12.3 Crime against Official Secrets

Definition: the unauthorized obtaining, keeping, communicating or publishing of official information whose disclosure is prejudicial to the State's security or public interest — the protected classes: defence and security information; classified diplomatic material; the statutorily protected records. The elements: (i) the information's official and classified character; (ii) the unauthorized dealing — obtaining by improper means (the trespass, the hacking) or the keeper's breach (the official's leak) or the publication knowing the classification; (iii) the prejudice-intent or knowledge (the security-damage element distinguishing the spy from the scholar). The statute family: the Code's state-secrets provisions; the Crime and Punishment against State Act, 2046; the security legislation's protected-places and protected-information heads; the Ain-era Official Secrets tradition's inheritance. The tension (the unit's closing analysis): official secrets vs. the Right to Information (Constitution, Article 27; the Right to Information Act, 2064) — the citizen's right to information of public concern, the Act's proactive-disclosure and demand-disclosure architecture with its exemptions (the security exemption's contested breadth); the whistleblower's position (the public-interest disclosure vs. the oath's breach); the journalist's privilege (source protection vs. the secrets offence); the classification culture (over-classification — the bureaucrat's reflex — against the transparency constitutionalism). The exam's formulation: the security exemption must be read narrowly and specifically — a government's embarrassment is not a state secret (the line every court must draw). Exam Focus…