In light of Julian Assange’s release, an intelligence watchdog has called for urgent changes to the nation’s secrecy laws to protect journalists and whistleblowers handling sensitive information.
Jake Blight, Australia’s Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and one of Australia’s most experienced national security lawyers, stated that unclear regulations can negatively affect the role of a free press.
“Excessively wide or uncertain secrecy laws can undermine trust in government and unreasonably impact the important role of a free press and civil society groups,” Mr. Blight said in his review on secrecy laws handed down on June 27.
He highlighted that current definitions of offending are too imprecise, and stressed the need to avoid broad terms such as information relating to “the functioning of government.”
His review recommends scrapping the use of security classifications, such as “top secret,” as a basis for an offence.
Instead, he advocated for changing the law to make it an offence only to release information that harms a security agency’s operations, capabilities, technologies, or the methods and sources it uses to obtain information.
“Disclosure of information about the core intelligence operations, capabilities, technologies, methods, and sources of Australia’s six main intelligence agencies will almost always be harmful to the national interest,” he said.
“But it does not follow that all information to do with those agencies will always be harmful.
“This is particularly so for agencies whose functions have expanded beyond traditional intelligence functions and now include assisting other bodies—such as the Department of Home Affairs—with their functions.”
The report cites broad cybersecurity information, commercial mapping, and routine administration as examples of material that should not be captured by secrecy laws.
As he embarked on his review, Mr. Blight questioned whether the fact that a government official has stamped a document secret should automatically give that stamp an effect in law.
“Shouldn’t sending someone to jail be a matter of a judge deciding whether there’s been harm or risk of harm?” he said in an interview with the ABC.
“[But] the core of that offence is deciding whether an official put a stamp on a document.
“We have literally thousands of national security laws. About 3,000 plus pages. That’s about the same number as the complete works of William Shakespeare, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and all three volumes of Lord of the Rings added together.”
While Mr. Blight admitted there was “undoubtedly information that [has the potential to] cause harm,” he emphasised that there has to be a balance in empowering our national security, police, and law enforcement agencies to do their work.
Excess Secrecy Criticised
Mr. Blight added that it was currently an offence merely to receive a classified document.“The journalist has potentially committed a crime the moment they intentionally receive that document. Before they’ve done anything else with it. Before they’ve assessed it, before they’ve copied it, before they’ve published it. And there’s certainly being put to me a lot that this has a chilling effect and isn’t necessary.”
Divulging classified information carries a seven to 10-year sentence.
Senior lawyer Kieran Pender at the Human Rights Law Centre supported the report’s recommendations.
“Unnecessary and disproportionate secrecy is bad for democracy.”
Greens senator David Shoebridge also wants to see an overhaul of Australia’s secrecy laws.
“Whistleblowers like Julian continue to pay an unfair price for telling the world the unethical and criminal actions of governments.
“We must stand with them, and we must ensure that the legal structures we put in place are there to protect them, to tell truth to power and ... not go to jail for the privilege.”
