|
This project combines the themes of access to information and data security precisely because of the threats that can result to journalists who seek to obtain information and cannot do so by legal means even when there is a clear public interest in the information.
In the absence of a functioning access to information law, when journalists do obtain information by leaks, there are risks that they will come under pressure to reveal sources and/or be charged with illegal possession of information. Such threats are not limited to the new democracies of central and eastern Europe: in Germany in 2007, 17 journalists were prosecuted for “involvement in disclosing state secrets” (article 353b of the criminal code) after publishing documents giving details of the kidnapping and maltreatment of two German nationals who had been taken by CIA agents to Afghanistan as part of the extraordinary rendition programme [1].
The case against the journalists, which brought international protests, was eventually dropped but nonetheless provides a particularly strong example of the current pressures on journalists who reveal information about the complicity of Western European governments in violations of human rights related to the war on terror. A recent report on such developments by the Association of European Journalists was entitled “Goodbye to Freedom?” [2]
The goal of this project therefore is to support journalists in their use of access to information laws in order that they can exercise the legal right to obtain government-held information. At the same time, there is a responsibility to ensure that journalists engaged in data collection, investigative journalism, and possible undertaking court cases against the government to enforce their right of access to information, are fully protected from illegal surveillance and other interference with their electronic communications and the integrity of the information they have collected.
[1] The two men are Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national born in Germany was held at Guantanamo Bay until 2006, and Khalid el-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, reportedly captured in Macedonia in 2003, taken by CIA agents to Afghanistan, abused, and then freed in Albania in 2004
[2] For more information see Association of European Journalists
|
