Police control of classified information

[Mark Cottle]

On 9 Apr 2009 at 11:28, Ian Batten wrote:
> 
> 
> Is ``Police SECRET'' the same as real SECRET?  After all, we could  
> start marking company material as SECRET, but that wouldn't make it  
> the same as MoD SECRET.  Does material generated by the police and  
> marked SECRET by them imply the same rigour of handling as stuff  
> marked SECRET by the intelligence services?
> 

If I recall correctly from when I was a civil servant, there is a 
standard HM Government protective marking scheme, which should be 
common to all departments and agencies (including the police and 
intelligence community). It is also supposed to apply to any parts of 
the private sector which work for the public sector. Unfortunately 
this system is undermined by flaws which affect many other aspects of 
the machinery of government and public services. 

There is a widespread implicit assumption in government that by 
setting policy one determines how things occur in the real world - 
senior civil servants and elected politicians are particularly prone 
to this fallacy (because if they weren't they would have to face up 
to their relative ineffectuality). Things never work exactly as 
they're supposed to because policies have to be implemented by human 
beings. It doesn't matter how detailed and prescriptive you make your 
definition of SECRET or CONFIDENTIAL, there will always be a human 
interpreting it and there will always be variations in such 
interpretation. Of course you can send people through extensive 
training and refresher courses and you can circulate firm sounding 
memos reminding people of policy - but the pressures of the real 
world and the complexity of human psychology will still conspire to 
defeat attempts at truly common and consistent implementation. And 
that's before you get to the problem of environments where HM 
Government schemes apply alongside local or corporate schemes. 
(I seem to recall that the although the clearance level "DV" was 
supposed to be common across departments and agencies the 
intelligence services do their own vetting and in effect try to have 
their own separate DV category)

In the end, all systems that depend entirely on rigid implementation 
of policy by humans will tend to fail to some extent. They are no 
substitute for organizations staffed by intelligent people who are 
encouraged to act intelligently and protected from pressures which 
might force errors. Sadly the reality today seems to tend towards the 
former.

Mark Cottle
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