EVEN the staunchest defender of covert policing accepts there is a need for a certain amount of information to be available to the public on this shadowy, albeit necessary, form of law enforcement, in order to ensure that officers are acting legally.
Officers from units south of the border were embedded into peaceful protest groups and entered into sexual relationships with the women they were spying on.
Part of the snooping took place in Scotland - at the G8 in Gleneagles, in particular - and Scottish officers were seconded to rogue units.
In 2009, the practice of the police paying informants to snoop on campaign groups was also exposed.
Officers purportedly from Strathclyde Police tried to get a protestor to informer on her friends and pass on information about the Plane Stupid group. She refused and recorded the exchanges.
Against this backdrop, the Sunday Herald asked Police Scotland for the total number of informants it had recruited between April 2013 and January 2016.
Publication of this information posed no risk whatsoever, as the figure was national and covered a significant period of time.
However, with depressing predictability, the force refused and took the case all the way to the Scottish Information Commissioner.
In an unequivocal judgement, the SIC stated: “The Commissioner considers the submissions she has received are general in nature, speculative, and do not evidence how disclosure of the information requested would be the catalyst of any of the harm claimed by Police Scotland.”
Despite this defeat, Police Scotland embarked on a ridiculous court challenge in an attempt to stop the information from coming out. The force lost, again, and it remains to be seen how much public cash has been wasted.
However, Police Scotland is not alone is being woeful when it comes to FoI. As has been previously reported, senior journalists raised concerns recently about the Scottish Government’s record on FoI. Government meetings were not being minuted and special advisers ‘screened’ responses. Our story today confirms the fears of a two-tier FoI system.
FoI amounted to a law change, but it was also supposed to transform attitudes. Police Scotland and the Government are bad role models and need to raise their game.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here