Thanks to the government, we now know that Ben Griffin is no lone fantasist howling at the moon:

A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops.

I think we can be certain he was telling the truth. Why gag him if what he was saying was rubbish? If that were the case surely sending out some obsequious, ambitious and morally-compromised minor functionary to smear him - as is usually the done thing - would have served.

The Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces’ activities.

Sorry guys, but you just did. And how.

We now know that every utterance and mention of Ben Griffin is worth the closest scrutiny. Get yourself a Google News Alert. The speech Griffin made on Monday is reproduced below.

(more…)

I see fearless champion of freedom of speech Guido Fawkes* is defending Wikileaks. The website is a repository for documents that might otherwise be suppressed.

This is where Guido uploads important documents (like that Northern Rock memo) and others they don’t want you to see…

I’ve got some important documents that ‘they’** don’t want you to see. Would Wikileaks be the best place to put them for safe keeping, do you think?

(Guido will also be speaking at the Manifesto Club - that bolt-hole for the some of the Living Marxism atrocity deniers - on Tuesday. ‘Guido will be putting the case for the freedom to offend everyone except the truth’. Would anybody like to go? I imagine we could make the Q&A session afterwards an interesting one.)

* Number of legal proceedings initiated against other bloggers: 2
** ‘They’ in this instance being Guido Fawkes.

Well now, this is interesting.

Gordon Brown has promised to reverse the Commons decision to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. “It will be corrected,” he said of the legislation, passed by MPs 10 days ago. is interesting.

Put the Prime Minister elect in front of an audience of book-loving luvvies and happy camping Hampstead liberals, have Mariella Frostrup purr in his ear, and he folds faster than Tony Blair being told to grab his ankles by Rupert Murdoch.

Not that we should expect that this reversal sets any kind of encouraging precedent, but we can only hope that John Reid’s last gasp grab for Mosleyite posterity is similarly screwed.

…petition the Prime Minister to implement a full Freedom of Information Act. There is no justification in Government business being executed in a shroud of secrecy. The Government works in our name, therefore access to ALL business should be free and immediate.

While reading around the Saudi/UK arms dealing piece I came across this:

The Campaign for Freedom of Information: Tony Blair presents 1995 Freedom of Information Awards
Individuals and organisations who have contributed significantly to greater openness are recognised in the Campaign for Freedom of Information’s annual Awards, presented on Monday evening, March 25, by the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, leader of the Labour Party.

Isn’t this one of those poacher/gamekeeper crossovers we hear so much about? Treat yourself to a grim, ironic chuckle this fine Friday morning.

Whitehall officials have refused requests under the Freedom of Information Act to publish the results of Gateway reviews on high-risk IT-related projects at the NHS, the Child Support Agency and on a national ID card scheme.

…

Gateway reviews are six-stage independent assessments during the life of high-risk projects conducted by the Office of Government Commerce.

The OGC’s refusal leaves Parliament with no reliable means of receiving regular reports on the progress of risky IT-related schemes, which can cost billions of pounds.

…

The OGC’s refusal to publish reports came in the same week the government admitted that a problem-laden IT implementation of tax credits in 2003 contributed to about a third of all awards, covering 1.9 million families, being overpaid in 2003-04.

read the rest…

Guardian: Ministers stall inquiry on Iraq war advice

Ministers are using a procedural device to stall a referral under the Freedom of Information Act to Richard Thomas, the information commissioner. Mr Thomas, an independent watchdog responsible for policing the act, cannot step in until ministers announce the results of an “internal review” of their own decision. But they have failed to do so. An investigation could lead to a legally binding order that they must release the files.

You really do have to think that if it was in any way beneficial to Blair - like whether his youngest son Leo had his MMR jabs - this information would have seen the light of day months ago.

Precedent and procedure would have gone out of the window had Blair been able to say: “There you go, the Attorney General’s advice vindicates me completely.” It quite clearly doesn’t, hence all the smoke and mirrors.

The Independent: Government attacked for ‘hypocritical’ attitude to Freedom of Information Act

Ministers’ promises to usher in a new age of freedom of information have failed to materialise, with scores of requests to open the Government to public scrutiny being rejected.