The World - News from June 30, 1988

The British government proposed a reform of the harsh 1911 Official Secrets Act, which currently makes it an offense for an unauthorized person to reveal even trivial official information. In a report, the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said the “catchall” nature of the act should be replaced by a new law strictly confined to disclosures that would actually be harmful to the public interest. But the government’s “white paper” also said that employees of spy and security services will continue to have an “inescapable” lifetime duty of secrecy about their work and should be barred from writing their memoirs.