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As the link in my original post pointed out, ICO has just chastised three police forces for not meeting their FOI obligations. The police might well have argued some of the information involved is excluded from FOI releasability on grounds of operational sensitivity, but ICO didn't need to see it, the action was taken purely on them not meeting the timeliness requirements, where they are legally obligated to report their performance. They had FOI organisations, they just weren't working well enough, and they weren't fixing them. You don't need to see classified information to know that.ICO has in fact fined the MoD this year, though that was for a breach of confidentiality relating to Afghan Interpreters.The entire reason for the existence of ICO, and the FOI Act, is that an enforceable access mechanism absolutely is needed for non-classified information. Organisations, or individuals within organisations, for a multitude of reasons, regularly adopt a secret-squirrel attitude to information that is supposed to be publicly available.There are widespread exemptions in the FOI Act 2000 for information affecting national security, but ICO could easily be adapted to deal with classified information if needed through a mechanism similar to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, or the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, all of which are independent bodies specially constituted to have access to classified data in an oversight role. The US already has a similar organisation in the form of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
As the link in my original post pointed out, ICO has just chastised three police forces for not meeting their FOI obligations. The police might well have argued some of the information involved is excluded from FOI releasability on grounds of operational sensitivity, but ICO didn't need to see it, the action was taken purely on them not meeting the timeliness requirements, where they are legally obligated to report their performance. They had FOI organisations, they just weren't working well enough, and they weren't fixing them. You don't need to see classified information to know that.
ICO has in fact fined the MoD this year, though that was for a breach of confidentiality relating to Afghan Interpreters.
The entire reason for the existence of ICO, and the FOI Act, is that an enforceable access mechanism absolutely is needed for non-classified information. Organisations, or individuals within organisations, for a multitude of reasons, regularly adopt a secret-squirrel attitude to information that is supposed to be publicly available.
There are widespread exemptions in the FOI Act 2000 for information affecting national security, but ICO could easily be adapted to deal with classified information if needed through a mechanism similar to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, or the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, all of which are independent bodies specially constituted to have access to classified data in an oversight role. The US already has a similar organisation in the form of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
