{"id":1018,"date":"2008-06-11T22:14:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T21:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2008-06-12T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T18:16:14","slug":"what-to-do-if-you-find-top-secret-intelligence-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/what-to-do-if-you-find-top-secret-intelligence-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"What To Do If You Find Top Secret Intelligence Documents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">I<\/span> wonder why the person who discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/7449255.stm\">two intelligence assessments<\/a> on a train gave them to the <strong>BBC<\/strong> rather than handing them over to the police?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Remember, these documents were <strong>TOP SECRET<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So secret, that they were marked &#8220;for UK\/US\/Canadian and Australian eyes only&#8221;. (Readers in <strong>New Zealand<\/strong> will be disappointed that despite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/section\/1\/story.cfm?c_id=1&#038;objectid=10515268\" target=\"_blank\">their contribution to the coalition<\/a> their eyes aren&#8217;t secret enough.)<\/p>\n<p>Of course, had anyone at the BBC who saw the documents been<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opsi.gov.uk\/acts\/acts1989\/ukpga_19890006_en_1#l1g1\" target=\"_blank\">(1) A person who is or has been\u2014<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opsi.gov.uk\/acts\/acts1989\/ukpga_19890006_en_1#l1g1\" target=\"_blank\">(a) a member of the security and intelligence services<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>then they would have been obliged to hand them over, or else found themselves committing an offence under the <strong>1989 Official Secrets Act<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Although the OSA is so all-encompassing that anyone handling the docs might be liable, even the person who failed to hand them over in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Still, you could certainly make a case that presenting them to FG is a cast-iron signal that you didn&#8217;t want the contents made public.<\/p>\n<p>So what should you do if you spot top secret documents in your carriage? Here&#8217;s my professional advice. Place them carefully in a freesheet.<\/p>\n<p>No one will ever find them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wonder why the person who discovered two intelligence assessments on a train gave them to the BBC rather than handing them over to the police?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}