No Climategate Prosecutions
January 26th, 2010Via: Bishop Hill:
However, when the Climategate emails were released I noticed several email from Mike Hulme predating 2005, which appeared to contradict the earlier assertion that all such emails had been lost. Intrigued, I wrote to the Information Commissioner asking that this be investigated and today I had my response.
First off, I was told that while there appeared to be a problem, I needed to be clear that there would be no prosecutions under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, regardless of the final outcome of the investigation. Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior. As anyone who has made a UK FoI request knows, it can take six months to exhaust the internal review process before the ICO even becomes involved. The ICO can then take another six months before starting his investigation.
The upshot is that the FoI Act’s section allowing criminal prosecutions is to all intents and purposes a dead letter and the ICO officer actually volunteered this conclusion himself – “the Act is flawed” was the way he put it. The ICO is apparently going to take this up with the Ministry of Justice, which is fine but will be of little help for those who are interested in seeing justice done.
It seems quite clear that civil servants are able to withhold and destroy information without any consequences and it’s interesting to ponder how such a dramatic flaw can have found its way into the terms of the Act. Of course we in the UK are used to poorly drafted laws finding their way onto the statute books, but we might also consider the thought that Sir Humphrey might have knowingly inserted this crucial error, in order to ensure that when push came to shove he could keep things quiet without any concerns that he might find himself in hot water.
Conspiracy theory? Perhaps, but you have to admit, it’s a possibility.
Every now and again I’m thrown off guard by a story that contains words like “Freedom of Information Act” and I assume they are located in the US, only to read farther and find out it’s about the UK or elsewhere. Even knowing that the Freedom of Information Act in question is not the FOIA (oh how we love stripping all meaning from things with acronyms) that I’m as vaguely aware of as any other American zombie – I assume that it means the same thing. A trend that showed up on my radar a while back is the ‘harmonization’ of various facets of law and order in countries around the world. The part of me that really wants the world to get a grip and get along thinks that ‘harmony’ is a wonderful word and that we should all be singing a lot more of it. The part of me that knows that these words are used very specifically to tug on the heartstrings of the other part of me wants to know what key we’re playing in. What is it that we’ll harmonize towards? A few of Kevin’s posts recently all touched the same set of strings–
We use these here too…
Britain: Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
Will we see more or less of this?
Children Disappearing from Hospitals in Haiti
Only advertisers will be able to provide internet content. yummy!
Italy to Require Anyone Who Uploads Video to the Internet to Obtain Government Authorization
Let’s all fail together! hugz!
Faber on Upcoming Sovereign Debt Crisis
They use these over There, and no one’s had *any* problems.
Monsanto’s GM Corn Damages Organs: A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health
And of course we’ve got a few things of our own for everyone else to harmonize to:
Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review
Obama Establishes Council of Governors Via Executive Order: “Synchronization and Integration of State and Federal Military Activities in the United States”