Secrecy or Public Interest?

So today a Conservative shadow spokesman, Damien Green has had to endure the ignimony of 9 hours of detention while being interrogated for doing his job - releasing information that the government wanted kept secret, into the public domain , in the public interest.

Now it's not often that I'll support a conservative - but this heavy handedness reeks of yet more surveillance & regulation. An opposition exists (partly) to criticise governmental bad practice. If 5,000 illegal immigrants are working in the security services ( which is one of the items Green is meant to have leaked) then that should be in the public domain.

It's hard enough, as Chris Huhne said on the Today programme this morning to access the information to enable effective opposition - but heavy handedness when it is released is not an appropriate way to treat an elected member of parliament.

Even if the data were a threat to national security, bully boy tactics reveal more about the paranoia of the current administration than about the severity of the information released. It raises a terrible spectre: if a member of parliament can be treated this what lies ahead for the ordinary citizen whose civil liberties have been chipped away to allow detention without trial should he reveal something unexpected that might be considered in a roundabout way to have some vague relation to an issue of national security !!