UK Government Refuses To Reveal Job Title Or Salary Of Top Law Enforcement Officer Because Terrorism

from the oh,-come-on dept

Wed, Apr 15th 2015 1:13am — Glyn Moody

As Techdirt has reported previously, the UK government is so reflexively secretive that it even refuses to confirm or deny information that it has previously confirmed. The Intercept reports on another absurd case of completely trivial requests for information being turned down because "terrorism". It's refusing to reveal either the job title or salary of Cressida Dick, a top government official in some apparently mysterious role:

The British government is refusing to disclose the job title and taxpayer-funded salary of one of the most senior law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom, claiming the details have to be kept a secret for security reasons.

Cressida Dick (pictured above) was formerly one of the highest ranking officers at London’s Metropolitan Police, the largest police force in the U.K., where she headed the Specialist Operations unit and oversaw a controversial criminal investigation into journalists who reported on Edward Snowden’s leaked documents.

In December, Dick announced she was leaving the London police to take up a top job with the government’s Foreign Office. But her new role is being shrouded in intense secrecy.

It's just about theoretically possible that the job title could reveal operational details of the role in question -- something along the lines of "Head of Department Trying To Use Man-In-Middle Attacks To Spy On Google Users in the Middle East" -- but only if that job title were extremely ill-chosen. Moreover, the British civil service has centuries of experience in coming up with grand-sounding but totally meaningless job titles, so it's hard to believe that for the first time in its glorious history it was really stumped, and had to resort to literalism. Refusing to release details of the salary attached to the position is even more ridiculous -- unless, of course, UK officials are required to use their secret stipend's digits as a password to access government systems.

All that the UK government achieves by refusing to release this information is that it comes across as risible and petty, ridiculously focused on controlling unimportant details, instead of concentrating on what really matters. Things like respecting the public's desire to know how its taxes are being spent, rather than dismissing it as if it were an impertinent question from a tedious child.

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Filed Under: cressida dick, foia, government, secrecy, uk

22 Comments

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Stephen, 15 Apr 2015 @ 1:44am

Secretive Policing
So it's official. Britain now has it's first secret(ive) police officer. Can jackboots be far behind? (Or perhaps we should be calling them "jillboots" given the officer's gender.)

They already have the secret(ive) mass surveillance all set up and raring to go. Presumably they'll next be wanting a secret(ive) prison to put evildoers in and secret(ive) courts to try those evildoers in so as protect all that precious secret(ive) testimony and serret(ive) evidence they'll be convicting them with.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 3:26am

Re: Secretive Policing
We've already got secret courts, testimony and evidence.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 3:59am

Hey, I have an idea. They should keep the Prime Minister's name secret, too - I mean, what if the terrorists find out who he is and try to kill him or threaten him?! In fact, we should keep the the names of everyone in the government secret - just to be on the safe side.

DEMOCRACY!
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:03am

I've said it before. UK wants to become the China of Western Europe.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:15am

What the UK government is admitting...
...is that they're scared of terrorists. Of course, anyone who admits being scared of terrorists is a terrorist ally: they're doing exactly exactly what terrorists want them to do. Thus the UK government has just publicly confessed that it supports terrorists (and their goals) and intends to make doing so its public policy.
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Padpaw (profile), 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:24am

If the officer in question is torturing and murdering suspects that would explain how revealing his name would be helping terrorism.

Since that would create even more terrorists out to avenge the possibly innocent people he has hurt/killed
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Padpaw (profile), 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:26am

Re:
sorry half asleep here, meant to say revealing their job title and her. Not name and him.
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Guardian, 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:38am

here you go
he's called the chief secret turd and his salary is HUGE HUGE i tell ya.....

haha like a terrorist cares what your called or how much cash you make, what a crock a shit
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:40am

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 15th, 2015 @ 3:59am
The votes are in and have been tallied. Your next Prime Minister is... A secret because terrorism and national security.
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Doctor Poop, 15 Apr 2015 @ 4:49am

A dick amongst many other dicks
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 6:37am

the UK is behaving more and more like the USA, hiding details of certain high officials, even though they are paid out from the tax payers bucket. as for her, it sounds as if she could do with a large part of what's in her name! perhaps then she wouldn't be so full of piss and importance!
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 7:00am

Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 15th, 2015 @ 3:59am
Imagine what the secret ballot would look like.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 7:19am

Re: Secretive Policing
They already have the secret(ive) mass surveillance all set up and raring to go.

It's already going, and has been for quite some time.
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David, 15 Apr 2015 @ 8:27am

Re:
In fact, we should keep the the names of everyone in the government secret - just to be on the safe side.

That's basically the U.S. approach: the elected goverment officials including the president get their names widely publicized. The people actually wielding the power remain in the dark.

For that reason it does not really matter if the security for some Nobel Peace prize recipient is basically a clown show. It's part of keeping the president in line: "you wouldn't want to let us have another Lee Harvey Oswald get through, would you?".
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 8:48am

Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 15th, 2015 @ 3:59am
This story translated to me as thus: "We won't say because we're scared not only of the terrorists, but more so the people we're supposed to serve."
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Just Another Anonymous Troll, 15 Apr 2015 @ 9:13am

If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 12:59pm

don't reveal Cressida's Salary, then there's no way to uncover the 10s of millions in bribe money in the Cressida foreign bank accounts.

It could all be salary, or some of it could be slush funding from various terrorist organizations to overlook their activities.

The fact that either could be true shows how low the UK government has sunk.

Well that and charging anyone reporting child abuse from MPs with violating the official secrets act.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 1:01pm

Re: Secretive Policing
Don't forget the secret bullets and the secret mass graves for anyone trying to expose the dozens of paedophile conservative MPs...
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 1:02pm

Re:
IF????? thats a bit naive
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2015 @ 3:44pm

Yellow is as Yellow does.
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I'm_Having_None_Of_It, 16 Apr 2015 @ 5:57am

Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 15th, 2015 @ 3:59am
They wouldn't tell you where the polling stations were. Current incumbents would win by default in a massive landslide.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2015 @ 7:26pm

Time to put on your big girl panties and stop hiding under mama's skirt.
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