U.K. Secretly Spent $3.2 Million to Stop Journalists From Reporting on Data Breach

People who risked their lives for the UK and its people were being doxxed potentially to a government that would systemically kill them for having done so.

We spent a paltry sum on integrity and loyalty to our allies. Imagine how willing people from the middle east would be to work with us in the future if we were known for selling out those that do.

It looks like the expense was largely due to how procedurally complicated this was, and the fact that the UK Government was paying for “both sides.”

It seems the only media people actually involved in the legal process were representatives of Global Media & Entertainment Ltd (the company that owns LBC etc.). Associated Newspapers Ltd (Mail, Metro, etc.) also found out about it early on. Global sent a lawyer along to some of the hearings, but didn’t actually contest the injunction. The hearings were all held in private, and only the Government and the Government-appointed advocate were present for some of them.

The newspapers didn’t contest the injunction at the time.

> Ms. Bancroft [home affairs correspondent for the Independent] estimates that over the next 18 months, she attended more than 20 hearings at London’s High Court, where The Independent and other news organizations, including The Times of London and Associated Newspapers, were campaigning for the injunction to be lifted.

This sounds interesting, as most of the hearings were private and some were closed – lawyers representing news organisations might be there, but it seems odd to let the journalists themselves in.

I wonder what changed, and made the newspapers decide they wanted to fight this.

*Edit:* looks like the press started complaining in 2024, when the Government set up the Afghanistan Response Route – i.e. the scheme to resettle the people caught in the data breach. There were review hearings every 3 months over the period, plus at least one appeal to the Court of Appeal by the Government (after a High Court judge agreed to lift the injunction. I imagine the press were pretty desperate to report on it in May-July 2024; the right-wing press to attack the Government for its incompetence in the leak, and the hard-right press to attack the Government for the resettlement scheme in time for the election…

Lets name the Journalists/publications whose sense of justice and integrity is up for sale.