O is for Official Record

(From the A-Z of Secrecy and Ignorance Series)

Dr. Peter Finn (Kingston University London) and Dr. Robert Ledger (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Who constructs, controls, and preserves the Official Record is often key to documenting and understanding events. However, partly because of the potential of the Official Record to contain evidence of controversial policies and malfeasance, its construction, control and preservation is, especially in areas such as national security and the criminal justice system, inherently contested (Finn & Ledger, 2024). As Deirdre Curtin notes while writing about secrecy in a European Union context, ‘[c]ontrol over secrecy and openness gives power: it influences what others know and thus what they choose to do’, and ‘secret-keeping actually endows secrets with value’ (Curtin, 2014: 684). Those seeking greater openness and (democratic) accountability, and thus less secrecy, argue ‘sunlight is […] the best of disinfectants’ (Louis Brandeis in Berger, 2009) while others, not always unreasonably, urge stricter information control because, to their mind, sound government arises when advice and policy are formulated secretly. Indeed, as one of the best UK journalists of recent times, Ian Cobain, who has made it his business to consistently uncover the nefarious practices of the UK government, states, ‘[i]t is not difficult to see that a degree of secrecy is required by government’ (Cobain, 2016: X).

Useful guides for understanding the breadth and depth of material in the Official Record can be found in state definitions. The US Federal Government (2019), for instance, defines an—rather than the—official ‘record’ as 

‘all recorded information, regardless of form or characteristics, made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the United States Government or because of the informational value of data in them’.

Similarly, in the UK, a record ‘includes not only written records but records conveying information by any other means whatsoever’ (2020). In reality, meanwhile, these definitions are subject to numerous caveats and exclusions (the CIA, for instance, is able to define some documents as ‘nonrecords’) (Cox, 2011: 133).

Interestingly, though states make a big play of control and secrecy around the Official Record, evidence suggests that their grip might not be as tight as they would like. Classified material from the UK state was, for instance, left at a bus stop in Kent (Adams, 2021). The UK Ministry of Defence told The Independent that ‘The department takes the security of information extremely seriously and an investigation has been launched’ (da Silva, 2021). On face value, this appears relatively amusing as an anecdote (unless, of course, one is serving on the HMS Defender, which some of the documents concerned), but events elsewhere suggest it is not a one-off. The involvement of MI5 in research at Imperial College, London, related to a ‘covert bug and drone research project’ came to light when ‘[p]aperwork produced by Imperial [College] initially cited the apparently obscure Government Communications Planning Directorate (GCPD) as a back—era moniker used in Whitehall as a codename for MI5’—was brought to the attention of The Guardian newspaper (Sabbagh 2021). More structurally, a Japanese man working ‘for a company tasked with providing benefits to tax-exempt households’ in the city of Amagasaki, Japan, lost a USB stick containing details of 465,177 taxpayers in the city after ‘several hours drinking in a local restaurant before eventually passing out on the street’ (Murphy, 2022; Wodinsky, 2022). According to the BBC, ‘city officials said the data contained on the drive is encrypted and locked with a password’ and it appears no one tried to use the information (Murphy, 2022).

By Dr. Peter Finn and Dr. Robert Ledger

The Official Record: Oversight, National Security and Democracy

References:

Adams, P. (2021) ‘Classified Ministry of Defence documents found at bus stop’, Accessed: 10/09/2023. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57624942

Berger, A. (2009) ‘Brandeis And The History Of Transparency’, Accessed: 10/09/2023. Available at: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2009/05/26/brandeis-and-the-history-of-transparency/

Cobain, I. (2016) The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation. London: Portobello Books Ltd.

Cox, D. (2011) ‘Burn after Viewing: The CIA’s Destruction of the Abu Zubaydah Tapes and the Law of Federal Records’, in Journal of National Security Law & Policy. 5:1. 131-178.

Curtin, D. (2014) ‘Overseeing Secrets in the EU: A Democratic Perspective’, in  Journal of Common Market Studies. 52:3. 445-708.

da Silva, C. (2021) ‘Classified MoD documents found at bus stop in Kent’, Accessed: 10/09/2023. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/classified-documents-bus-stop-kent-b1873492.html

Finn, P.; Ledger, R. (eds) (2024) The Official Record, National Security, and Oversight: Democratic Case Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Murphy, M. (2022) ‘Japanese man loses USB stick with entire city’s personal details’, Accessed: 08/09/2023. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-61921222.amp

Sabbagh, D. (2021) ‘MI5 involvement in drone project revealed in paperwork slip-up’, Accessed: 06/09/2023. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/06/mi5-involvement-in-drone-project-revealed-in-paperwork-slip-up

UK National Archives (2020) ‘The Public Records System’, Accessed: 08/09/2023. Available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/legislation/public-records-act/pra-faqs/

US National Archives (2019) ‘Disposal of Records (44 U.S.C. Chapter 33)’, Accessed: 08/09/2023. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/about/laws/disposal-of-records.html#def

Wodinsky, S. (2022) ‘A Guy Got Drunk Enough to Lose An Entire City’s Personal Data’, Accessed: 08/09/2023. Available at: https://gizmodo.com/amagasaki-personal-data-usb-lost-drunk-man-1849113016