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The rules are also called the "Tshwane Principles" because they were announced at Tshwane on the outskirts of the South African capital of Pretoria. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution in October, expressing its support for the principles.
While acknowledging the need to protect state secrets, the Tshwane Principles underscore the need to strike an appropriate balance between the disclosure and withholding of information.
The principles stipulate that categories of information subject to restrictions should be limited to defense plans, weapons development, intelligence agencies’ strategies and sources of confidential information. The principles also state that information that constitutes gross violations of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law may not be withheld on national security grounds in any circumstances, and that the period of designation of government information as secrets and procedures for application for permission to access such information needs to be specified.
Moreover, the principles require that whistleblowers be protected in cases where public interest gained from disclosing information outweighs such interest from withholding the information, and that non-public servants such as journalists must not be subject to punishment.
Furthermore, the Tshwane Principles state that the government has a duty to prove the appropriateness of designating information as secrets, and that public servants can be prosecuted only if disclosure of classified information poses a real and identifiable risk of causing significant harm.
The results of international discussions that led to the compilation of the Tshwane Principles have not been reflected in ongoing Diet deliberations on the controversial special state secrets bill.
Serious questions remain about stiffening penalties for those who leak national secrets, which is the main aim of the bill. The United States and European countries impose severe penalties for espionage. However, the maximum prison term for leakages of secrets that do not constitute espionage is two years in Britain and five years in Germany. Critics have pointed out that a 10-year prison term for such an offense in the United States, the same as a penalty provided for by a punitive clause in Japan’s bill, is too severe.
The United States and European countries are moving toward promoting information disclosure. The U.S. Congress enacted legislation in 2010 on a system to strictly examine whether the executive branch’s classification of information is appropriate. It has also been pointed out that the volume of state secrets has surpassed government officials’ capacity to deal with classified information, which heightens the risk of an information leak. Three years ago, Britain shortened the maximum period of designation of information as state secrets from 30 years to 20 years, after which such information must be released. It then strengthened the authority of Parliament’s state secrets surveillance committee this year.
Japan has been left behind in these international trends. The bill now before the House of Representatives should be scrapped and significant discussions should be held on how to strike a balance between the need to protect state secrets and the public interest gained from disclosure of public information.
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