UK Foreign Office Bars Public From Attending Conference On How It Will Finally Release Illegally-Withheld Public Records

from the taking-the-'public'-out-of-'public-records' dept

The UK has a rule that nearly all government documents become public after a certain time has elapsed. But last year, it was revealed that the UK's Foreign Office had failed to release a huge store of older documents -- over a million of them:

The Foreign Office has unlawfully hoarded more than a million files of historic documents that should have been declassified and handed over to the National Archives, the Guardian has discovered.

The files are being kept at a secret archive at a high-security government communications centre in Buckinghamshire, north of London, where they occupy mile after mile of shelving.

Most of the papers are many decades old -- some were created in the 19th century -- and document in fine detail British foreign relations throughout two world wars, the cold war, withdrawal from empire and entry into the common market.

They have been kept from public view in breach of the Public Records Acts, which requires that all government documents become public once they are 30 years old -- a term about to be reduced to 20 years -- unless the department has received permission from the lord chancellor to hold them for longer. The secret archive is also beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
Now that it has been forced to admit that it holds all these records of great historical -- and often great political -- interest, the Foreign Office is making them public at last. But as The Guardian reports, it seems it still doesn't quite get what that means:
The UK Foreign Office is holding a conference to explain how it will finally place into the public domain millions of public records that it has unlawfully held for decades -- but is refusing to allow members of the public to attend.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: public records, secrecy, transparency, uk, withheld


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. icon
    Ninja (profile), 20 Mar 2014 @ 2:55am

    The UK Foreign Office is holding a conference to explain how it will finally place into the public domain millions of public records that it has unlawfully held for decades -- but is refusing to allow members of the public to attend.

    Sheer stupidity. The files will be public anyway. What are they expecting to hide? That they'll be using MS Access instead of a sturdy database system out of their own incompetence?

    When a Government abuses secrecy it tends to generate such hilarious yet worrying situations.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2014 @ 3:44am

    That they'll be using MS Access instead of a sturdy database system out of their own incompetence?

    Electronic version will have to be created and cataloged by someone else, as the sturdy database is heavy duty shelving.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2014 @ 4:27am

    The is the British Foreign Office - they couldn't organise a party in Bangkok without corporate assistance.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    beech, 20 Mar 2014 @ 5:27am

    This just demonstrates what kind of chicanery happens when there is a CULTURE of secrecy in government. Just like with most of the US's classified documents, there is no reason for these documents to be kept secret, and no reason for the conference to be kept secret. Everything is kept secret for the sole reason that "we keep everything secret"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2014 @ 5:32am

    Re:

    How's this for a plan:

    The entire archive is to be printed and scanned by a private company to get it into an electronic format suitable for public release.

    The scanned versions shall be considered derivative works with copyrights held by the private company.

    The private company agrees to not permit public release of their copyrighted works until the copyrights have expired.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    DogBreath, 20 Mar 2014 @ 9:10am

    Re:

    There is a reason.

    Just as hotdog makers don't want you to see how it is made, because then you would never buy and eat it.

    Governments don't want you to see how government policy is made, because then you (and other countries they lie to on a daily basis) would never trust it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    I'm_Having_None_Of_It, 20 Mar 2014 @ 9:19am

    Re: Re:

    Is it bad that I can see that happening?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 20 Mar 2014 @ 9:46am

    Re: Re:

    I don't know about UK law, but with US law, this couldn't happen. There mere act of scanning documents doesn't give you a fresh copyright because it isn't transformative. For a fresh copyright, you need to alter the work in some meaningful way.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 20 Mar 2014 @ 9:47am

    Re: Re:

    We already don't trust it, so there's nothing to lose.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    DogBreath, 20 Mar 2014 @ 10:10am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Well, as President Abraham Lincoln once said:

    "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

    I add to that something I think Mark Twain would have added:

    "And that is how politicians get elected, and re-elected."



    If history repeats itself, I believe we're doomed.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux3DKxxFoM

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 20 Mar 2014 @ 10:45am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Truthfully, I don't think the problem is who gets elected (and so I don't think we can solve our problem solely through elections).

    The problem is that when good people are elected, they are faced with a choice: stay pure and noble and be completely ineffective or play the corrupt game and be able to do at least some good along with the bad.

    The problem is the system itself is corrupt.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 20 Mar 2014 @ 4:07pm

    Re: but with US law, this couldn't happen

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    DogBreath, 20 Mar 2014 @ 7:48pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    The problem is that when good people are elected, they are faced with a choice: stay pure and noble and be completely ineffective or play the corrupt game and be able to do at least some good along with the bad.

    I agree. Too bad that most politicians are nothing more than puppets on strings, and automatically without question dance at their so-called "benefactors" behest.

    As history has shown, even the little good a politician may have been lucky enough to get done, gets bastardized by some other puppets down the road, and nothing can be done to fix that... unless you get your own puppets elected.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 21 Mar 2014 @ 9:03am

    Re: Re: but with US law, this couldn't happen

    Neither of those stories contradict what I have asserted. In the first one, the claim is that they did, in fact, alter the documents in a meaningful way. In the second, they're charging to search the records, not claiming copyright on the records themselves.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    GEMont (profile), 21 Mar 2014 @ 11:37am

    Its a Family Affair

    Why would the general public be allowed to attend an auction of old but incriminating and politically sensitive documentary evidence of past misdeeds??

    Only the families of the criminals/politicians/business leaders, who are referred to in these documents need attend, along with their checkbooks.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.