Discussing how far the American Bill of Rights protects speech compared with European practice, Kiriakou volunteered that the sharpest contrast was not with Germany but with Britain.[1]
Worse than the United States
In the United Kingdom, he said, it is far, far worse than it is even in the United States. His reasoning had two parts. The first was the statute itself: Britain has what he called an awful law, the Official Secrets Act, which in his description essentially bars anybody from saying anything having to do with national security.[1] That is a broader prohibition than anything on the American books, and it does not turn on whether the information concerned is classified, or whether disclosing it serves the public.
The second part was enforcement. Britain, he said, actually uses that law as an iron fist to crack down on whistleblowers and potential whistleblowers.[1][2] The inclusion of potential whistleblowers is the substance of the complaint: the statute’s value to a government, on this account, lies less in the prosecutions it produces than in the silence it induces beforehand.
The comparison he is drawing
Kiriakou made the remark in the context of a wider conversation about why European audiences were so interested in what he had to say about transparency and the classification of criminal acts. The Official Secrets Act comparison is the counterweight in that conversation: Europe was more receptive to him personally, but that receptiveness did not mean European law was kinder to people in his position.
The comparison also sets up the standard he applies at home. Kiriakou’s objection to the American Espionage Act is not that it exists but that it is applied to people who have committed no espionage, and that it permits no defence of public interest. The Official Secrets Act, on his reading, dispenses with even the pretence: it does not need to be stretched to cover a whistleblower, because it was drawn broadly enough to cover one from the start.