{"id":1731,"date":"2008-10-20T11:21:17","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T10:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2008-10-20T11:23:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T10:23:55","slug":"protecting-the-police-from-inquiries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/10\/protecting-the-police-from-inquiries\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting the police from inquiries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">J<\/span>ournalistic scrutiny of the UK police (and the armed forces and intelligence services, btw) is about to be severely restricted thanks to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/ld200708\/ldbills\/065\/08065.59-65.html#inf001\"><strong>Counter-Terrorism Bill<\/strong><\/a>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what the Bill says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>83      Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc<br \/>\n(1)     After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (c. 11) (collection of information)<\/p>\n<p>insert\u2014<br \/>\n\u201c58A  Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc<\/p>\n<p>       (1)   A person commits an offence who\u2014<\/p>\n<p>              (a)   elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been\u2014<\/p>\n<p>                     (i)   a member of Her Majesty\u2019s forces,<br \/>\n                    (ii)   a member of any of the intelligence services, or<br \/>\n                   (iii)   a constable,<\/p>\n<p>       which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or<\/p>\n<p>              (b)   publishes or communicates any such information.<\/p>\n<p>(2)   It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8216;reasonable excuse&#8217; defence sounds &#8216;reasonable&#8217;, but in the early stages of any investigation such excuse is often hard to justify &#8211; you&#8217;re asking for the evidence up front that the investigation might provide.<\/p>\n<p>Easy to see how this becomes one giant stick with which to beat anyone doing accountability journalism in respect of the constabulary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalistic scrutiny of the UK police (and the armed forces and intelligence services, btw) is about to be severely restricted thanks to the Counter-Terrorism Bill.<\/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":[1881,1589,1798],"class_list":["post-1731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-counter-terrorism-bill","tag-investigative-journalism","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731","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=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1734,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}