UK steps up war on whistleblower journalism with new National Security Act

British lawmakers explicitly cited WikiLeaks in multiple parliamentary debates on the Act. The motive behind the law, they insisted, was to prevent and deter “unauthorised disclosures” by any individual or organization ever again. Along the way, they repeatedly libeled Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, parroting the the demonstrably false narrative that WikiLeaks’ exposure of Western war crimes threatened innocent lives.

In fact, a leaked 2011 Pentagon report concluded there was “no significant ‘strategic impact’” to WikiLeaks’ release of either the Afghanistan War Diary or Iraq War Logs, provided to Assange by then-US soldier Chelsea Manning. During Manning’s ensuing trial, US government lawyers were forced to admit no one had been harmed in any way as a result of her disclosures. The prosecution conceded this finding during Assange’s initial extradition proceedings in February 2020. A central pillar of the British state’s case for the National Security Act is therefore based on lies.

In reality, the British government developed its vendetta against Wikileaks after being repeatedly exposed for its own human rights abuses and killing of innocent civilians.

An ongoing inquiry has been confirming a BBC investigation which revealed that an “SAS squadron killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances on one six-month tour,” then falsified evidence to frame them as armed insurgents.

In February 2011, following the British special forces’ killing of eight unarmed Afghan civilians in a raid, one officer privately wrote to another, “whilst murder and the [SAS] have oft been regular bed-fellows, this is beginning to look bone!” His colleague replied: “I find it depressing that is [sic] has come to this…Ultimately a massive failure of leadership…and when the next Wikileaks occurs then we will be dragged down with them.”