Tell Priti Patel: Stop your attack on journalistic freedom
Journalists who share leaks of official information should not face life imprisonment for doing their job
David Vincent is Professor of Social History at the Open University, where he was previously a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. His publications include: Literacy and Popular Culture, England 1750-1914 (CUP, 1989); The Culture of Secrecy: Britain 1832-1998 (OUP, 1998); The Rise of Mass Literacy. Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (Polity Press, 2000). He is currently writing on the history of privacy.
State interception of postal correspondence marks the first major privacy scandal of modernity. The real question,...