the government’s reaction to critical news. “The reason British media has so much tabloid material is because they are unable to report on real issues” ...

The Official Secrets Act is to blame
Wednesday 4 February 2004 21.26 EST

... the 1989 Official Secrets Act ... was designed by the Thatcher government to stop people such as Clive Ponting ever revealing unpalatable secrets again. Section two encourages false or vague reporting. If a journalist works too well on a story involving an official secret, prosecution will inevitably follow. There is no public interest defence - because that is specifically forbidden by the act ... Andrew Gilligan was working on a story about an official secret, using contacts bound by the act. Dr Kelly certainly had access to secret information in documentary form - and perhaps knew of others with access to secret information who might back up his story. But if Gilligan had firmed up the story by looking for such evidence or second witness statements, he would have been open to prosecution ... Using a single source is now said to be the genesis of his mistake. But what alternative does the Official Secrets Act give? To bring the truth to the public, it has to be wrapped it up as a rumour ...

[Ash_F]

5. What the leaks did was give credit to the investigative reporters

Proving they were right by providing the info straight from public official's criminal mouths. Thereby taking away from those individuals the tool of plausible deniability.

That's a big difference and you should not minimize what Bradley Manning has done.