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28 July 2023 / Athelstane Aamodt
Issue: 8035 / Categories: Features , Media , Freedom of Information
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‘That’s classified!’

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As events in the US bring classified documents out of the shadows, Athelstane Aamodt shines a light on government secrecy

We’ve all seen it. That bit in a film when a plucky reporter asks about the existence of a rumoured secret black-ops mission that appears to have killed a lot of innocent civilians during their mission and for which they have gone undetected and unpunished. ‘That’s classified’, replies the aloof official, peremptorily ending the conversation.

The classification of documents by governments has become topical in recent months: Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and Vice-President Mike Pence, have been found to have classified documents in their homes. Thus far only Donald Trump has been indicted, and he has entered ‘not guilty’ pleas to 37 federal charges of document mishandling.

There is always something a little disconcerting about certain pieces of information being ‘classified’. Democracies, that are after all (at least notionally) founded on principles of transparency and openness, appear to be acting against their own nature by preventing their citizens from seeing all

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

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Blake Morgan—four promotions

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices

NEWS
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NLJ this week: Renters’ Rights revolution begins—brace for tribunal chaos

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

NLJ this week: Civil procedure gets a spring overhaul
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
NLJ this week: Why GP complaints are going nowhere
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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