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Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the foundations of U.S. information policy were being set after World War II, wartime practices were remade and made permanent in a crisis atmosphere, with the establishment of a classification system (essentially the same one used to this day) by executive order, as well, as the passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and the National Security Act in 1947. However, even as the practice of official secrecy took root, the United States took the lead in formalizing standards of openness by statute, beginning with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act and culminating in the passage (and 1974 strengthening) of the Freedom of Information Act. This article traces the development of U.S. information policy since World War II and describes the impact of official secrecy on decision making and democratic practice more generally.

My title is intended to cover two related matters which have excited much public interest over the last few months—official secrets and freedom of information. The Official Secrets Acts and particularly the notorious section 2 of the Act of 1911 have of course been matters of public concern for many years. The Act of 1911 was passed through Parliament with scarcely any discussion during a spy scare, but as the Franks Committee has long since pointed out, its all‐embracing character was not the product of inadvertent haste, but the culmination of twenty years of effort in Whitehall to get Parliament to take the problem of protecting official information seriously. The security of the realm was, and remains, the most effective argument for extending a blanket of secrecy over all official information, however trivial. The difficulty for those who want to remove part of the blanket has been to convince the doubtful sympathizer that the blanket is divisible, or that some of it can be turned back without revealing all. The alternative, very satisfactory to Whitehall, ministers and senior civil servants alike, is that the release of official information should be entirely at their discretion. It is of course necessary for government that a great deal of official information be published as a matter of routine. The problem with the discretionary system is that some information needed for effective parliamentary scrutiny and public debate is not made available until after its publication could have affected government decisions, or indeed, at all. And the government, in deciding whether or not to publish, is apt to confuse its own political position with the national interest.

Britain except in time of war has never had a Minister of Information. Each Minister is responsible not only for the policy of his Department but also for the publicity of that policy. During my thirty years in Local Authority and Parliament, I can honestly say that I have never been conscious of any Minister or Official withholding information from me. That may be because my specialties were not prominent in the field of controversy and—significantly—the furore arising from the publication of the Government White Paper CMD 7285, Reform of Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, was generated by somewhat biased neutrals with an interest in controversial fields. I propose to return to the question of the White Paper toward the end of this paper.

I want to make some comments on recent discussions of the moral and legal status of blackmail and in their light look at official secrecy (see Owens, 1988 and Evans, 1990).

This chapter focuses on how the United Kingdom, historically and contemporarily, has generally resolved the dichotomy between the conflicting public interest principles of media freedom to publish and governmental duty to protect, in the field of national security. The fundamental principles common to all democracies are discussed, the history of UK government/media interaction described, two detailed recent case studies are used of the UK's system of officially informed but voluntary self-censorship (during Afghanistan 1 and Iraq 2), and lessons on government/media balance are drawn. In today's high-speed international communications environment, it is no longer feasible for governments to suppress information widely in the public domain electronically and in other countries. Governments therefore achieve better protection of necessarily secret national and allied security information at source by not attempting to suppress publication of other security information seen by large numbers of insiders as being of low security importance.

Al-Qaeda is conventionally portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities – coordinated by the network's leader Osama bin Laden – are the source of international terrorism today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against Western civilization. Al-Qaeda's terrorist activity today is considered, “blowback” from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream conceptions of al-Qaeda's identity. Western covert operations and military – intelligence connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today. US, British, and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.11This paper advances an original argument based partially on research in Ahmed (2005), supplemented here with significant new data and analysis. Also see Ahmed (2002).

The purpose of this paper is a holistic assessment of the impact of whistleblowing policy adopted by the Nigerian Government in fighting corruption and an evaluation of the whistleblowing and witness protection bill.

This paper is a critical analysis of the whistleblowing policy and the draft whistleblowing and witness protection bill. The paper combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. It is conducted through the study of the policy and the draft bill and the critical examination of the data released by the federal Ministry of Finance. Moreover, the personal experience of the authors in the civil service and in formulating and implementing the whistleblower policy account significantly.

The whistleblowing policy adopted by the Federal Republic of Nigeria is promising in controlling corruption and other economically motivated crimes. However, while efforts to give whistleblowing a legal backing will strengthen the fight against corruption in Nigeria, the National Assembly must subject the bill to rigorous debate to avoid having many lacunas in would be act.

The use of whistleblowing in combatting corruption in Nigeria is still at its infancy. A policy document backs implementation of the policy – there is no legislation or case law to consider. Thus, analysis is based on the policy document, the bill, statistics from the FMF and personal experience of the authors.

There is no comprehensive study on the adoption of and efforts to give legal backing to, the whistleblowing policy adopted in Nigeria. This paper is of value to the Nigerian Government and the National Assembly considering the latest efforts to institutionalise whistleblowing in Nigeria.

I believe it is, or was, the case that libraries in the Republic of South Africa do not stock copies of Black Beauty; nor children's stories about little black rabbits and little white ones. Similarly, it is said to be impossible to get Darwin's Origin of the Species in the so called ‘Bible Belt’ region in the USA; and I have no doubt that it would be provocative—and also futile—to request a copy of, say, Animal Farm from the Lenin Library in Moscow.

Agitation for adoption of freedom of access to government information is an emerging issue in Africa and has gathered momentum since 2000 when South Africa passed the first freedom of information (FoI) law in the continent. This paper aims to discuss the extent of passage of FoI laws in Africa, the reality of their implementation in some of the countries and the critical challenges and recommendations.

A document analysis approach was adopted for gathering vital information on the realities and challenges of FoI implementation in Africa. Literature on the concepts, principles and practice of FoI were reviewed, and relevant facts and figures were extracted to buttress the authors’ argument.

Only 14 (25.5 per cent) of the 55 countries in Africa had signed FoI law as on January 31, 2015; 16 (29.0 per cent) are still lobbying, while 25 (45.5 per cent) of the states had no significant plan yet. Political factors like colonial legacy, poor leadership, inexperienced record managers for the implementation of FoI Acts (FoIA), corruption and hydra-headed clauses such as “national security, and other privacy rights” impede access to government records in Africa. The paper recommended among others that African countries should amend restrictive laws that continue to impede full implantation of FoI laws.

Implementation of the provisions in the FoIA in Africa will not be realistic unless those restrictive clauses that hinder citizens from freely accessing government information are reviewed in line with free access to information.

This paper appears to be the first to review the status of FoIA in Africa since the first right to information laws were signed in the continent.