Both Spanish press associations and legal experts have come out strongly against a proposed new rule to regulate classified information and official secrets in Spain as a giant leap in restricting freedom of the press and governmental transparency.
The draft Law of Classified Information was railroaded through the council of ministers as a matter of urgency on August 1st, just before the government, and much of the country, went on vacation. If eventually approved in the legislature, it will replace the current law approved in 1968 by the Franco regime.
The proposed law makes three controversial changes.
It increases classification from two to four categories: top secret, secret, confidential and restricted, with competency of sealing information under each category corresponding to different government entities. The Council of Ministers could classify information as secret and top secret, while the two lesser categories would be left in the hands of authorities ranging from ministers to secretaries of state, undersecretaries, government delegates or the highest responsible for the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), and the Police or the Civil Guard, among others.
It would also establish an automatic expiration date on keeping information classified, varying from 4 to 50 years, with an absolute limit of 65 years. Currently none exists.
The body that oversees the protection of classified information, the National Security Authority (ANS), attached to the CNI, would go from being under the Ministry of Defence to being controlled by the office of the Presidency, essentially giving the president’s office sole power to propose declassification.
Under the new law, the final decision to declassify information would remain with the Council of Ministers, as it is currently.
The Federation of Spanish Journalists Associations (FAPE) and the Madrid Press Association (APM) rejected the draft as “limiting the rights of freedom of expression and information.”
The associations are demanding the removals of language that criminalizes reporting on classified information by journalists and media organizations and would also force journalists to hand over classified information obtained while exercising their profession.
“What results from journalistic investigations cannot be conceived as improper knowledge of classified information,” says FAPE.
Legal experts interviewed by El Debate concur.
A former judge on Spain’s Supreme Court, who prefers to remain anonymous, said that “the Bill is one more step to control and censor information. The objective is clear: that only what power wants to be reported, and that, of course, said information is always beneficial for the Government.”
He said the intent was first written into the Plan of Action Against Disinformation, approved by the executive branch in 2018 and described as seeking to establish a procedure “to define a methodology for the identification, analysis and management of disinformation events.”
“It intends, from the office of the president, to control all information and eliminate what misinforms,” he said, defining disinformation as “any information that is not truthful and timely… That is to say, that which is beneficial for power.”
Another legal academic, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Santiago de Compostela Roberto Blanco Valdés, took issue with amassing power over classified information in the hands of the presidency.
“The question,” he said, “is that who declares information classified must be an independent agency, as was the CNI, with a certain functional autonomy. The previous system with checks and balances has been distorted…The possibilities of abuse are infinite.”
According to Carlos Flores, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia, “Sánchez’s government has just proposed a generalized extension of the concept of official secrecy in order to multiply its incidence and, consequently, to increase the opacity of our institutions.”
He evaluates the draft law as giving greater room for politicians to remove information from public access—and therefore civic debate—simply because it is embarrassing or inconvenient for the government, instead of according to the stricter national security criteria that currently exists.
All agreed that there was no justification for processing the draft’s first step to law as urgent. Both the timing—while most of the country was preparing to go on vacation—and the limited time frame of nine days at the beginning of August for public comment, speak to the opacity the government seeks in the proposal.
