Reference Material

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Selected news articles

Papers prove Trafigura ship dumped toxic waste in Ivory Coast]


From "Silencing Sources"

(See Privacy International: Silencing Sources)

International Guidelines

Specific legal examples

  • “In Sweden, the principle of anonymity of speakers was first recognized in the Ordinance Relating to Freedom of Writing and the Press in 1766.”
  • “The most detailed protection is the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act, which is part of the constitution. Under the Act, anyone who is a source has a fundamental right to anonymity and it is prohibited as a criminal offence for journalists to break this duty of confidentiality.”
  • In the US, the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that there is no constitutional right of journalists to refuse to testify before a grand jury about their sources of information.” Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972). (Lesson: we need strong and specific laws even when free speech is protected to start with.)
  • 20 countries have source protection laws: Georgia, Mexico, Indonesia, France, Turkey, Mozambique, Iceland (civil cases), Kosovo.
  • Lithuania's source protection overturned by court. Decision of 23 October 2002
  • Qualified source protection: Belgium, Philippines, Armenia, Luxembourg, Finland.
  • Source protection laws useless in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Australia.
  • Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “It should be emphasized that this right does not constitute a duty, as the social communicator does not have the obligation to protect the confidentiality of information sources, except for reasons of professional conduct and ethics.”
  • Who is a journalist: Belgian law is most open, US law has multi-part test. Argentina and California cover web sites as journalism.
  • p. 44 anti-terrorism laws in South Africa, Philippines, Uganda, US
  • “A US federal judge ruled in November 2006 that the New York Times could not use information from anonymous government sources in its defense of a defamation suit if it refused to disclose the identities of the sources." [1]
  • Bosnia Law on Protection Against Defamation (protects sources)
  • Kosovo 2006 Law on Defamation and Insult (protects anonymous sources)
  • The Argentine Civil Court of Appeals in September 2006 ruled that when a journalist claims a defense to defamation under the “Campillay principle” (faithfully reporting something told to them), requiring them then to disclose their confidential source “would amount to prior censorship”. Case CNCiv Sala L, AJP v. Productora Cuatro Cabezas, La Ley 7 de septiembre de 2007.
  • Public Citizen: Right to speak anonymously list of cases in US
  • Syria has terrible laws [2]
  • “To date, only a few countries have adopted comprehensive laws on whistleblowing. The UK, New Zealand, Ghana, and South Africa have the most developed laws that can truly be called comprehensive. The US and Canada have laws that cover the public sector broadly and Japan recently adopted a law covering the private sector.”
  • “In Sweden, public employees have a constitutional right of anonymity to speak whatever they wish. In Norway, the Governmental Commission on Free Expression specifically suggested that the Constitution be amended to include protections for anonymous speech. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in May 2006 that public employees were not protected by the Constitution when speaking as part of their official duties.”

Examples of source leaking, searches, and wiretaps

  • Examples of anonymous sources manipulating journalists: Valerie Plame, Interbrew
  • Asahi news reporter axed for breaching promise with secret source, Japan Times, 7 August 2007
  • Peter Preston, How not to defend your source, British Journalism Review Vol. 16, No. 3, 2005
  • Names in context of forcing release of documents: Sarah Tisdale, Vanessa Leggett, Bill Dunphy, Josh Wolf
  • p. 32 lists newsroom searches in Hong Kong, Kenya, UK, Russia, Italy, France
  • p. 36 lists electronic surveillance on journalists in Colombia, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, UK, Japan, Latvia, Czech Republic, Macedonia
  • p. 38 Philippines, Mexico, Zimbabwe allow wiretaps. US, Council of Europe, Zimbabwe have surveillance infrastructure. In Greece this infrastructure allowed the Prime Minister's phone to be tapped. Vassilis Prevelakis and Diomidis Spinellis, The Athens Affair, IEEE Spectrum, 44(7):26–33
  • p. 40 list of ways electronic records have been used to out sources: Yahoo/China, UK, Indonesia, US on CIA secret prisons, South Africa
  • “The USA PATRIOT Act expanded the ability of government officials to obtain phone records based on a National Security Letters without a court order”
  • “In 2005, the European Union adopted the Directive on Data Retention that requires telecommunications providers to automatically collect and retain all information on all users' activities. The length of the retention can last up to two years. All EU countries must adopt laws by 2009 implementing the Directive.”
  • p. 42 list of cases where state secrets used as justification for raiding/intimidating journalists: Canada, Taiwan, UK, Russia, Morocco, Germany, Lithuania, China, Russia, Denmark, Peru, UK
  • “In the US, CIA analyst Mary McCarthy was fired in 2006 after it was suspected that she was the source of stories on rendition and torture by US authorities.” [3]
  • p. 50-51 list of cases when bad things happened to people who revealed secrets: Kenya, Malaysia, UK, Denmark, US, Singapore, India, UK
  • "You are exposed" magazine article about Canadian privacy


Law references from IMMI proposal

USA

European Union

Belgium

United Kingdom

Estonia

Georgia

Iceland

Norway

Scotland

Sweden

Other references

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