ARTICLE 19 GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR FREE EXPRESSION recording tapes, photographs, films, layouts, drawings, maps or similar and classified document according to the provisions of this law”. The Law defines an officer as “any Minister, Director, Chief, commander or employee whose nature of work requires the maintenance or access to official documents or general information whose disclosure form a threat to the internal or external security of the State.” Article 11 provides that the “strictly confidential protected, confidential, restricted and ordinary documents are considered under the custody of the person responsible for them.” Analysis The Law considers that private entities and individuals may possess State secrets. We consider that the appropriate scope of the Law – that is, restricting access to information in which there is a substantial risk of harm to national harm which outweighs the public interest in its disclosure – is such that no private institutions would legitimately possess such information. We cannot foresee any situation where the government would outsource sensitive national security information to an external private institution. Accordingly, the scope of the definition of Department should be drafted considerably more narrowly than currently worded in Article 2 removing, at a minimum, private institutions. Also, the phrase “secrets, official documents or information” in the current definition of “department” is particularly problematic. The scope of the information held by the “department” must be more clearly circumscribed than this. At the least, the definition should be limited to information which falls within the definition of “protected secrets and document” and thus defined within the Law. Article 2 also fails to adequately define the boundaries of “protected secrets and document” allowing an unlimited range of information to fall within the definition. While we note this may be in part due to the process of translation, the scope of the definition of “protected secrets and document” in Article 2 is very unclear. Is it intended that the definition is limited to documents classified under the Law, or is intended to be a non-exclusive definition? We are concerned that a very broad range of material can be encompassed under the current drafting of “protected secrets and documents”. As noted above, secrecy laws such as the present Law should define national security precisely and indicate clearly the criteria which should be used in determining classified information, so as to prevent abuse of the label ‘secret’ to prevent disclosure of information in the public interest. An expansive, broadly drafted definition of “protected secrets and documents” is inconsistent with the international standards which govern access to information and potentially encompasses a significant amount of information which is not necessary to protect national security. Also, while the Law purports to protect only classified documents, the scope of the classification definitions are so broad that potentially any information could be included in these categories. Again, this a cause for serious concern. The classification system, in conjunction with the definition of “protected secrets and document”, is critical in defining the proper scope of secrecy legislation and is in need of substantial review. There are serious issues relating to who has the authority to classify information, the lack of a review mechanism for the decision to qualify information, and the definition of “ordinary documents” which seeks to place all official documents beyond disclosure to “nonconcerned persons”. Accordingly the scope of the Law is very broad indeed, far beyond the Memorandum on Jordan’s Protection of State Secrets and Documents Provisional Law No. (50) for the Year 1971ARTICLE 19, London, 2005 – Index Number: LAW/2005/1205 -9-